Getting a New Site Indexed Quickly

So you’ve decided to start a website. You’ve done the research and have selected the best domain to help you rank well in the search engines. You know exactly what purpose your site will serve and have everything planned out.




I have been in this position many times and always get excited to see how quickly I can get my new site to rank well. It’s fun to do and I have learned a lot about what it takes to get a new website on the first page quickly. For the record, I have learned that you can get a site on the first page within a short period of time, but keeping it there and even getting it to move up to the most important positions can take a lot of hard work and time.



One of the things that I have been frustrated with in the past is the amount of time it would take Google to index my sites. I had the site up with some good content on it and everything was optimized perfectly–so why hadn’t Google crawled my site yet? After asking myself this a few times I decided to go out and tell Google about my site. I’m going to give you a couple tips on how to do this. Please keep in mind that with the new Google Caffeine, Google has promised faster indexing, but these tips should still prove useful.



Set up a free Google Webmaster account and verify it. This is a great way to tell Google about a new site and a great way to set things up the way you want them.

Submit your url to Google for free. What? You can actually just submit your url to the all powerful Google? Yes. You can.

Set up a free Google Analytics account. This is another way to tell Google about your site and is also the best free analytics program you can get.

Build a few directory links to it with the directories you know accept free links fast. I’ve always had quick success with ones like Directory-Free.com and Jayde.com. There are thousands out there, these are just a couple of examples.

Throw a quick link up to it on another site you own that gets crawled frequently. Usually one of your blogs would be best since it gets crawled every day because you post on it every day…right?

If you are concerned about Yahoo, they also have a place to submit your url.

Post a link to your new site on Twitter and Facebook to get some initial traffic to it. If your site is freaking awesome, you may get a couple links out of it at the same time.

Stumble your site. Digg your site. Wibb-it your site. Basically, go out and put it in every social bookmarking site you know of.

By following these simple guidelines, I have seen some great success with getting my sites indexed quickly. I’m not going to tell you how quickly, because there is no guarantee, but you can believe me when I say quickly. Once your site is indexed and optimized, it’s time to bust out your super SEO powers and build a ton more sweet links!

10 Tips For Video SEO

Do you know how to do SEO for your videos? Do you have a video or two on your site but are unsure how to do search engine optimization for them?




You are not alone. For a long time it was difficult to say what would help a video rank well in search engines such as Google, but it has become a lot easier than it used to be.



Here are the top 10 SEO tips for videos:



1- If you plan to upload a video to both your site and video distribution sites like YouTube, be sure to post it to your site first. That way you can get links through the embed codes where possible.



2- Make sure that your site has more content than you give the video distribution sites. For example, your site could include a “part 2” to the video or a textual transcription that can’t be had anywhere else. This can entice people to link to your site rather than the video distribution site.



3- Use your targeted keywords in the video’s file name, title, and in the tags where it is appropriate.



4- Build links to the video both internally and externally. Video, like any other content on the Web, will be judged by the same link standards.



5- Create a video sitemap for any videos on your site to make it easier for search engines to find all the video content.



6- Optimize the URL of the page where the video is located by naming the page with the keywords. Only have one video per URL.



7- Tweeting, bookmarking, and mentioning the video on social media sites are great ways to gather links.



8- Cross link your video to other relevant videos that you have done. This will help all of your videos rank better and be more useful for your visitor, which always leads to more views.



9- Create useful content that your visitors will want to link to. This will help to build natural links and encourage comments which also influence search engine rankings.



10- Use a video distribution service such as TubeMogul or Traffic Geyser to spread the video quickly across the Internet. These services can save you a lot of time.



These tips are primarily SEO related. There are a lot of topics about video that need to be discussed to get the most out of a multimedia campaign, but we shall talk about them in another post. Watch for them to come in the future. In the meantime, start recording!



Bonus tip: YouTube will soon let you connect with your friends easier. They are going to suggest people you know by recommending those you have sent videos to via email. Also, if you have connected your Gmail account with your YouTube account, they will suggest people from your contacts that also have a YouTube account.



The idea is to promote subscriptions between friends. One of the key factors in making all of this work is to be sure that your account settings are correct. If you’re not sure, simply go to the privacy settings within your YouTube account. There is a box there that states, “Let others find my channel on YouTube if they have my email address.” Make sure that the box is checked so you can be found and maybe even increase your subscriptions.

Removing a Ban from Google

Banned from Google? Ouch. Anyone who’s been banned from Google before knows that it’s not a fun ordeal. As of June 22, 2009, a report shows that google.com is used for around 90% of all searches done on the internet (worldwide). And with the next closest search engines in the running being 85 points away (yahoo.com at 5.5% and the new bing.com at about 4.5%) that’s a pretty big chunk of your traffic being cut out when Google decides to ban your site.




How to Know if you are Banned from Google



Sometimes it’s not so easy to know if you are banned from Google. So I’ve started a “You Might be Banned from Google if…” list. Feel free to add to the list in the comments.



If yesterday you were ranking on the first page of Google and today your site is nowhere to be found in the SERPS, you might be banned from Google.

If you do a site search (site:yoursite.com) on Google, and it brings up no results, you might be banned from Google.

If yesterday your page rank was 5 and today it is 0, you might be banned from Google.

Common ways of getting banned from Google.



Now, of course, if you’ve been banned, you probably already know why it happened. But just in case you’re still in a daze, here are some common ways to get your site banned from the ever powerful Google search engine:



Hidden text or hidden links – when you think about how this is done (making the color of the text the same color as the background that it’s placed over, how hard would this really be for Google to detect with a small piece of code in their algorithm?

Use of cloaking or sneaky redirects – and yes, Google calls them “sneaky.”

Loading pages with irrelevant keywords – aka keyword stuffing.

Creating multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

Creating pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other mal-ware.

Producing “Doorway” pages created just for search engines with little or no original content. The key to this is “little or no original content.” If you’re actually adding new content to the web then this shouldn’t be a problem.

There are also some “back-door” ways of getting your site banned from Google, such as including several links to sites that are known for spamming, thus causing Google to draw the conclusion that you’re affiliated with them.



Should you feel the urge to read more on this topic, visit google.com for a few more tips on creating a “Google-friendly” site.



If anyone knows of any other sure-fire ways of getting banned from Google, let me know in the comments!



So what if you do get banned? Then what?



How to remove a ban from Google

The thing to remember with a Google ban is that it is not always permanent. In fact, most of the time, you can just change whatever it was that got you banned and then submit a reconsideration request. To resubmit to Google, visit this link, which will take you to a page within the Google Webmaster Tools. From there they will walk you through the process which can also include sending an email to Google regarding what you have changed and why you feel you should be included in the search engine once again. Remember when you compose this email that there will be a real person reading it on the other end. Be kind and business-like in your request and you will have much more of a chance of getting the ban lifted and once again being indexed in the largest and most used search engine on the web.

10 Link Building Strategies For New Website Or Business Owners

Believe it or not, all SEO’s were newbies at one time or another. Launching a website can be a very exciting event for an individual or new business owner. However, that excitement can quickly turn to disappointment when the site owner finds out that they are getting little or no traffic. If they are getting traffic, it is most likely coming from family members or friends who they notified through an email or Facebook.




Being involved in SEO and marketing in general, I am usually bombarded by family members and friends with questions about marketing their website or their future website on the Internet. Because of this and my willingness to help just about anyone I know, you can usually find me in a small dark corner at a family party (it has to be small and dark because my wife gets ticked when I’m not up and socializing with everyone), on the phone in the car, or answering an email, Facebook message, or Twitter message about SEO and other internet marketing tactics.



I was on a call yesterday with one of my best friends from high school. Our conversation was focused on general search engine optimization principles and link building tactics that could provide a good foundation and hopefully, if he does them right, some strong rankings in the search engines. One thing I emphasized is the fact that what ever he does, he needs to build links naturally. A natural link building campaign is crucial for success in SEO.



A natural link building campaign is one that is just that, natural! Getting 50,000 links within the first twenty days of your website’s existence is definitely not natural. Getting a slow trickle of links coming into your website and then building up looks much more natural. Also, getting 50,000 links pointing to your home page with the same anchor text is not natural. Vary your anchor text and include long tail versions of your keywords. You should also build links to other pages of your site in addition to your home page. All of these things help with building a natural link campaign.



In terms of links, there are two types of links you can get for your websites, external and internal links. Both are very important and can make a huge difference in your search engine rankings. I want to discuss in detail, ten ways to effectively jump-start your link building campaign.



Friends & Family Members



When beginning a link building campaign, one very natural way of obtaining links is from friends and family members. I just opened up our family blog and counted all of the friends and family who we have added in our blogroll. The grand total… 41. How hard is it to simply call up (recommended – it’s more personal) or email your family and friends who have blogs or other sites, and ask them for a link to your new website? Not hard at all! In fact, because they are your friends or family members, they will probably do it without hesitation. You can do the same thing with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.



Add A Blog To Your Domain



Google loves blogs! Google loves fresh content! Google loves internal links! Internal links from other pages of your website are a guaranteed way to help you increase your rankings in the search engines. Adding a blog to your domain is a great way for you to easily add new content to your website on a regular basis. In most cases, adding a blog to your main domain is rather simple and can be done in as little as three clicks of your mouse. Web hosting companies like myhosting.com, Hostmonster, & Bluehost offer one click installations of blog platforms like Wordpress or b2evolution.



Adding a blog, posting to it at least once daily, and linking back to your home page and other important pages of your website with keyword anchor text is a great way to gain a lot of internal links. When blogging, you should also link out to other websites that interest you and websites that are in similar industries. You might also consider adding images, videos, polls, etc. Mix things up! Make it look natural! Most important, have fun!



Local Organizations



Just about every city in the country has a local chamber of commerce; mine would be the Lehi Area Chamber of Commerce. Joining a chamber of commerce will not only get you a very good link back to your website, but also provides networking opportunities with other local businesses. Most times, depending on your business, you can generate new leads rather easily by getting to know other individuals and businesses in your area.



Local News



Developing relationships with local newspaper writers and always making yourself available for comments on news stories that involve your industry is a great way to build awareness about your company and get links back to your website (if the newspaper is published online).



Help A Non Profit Organization



You would be surprised how many non-profit organizations are operating in your city and your state. Every one of us has been given talents and certain things that we are good at. I guarantee that there is a non-profit organization that could use your help, whether it is with designing their website or painting the conference room of their new office building. If you offer of yourself and your services freely, you can most likely ask for, and get a link to your website from theirs.



Submit Your Site To Local & Industry Specific Online Business Directories



Anyone studying SEO can usually find a blog post about submitting your website to directories on the Internet. Yes, this is a valuable link building tactic, but before you go crazy and start submitting to thousands of directories, seek out local directories and directories that are specific to your business. Submit to these first and take your time filling out all of the information that they ask for. These will be some of your most valuable links since they are so relevant to your website and business.



Social Bookmarking



You have probably heard the term social bookmarking. You have probably heard that social bookmarking is a great way to build links. Well, it is and it isn’t… You can waste a lot of time social bookmarking if you are submitting to the wrong sites. I limit my social bookmarking to Mixx, Propeller and sometimes Kirtsy. The trick to social bookmarking is to not only bookmark your website, your blog posts, and other things related to your website, but bookmarking lots of different things that interest you. This will make your bookmarking profiles look much more natural to both viewers and the search engines.



Write An Article And Submit To Article Directories



Writing articles and submitting them to sites like Ezine Articles, Article City, and Go Articles, also known as article marketing, is a great way to get links back to your website. Take time to write a very detailed article about your industry and submit it to a few article directories like the ones I listed above. You will get links back to your website by properly using the author resource or bio box at the end of the article. You should tell a little about yourself and your company, while adding keyword rich anchor text links pointing back to your website.



Write And Submit A Press Release



Writing press releases and submitting them to places like PR Web or Web Wire is a great way to generate interest and buzz about your business and also to get links back to your website. This method of link building is a little more difficult than other links that you can get for your website. Writing a press release takes skill… a skill, which the average person, like me, does not have. Press releases have certain requirements that must be met, a certain format that must be followed, and in most cases, need to be super interesting. Not having any of these elements can almost guarantee that your press release will either be outright rejected or not distributed to other news related websites.



Build A Hub Page Or Squidoo Lens



Building a Hub Page or Squidoo Lens is a fun way to get links back to your website. To date, I have built 73 Hubs and 25 Lenses for my own personal websites and hundreds for clients that I have managed. The most effective Hub Pages and Squidoo Lenses are those that have at least 450 words of text about a certain topic or subject, videos, pictures, polls, and other gadgets that are easy to add. You want to make the page as interactive as possible so it provides value for anyone who happens to read it. You are allowed two links to other websites from your Hubs and a handful of links (be conservative, don’t spam) from your Lenses.



Building links isn’t pretty. But, in order to rank well in the search engines, it is absolutely necessary. These are ten excellent ways for new companies or new website owners to start building links to their websites. There are many others and I encourage any of our readers to add to this list by commenting on this post.

Transformers of SEO Part 2: The Decepticons

Before anyone asks the question, the answer is: “Yes, I finally got out to the theater to see Revenge of the Fallen.” About 10 years ago life was much simpler. I could just pick a night, meet some of my friends and head out to the theater to see a movie. Now I am married and have a couple of kids. Getting out to the theater has become a rare event, but I did manage to make time over the weekend to see it with my brother in-law.




Thanks to a couple of comments from Princess Zelda and Dan Schulz on my previous post about Transformers of SEO, I have had some inspiration to write a sequel. My previous post compared a few optimization strategies to the Autobots. This post will contrast some of the current blackhat SEO strategies to the Decepticons. I think this comparison is appropriate because, in the end, blackhat SEO only “deceives” the person using it by making them think that it will bring top rankings and instant wealth.



Cloaking (Megatron):



Megatron is the leader of the Decepticons and one of the most powerful Transformers. Just like Megatron, cloaking can be a powerful blackhat SEO tactic that could result in high search engine rankings. The negative aspect of this tactic is that once a site has been caught cloaking it is removed from the search index and all the top rankings are instantly taken away. Cloaking is done by making a website appear to be something completely different for site visitors than it does for search engine spiders. There are many ways a web developer can go accomplish it, but whatever method is used, the end result is always the same.



Doorway Pages (Devastator):



Several Decepticons combined together to transform into one large robot called Devastator. When combined together they were a powerful and formidable opponent. Doorway pages can be compared to these Decepticons. One doorway page on its own can be an effective tool for driving traffic to a website, but multiple doorway pages can have a “devastating” effect. Doorway pages are single web pages that are set up and optimized for a couple of search terms with the singular goal of sending people from that page to a main website. Creating several doorway pages targeting multiple search terms can eventually help a webmaster rank well for all their targeted search terms. Doorway pages are just another way of tricking or deceiving the search engines. The goal of search engines is to provide the searcher with the most relevant websites to their search query. They want those websites to be what is displayed in the search results and not a page that directs a visitor to another site. Once doorway pages are discovered, they will be removed from the search index and all the work of creating them will be for nothing.



Keyword Stuffing (Starscream):



Starscream is the sidekick to Megatron but always seems to be more like a thorn in Megatron’s side. He was useful when he assisted the Decepticons in battle but was usually more of a hindrance then a help to Megatron because he was constantly plotting to overthrow him and take over as leader. I think keyword stuffing is much like Starscream. Many webmasters stuff webpage elements like titles tags, alt attributes and headers, full of keywords to either target many different search terms or inflate keyword density. While this strategy may have worked in the past, today it only results in reducing the weight of the elements that have been stuffed. So instead of possibly ranking well for a few targeted search terms, the site will struggle to rank for any search terms at all. Keyword stuffing is a strategy of the past that is dead and gone. Anyone practicing it today can expect their SEO campaign to also be dead and gone.



Don’t be fooled by any of these blackhat strategies, they deceive webmasters into believing they can bring quick rankings and wealth, but in the end it is the ethical SEO techniques that will bring the lasting results.

Marketing Team Players

SEO.com is doing its part to help boost the struggling economy. The Utah Internet marketing company today announced its Ultimate Web Marketing Makeover, which will give one organization the chance to emerge from the recession via a comprehensive Internet marketing campaign.




“We’ve been fortunate to experience great growth during the recession, and now we want to give back to help someone else have similar success,” said Dave Bascom, chief executive officer of SEO.com.



Through October, SEO.com will accept submissions from various organizations that detail how the recession has affected them, and how they believe Internet marketing services could improve their situation. SEO.com will then award one of those businesses a six-month contract worth more than $60,000. Some of the services will include:



Web Site Redesign

Search Engine Optimization

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Link Building

Press Releases, Writing and Distribution

Copywriting

Local Search Optimization

Social Media Optimization

Website Analytics

Blog Marketing

“With all the services we’ll provide over the period of six months, we expect to lay a foundation that will literally change the future of a struggling organization,” Bascom said. “To the winning organization, this will be worth much more than the $60,000. We will provide them with a strong online presence so they can attract many more customers through search engines, and we’ll design their site so more of those visitors will turn into paying customers.”



To participate in the contest, participants must fill out the Ultimate Makeover form which includes a section to write a 500-word essay that explains why they should be selected.



Any organizations that offer quality products or services and have been negatively affected by the recession are encouraged to apply. SEO.com will judge the participants based on the quality of business or service, the industry, the story behind the company, how it has struggled during the recession, and the potential to not only succeed, but to benefit the community.



“We really want to help a deserving company or organization get back on its feet,” said Nelson James, vice president of SEO.com. “We are good at what we do, and we are confident that the services we are offering in this package will do just that.”



SEO.com is accepting submissions for the Ultimate Web Marketing Makeover through Oct. 31, and will announce the winner in early November. If you know anyone who could benefit from this contest, please spread the word. For more information, visit http://www.seo.com/web-marketing-makeover/



About SEO.com

SEO.com is a full-service Internet marketing firm that specializes in search engine optimization. The SEO firm’s search engine marketing tactics help numerous clients reach millions of potential customers on the Internet. SEO.com has grown rapidly since its inception and continues to expand its offerings as a full-service online marketing firm. The company offers everything from organic search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) to social media marketing, online public relations and search friendly-Web design. Clients range from small startups to Fortune 100 companies. For more information, log on to SEO.com.

Google are Now Bringing in More Real Time Results

The current popularity of Twitter and the fact that Twitter are trying to turn them selves into a real time search engine has made Google stand up and react.




Although we all know that fresh unique content was always essential to build power and authority on your site and also give your new post a freshness boost, there has been a slight tweak in the algo from what I am seeing over the last few days to give further power to fresh posts from authority and powerful sites.



What seems to be happening is that when a new post is created it gets indexed and then placed into a Top 10 position for some highly competitive terms, this ten over the next few days drops off on to page two, three and then eventually disappears from the SERPs.



It seems as though Google have increased the algothirm to bring in fresh results a lot more. Again this is great for that extra little bit of exposure

A great example of this is the term “SEO”. Firstly it was Dave Naylor’s post about geo targeting which came straight into the Top 10 and then slowly faded out as the post aged and then the Search engine journal post which hit the first page and then slowly started shifting out.

Google Caffeine Update, An SEO Insight

I don’t usually post news stories as I try to make the blog different and unique, I mean why post something that everyone else is posting, with exactly the same stance. But I feel that the Caffeine update that Google have recently announced is well worth a blog post.




Here is a caption from the official announcement



For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.



Read the full post by Google Here



The Google caffeine update clarifies exactly what I have been saying and thinking for the last few weeks, you can refer to the recent blog post http://www.seotops.com/google-are-now-bringing-in-more-real-time-results_1096/

I like to post about things that I see and notice happening in the search industry from experience and testing. So let’s get down to discussing the Caffeine update. So what does this mean to search positions? The future of search? And so many more unanswered questions?



Well from what I have seen although Google say that they are testing the new infrastructure on www2.sandbox.google.com and some people stating it will not affect the results. I have been seeing this is the current SERPs for some weeks now. Basically what I am seeing is results constantly changing, updated content is getting a fresh boost for major terms a lot more now query deserves freshness, part of the faster indexing and crawling capabilities. I.E. new blog posts go straight into the Top 10 for competitive terms and gradually drop out. Results are no longer stable and personally from a searchers point of view it’s a good thing. The reason I say this is because the internet has expanded so much, whereas we used to have a strict Top 10 with all the best sites, there are now so many more sites online and simply not enough room to show ever decent authority site in the Top 10.



We all know that users do not navigate to page 2-3-4 etc, so what Google can now do is constantly refresh the Top 10 with the authority and power sites, so users get to see much more great sites as well as newly created content for what they are searching for. This is basically a response to Twitter and a right back at you to Bing.



But from what I am seeing, although Google seem to be bringing in real time results and constantly refreshing the SERPs, the Top 4 positions seem to be still be stable. Again the reason for Google doing this is because they have to please all searchers, although moving into real time is all very well and good, a lot of people still want consistency and a huge amount of users click on the Top 4 results, so they have to stick. I mean if you go and search for something find a great site at the top, you want that site to appear there next time.

So where does this leave SEO? Personally I think it’s good for the SEO sector. I mean even the most competitive terms do not get that much traffic from positions 8-9 and 10. So the constant refresh will allow Google to deliver a constant flow of great results and allow all sites to get coverage numerous times a day, stable positions for competitive terms will be a thing of the past, unless of course you are a good SEO or employ a good SEO to push you into the Top 4.

Learn the Basics Before You Try Anything Fancy!

l heard something on the radio a few weeks ago that stuck with me and made me think about the basics of SEO. The line went something like this, “You have to have the fundamentals down before trying any of the fancy stuff. ” So before you go out and try to do things like PR sculpting or any of the other advanced techniques you hear about, get the basics down.




SEO can really be broken down into three essential areas: Architecture, Content, and Links. These are the basics of SEO that you need to understand and get right first. Let’s take a look at some key points to understand in each of these main areas.



Architecture – Can Your Site Be Crawled?

One of the first problems that a website has to address is whether or not their site can actually be crawled by the search engine spiders. You can have the best content in the world, but if the search engine spiders can’t get to it you won’t reap the benefits! Here are some things you can do to help your site be more crawl-able:



Avoid things like JavaScript or Flash navigation. Both of these kinds of navigation are not crawled very well by search engines at this time. This could change in the future, but for now it’s best to just avoid JavaScript and Flash navigations.

Keep your site’s architecture as flat as possible. Don’t have tons of levels in your architecture. Keep pages as close to the root as possible. In other words, mysite.com/folder/product is much better than mysite.com/category/subcategory/other-folder/product.

Stay away from parameter strings in URLs. By having parameter strings in URLs you could have multiple versions of the same content and will have to learn how to properly use the canonical element. You can avoid this by not using parameters. Instead, have a static URL for each page whenever possible. For example, mysite.com/productname.html is much better than mysite.com/?prod-id=abc123&cat-id=def456.

Use internal linking appropriately. Whenever it makes sense, link to other pages in your site from within the content of the page. Don’t just rely on your navigation to get people (and search engine spiders) to where you want them to go. (More about internal linking.)

Sitemaps are your friends. Make sure your site has both an HTML and XML sitemap. (More about sitemaps).

Content – Is It Optimized?

Once you have your website’s architecture set up the right way, the next step is to make sure that your content is well-optimized to help your site rank for your main keyword phrases. Here are a few basic guidelines to follow:



Don’t target too many phrases per page. You may have a list of 50 keywords you want to target, but you should only focus on 2-3 main phrases per page. Create other pages around additional phrases as needed.

No spammy stuff! Don’t do any keyword stuffing, alt stuffing, meta spamming, or any other spammy techniques. They don’t really work well anymore anyway.

Use your keyword phrases in titles, header tags, etc. By using your keyword phrases in your titles and header tags you can give them more emphasis.

Use your keywords in your content. Don’t just rely on your titles and header tags. Don’t overdo it; make the text read naturally but make sure you include your keywords and variations of them in the content.

Links – Getting Juice from Other Sites

Setting your site up the right way is one step, but getting traffic to your website takes a lot more than just using keywords on your pages. The other big key to getting a good rank on the search engines is to get other sites linking to you. By getting these links you are showing that your site has credibility and is worth ranking well. Here are a few quick tips to keep in mind when you’re building links:



Use a variety of techniques. There are a lot of things you can do to build links: directories, articles, social bookmarking, forums … the list goes on and on. Mix up what you’re doing and get a variety of link types coming into your site. (More about link building)

Spread your links over a lot of domains. It’s important to get a lot of links, but it’s also important to get a lot of links spread over many domains. If you follow tip #1 this shouldn’t be much of a problem for you.

Use keywords in your anchor text. One problem that I’ve seen over and over is that someone will build links to their site using either their name, their business name, or their URL. This is nice if that’s what you want to rank for, but if you want to rank for a keyword phrase you have to use that phrase as the anchor text of your link.

Use a variety of anchors. Don’t just use the same keyword phrase over and over again. Mix it up so that you aren’t spamming one phrase too much. This will help your link building look more natural.

The work is never done. Don’t think you can just submit to a bunch of directories and your work is over. SEO is an ongoing process.

While these tips don’t cover everything you need to know about the three main areas of search engine optimization, this is enough to get you started. Spend some time looking over your site to make sure that you are doing these basics. Then, if you want, you can try to get a little fancy.



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Google Caffeine – What You Need To Know!

As an SEO, I know that my industry is constantly changing and evolving. That is one of the reasons why I truly love marketing through the search engines. One upcoming change will be the release of what has been code-named “Google Caffeine,” which can be beta-tested here. It will be a new, more powerful version of Google’s search engine technology. You can read more about it from the Google Webmaster Central Blog.




Because I rely on search engine optimization to grow my client’s businesses and my personal websites, I pay attention anytime Google gives out little bits of information regarding the future of their search engine.



The following quote from Google tells us a lot about this new project’s role in the future of search:



“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness, and other dimensions.”



That one sentence tells us just about everything we need to know about the future of Google search. It tells us where we need to be moving to stay ahead of the curve in our industry. Here is how we can do it:



Site & Indexing Speed: Google is going to be crawling more sites, more pages on those sites, and adding them to their index much faster. We have known for years that Google and the other search engines love fresh content. The problem is that there is so much new content hitting the internet every single day that they needed to come up with a solution to keep their index up-to-date with the latest news and information. The key here is that you need to continue to add new content to your website often. As Google increases their indexing speed, your new pages will get picked up faster and you will rank better.

Accuracy: Websites that will continue to dominate the search engines will be the ones that can properly match up the keywords people are searching on with the content of what they are actually looking for. I believe Google is not only interested in which sites people are actually clicking on, but what their behavior is like once they arrive at the particular website. The key here is that you should take all the time you need to make sure you are targeting the proper keywords, that the content on your website is related to the search term, and that it is enticing enough to keep visitors interested. Conversion optimization will also play a huge roll in converting more of your visitors into buying customers. One thing I always tell my clients is, “I can bring you traffic, but what good is the traffic if it doesn’t make you more money?” This is true regarding targeting the wrong keywords and having a crappy web design that doesn’t convert the traffic.

Comprehensiveness: Google will continue to favor “authority” sites. You know, those sites that do an excellent job of completely covering their niche. The key here is that if you want a website that ranks incredibly well for your main keywords, you better be ready to put in some blood, sweat, and tears. Google wants to see and rank sites that are thorough and comprehensive resources for the people who are looking for information about a particular topic. This is exactly why it is crucial that you continue to build new pages on your website that rank for each and every one of your relevant keywords. Remember, Google continues to show that they prefer larger, older websites that are loaded with useful information.

This information is nothing new. These are the things we are currently doing for our clients and that you should be doing now to increase your search engine rankings. However, there are many websites who are not doing these things and will fall far behind when Google finally releases their new search engine technology.



That is why you need to get started TODAY! If you do, you will be far ahead of your competitors who push aside this information and you will develop what is known as a competitive advantage.



Good luck!

Get to Know Your SEO: Scott Smoot

We are pleased to introduce Scott Smoot, an account manager for SEO.com. Scott is originally from San Diego, California, and is a graduate of Brigham Young University, Marriott School of Management.




If Scott were a super hero, his powers would be flying and super-sharp wolverine claws. In real life, Scott has super Guitar Hero drum talent, and is ranked in the top 2000 in the world. He is also one of the best goalies in his area for inner-tube water polo, and can clap with one hand. With those talents and his SEO abilities, we believe that Scott already qualifies as a super hero.



Scott’s favorite blog (next to the SEO.com blog, which is, of course, everyone’s favorite) is www.failblog.org. Upon interviewing Scott, we checked out this blog, and also give it two thumbs up!



Scott’s childhood hero was Michael Jackson. He enjoys many genres of music, including everything from Metallica to instrumental soundtracks.



If you are ever online, and you see the screen name Botnic, you can quite comfortably assume it is Scott. He received this nickname from his sisters as a child, and still uses it today. The name comes from Dr. Robotnic, Sonic the Hedgehog Series.



We think Scott is awesome. If you want to see something really great, watch him on the drums. It is pretty spectacular.

Get to Know Your SEO: Seth Ellsworth

Seth Ellsworth has a different perspective on life seeing as he is 6’10”. In answer to your next question, yes, he plays basketball. He played a year and a half for Brigham Young University, but retired due to a back injury. However, Seth still reigns in the ESPN March Madness brackets.




Regarding super powers, Seth says that if given the choice he would probably be Gumby. He feels that he and Gumby could relate to each other because they are both tall. Among his many notable accomplishments is winning the Aflac duck during the company insurance presentation.



Seth grew up in Washington, Utah, Arizona, and a few places in between. Seth prefers weekends, but he still enjoys Thursdays because they bring him closer to the weekend. He doesn’t have any nicknames nor have any pets. He once had a fish, but you must watch the video to appreciate the significance of this fish.



And if you have any questions about conversion optimization, Seth is your man.

Optimizing Since the Middle Ages

was recently featured in the Salt Lake Enterprise. An article was written about our company, focusing on the incredible growth we have enjoyed despite the recession. After mentioning our office expansion and relocation, the article highlights the firm’s history. It states, “The firm was formed in April 1003…”




We knew that we led the industry in experience, innovation and good looks, but according to this article we preceded electricity– maybe even the wheel. We found this pretty funny and emailed jokes back and forth. My favorite response came from Nelson James, who was asked what his secret was to staying so young. He wrote, “Noni juice. I can get you in my line for a mere $16,000 to start out.”



This misprint was comical and was not damaging to our firm’s reputation. However, what if it was? What can be done if something harmful is printed or written online about your company and it begins circulating the web, or climbing to the top of the SERPs?



Many firms are including Reputation Management in their SEO efforts. This SEO service features monitoring, addressing or mitigating undesirable search engine results or online media comments. Techniques can include creating positive posts in response to negative comments, or writing favorable content and optimizing the subject matter for your company name or targeted keywords.



Reputation Management involves:

PR Crisis Management: Search engine optimization focused specifically on preserving and restoring reputation, when the crisis is already in progress.

Online Public Relations/Press Release Optimization: Publicly announcing new company developments and delivering the message to a much larger audience.

Blog Marketing: Consistently producing blog content allowing a company to publish its message to a large audience and creating an opportunity to start a discussion about different issues.

Link Building: Attracting links from offsite to build search engine rankings to certain pages. High rankings can ensure that your message is viewed first.

Nelson wrote a post about the dark side of reputation management, and showed how an seo firm used SEO to cover up unethical practices. We (obviously) do not condone this practice. However, if you become victimized online due to unfortunate or inaccurate events, reputation management can be crucial.



Benjamin Franklin stated, “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” A firm’s reputation is one of its most important assets. It is important to consistently monitor your online reputation to keep it positive and accurate.

Online Copywriting Tips

Online Copywriting Tips


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Web copy should do three things, and avoid doing one very important thing. In this article we'll show you what you need to do to make your copy sing, and your visitors sit up and take notice.

Web copy should:



Get attention.



Entice visitors to stay on your site, read the page.



Make visitors want to buy from you.



What not to do:



We here at XYZ Corporation know what it means to be successful. In fact, sometimes we forget that at one point a long, long, long time ago we weren't the premiere information distribution technology enhancement resource agency facilitator. Times have changed though, and we have transfused our corporate mission to account for the discrepancies in the post-modern publishing phenomenon. We are...us...greatest...best...us, us, us...selfish, etc.



- Aaron Wall



How to Get Attention



Copy writing is the essence of getting more profit from your site or from eBay auctions. Studies have shown that Internet users spend around 10 seconds on a web page before deciding to explore more or to hit the "BACK" button. All you get is 10 seconds to catch attention and entice readers to explore the rest of your site or product pages.



Eye tracking studies performed by Jakob Neilsen showed that people pay attention to the left hand-top side of the web page first, and then read the headline, subheading and finally scan the text.This means that the most important part of your web page is your headline and content directly under your headline. This is where you must make your most crucial points.



Make sure to put product benefits right under the headline, because readers are most likely to see it there. If the benefits are good enough, visitors will be enticed to keep on reading, eventually getting more interested in the product.



The point of the headline is to stop people dead in their tracks. The paragraph right under the headline should trigger the thought: "This is it, that's the stuff."



Another eye opener to the world of web marketing is the fact that people do not read websites. People SCAN WEBSITES.



Here is a great example by David Young of American Small Business:



Here's what it means: People who think that the Internet is just print in a different medium are wrong. (Is your brain rejecting that statement?) Here's my little 'a-ha' demonstration



You are reading a book: read - read - read - backup to re-read a difficult passage - read - read - lick thumb to turn page - read - read - read - and so on.



You are reading a newspaper: scan - scan - read - read - scan - read - turn to page 8 - read - back to page 1 - scan - read - turn page - scan - continue.



I am reading a newspaper: find the comics - scan - skip - read (just the funny ones - why do they call the boring ones 'comics'?)



You are reading engaging a web site designed by someone who believes that web sites are just like print: scan - scan - read - look for navigation link - look some more - click - scan - wrong page click back button -find another navigation link - click - scan - read - click - back to search engine.



You are engaging a web site designed by someone who believes the web is different: scan - read - click - scan - click - scan - read - read - click - scan - click - type - click - type - click - wait for UPS truck to deliver merchandise.



This means that your website and product copy must appeal to the eyes that rush through the page looking for something to focus on. Use of the following techniques will accomplish this.:



Bullets



Put your most important benefits and features in bullet format.



Bullets are easy to scan



Bullets stop the eyes.



Use 3 - 5 sentences per paragraph. Long paragraphs breathe of "work" and the tedious task of finding something valuable in the long and unformatted block of text. Short paragraphs allow users to quickly jump from one block of text to the next, assisting their eyes in the exploration of something interesting.



Take this post and example. It's written in web format. Once you break your copy into paragraphs, emphasize the most important points. Use bold, italics, bold-italics and various colors to make important points stand out. Once again, this technique stops the eyes that scan down your web page.



Use plenty of headlines. Your headlines within the text can serve as separator that stops the eyes and helps readers preview sections they are about to read.

Move Your Blogger Blog to WordPress: Getting Content on a New Host

Move Your Blogger Blog to WordPress: Getting Content on a New Host


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If you've been with Blogger for a while, have your own domain name and are ready to move to something bigger and better, keep reading. This is the second part of a three-part series that will help you move your blog to WordPress.

Recap of the tutorial



In the first part of this tutorial, we discussed the strategy for transferring content from your Google Blogger-hosted blogs to WordPress using your own custom domain name. If you have not read the first part, it is highly recommended that you read that first, before reading this part, as it contains information you need to understand this article.



The overall strategy focuses on registering your own custom domain and then pointing the CNAME to Blogger. This will allow Blogger to 301 redirect the old blog post URLS (those with .blogspot.com URLs) to new URLs that include your preferred domain name.



After maturity of the 301 redirection (this means that Google is passing all link juices/page rank and has updated all URLs in the Google index), we will export all Blogger posts to your WordPress XAMPP local host at which the onsite work is to be done.



After completion of the onsite work at the WordPress XAMPP local host, we will then select a web host to which these files and the database are to be uploaded. After this, we will point the name servers of the domain to your new web host.



After installation of the default WordPress, empty all the database tables used by the default installation and then import the WordPress database containing all of your Blogger blog posts.



We also need to check the consistency of your URLs before and after the transfer in order to avoid 404 errors (read part one of this tutorial for some background).



In this article, we will discuss the best practices for moving Blogger to WordPress. The following techniques below are vital to ensure that moving content to your WordPress web host will not affect both website traffic and current rankings in Google. These include:



Exporting Blogger content to your computer WordPress XAMPP local host.



Preparing the WordPress local host files to be uploaded to FTP.



Preparing the MySQL WordPress local host database to be exported to your new web host.



Installation of WordPress on your new web host.



Importing the MySQL WordPress database and replacing the default installation database.



Correcting possible 404 errors due to some changes in the URL before and after the blog transfer. This is safely done using 301 redirection with Apache .htaccess file.



Completing the finishing touches of the transfer. This includes updating your Google Webmaster tools account and Google Analytics for that website.

If you are ready to proceed and have read part one in detail, keep reading this article.

Affiliate Marketing, the Economy, and Maslow

Hey everyone. It’s been a bit. I ended up typing out a few entries lately, and ended up rejecting most for one reason or another. But here’s one for old time’s sake(no the blog isn’t dead, I’m just busy). This entry is going to be about the economy, psychology, and how to get some conversions out of it all.




The Economy & Hope



Yeah everyone knows the economy sucks. That’s not what this is about. What it’s about is it’s affect on the consumer mindset. A lot of people are broke, and those not broke are not spending. Except on hope. Hope turned out to be more than a presidential campaign motto in my opinion. Not in the political sense, but more in that it was the perfect motto for the American consumer/voter’s mindset.

Sure enough, hope is what’s converting. I’d like to nominate it for product of the year actually. It’s not like the “hope for a perfect golf swing”, but rather “hope for money” “hope for love”, etc. So how do we figure out what people are going to be buying



Affiliate Marketing, now with Excellent Maslow Goodness

Alright. Really quickly for those who don’t know: Maslow was a psychologist who created something called the hierarchy of needs. It’s basically a classification system for the different human needs and motivations, and their importance. They’re shown in the triangle below.

Ok. So the base are the most basic needs. Keep in mind that being on the bottom of the pyramid does not necessarilly create an increase in demand, but at least should be more stable than things that fall towards the top in the current economy.

Level 1 - Physiological

Since it’s a bit tricky to sell water or food online(though it is done), we’ll rule those two out.

“Homeostasis” is a persons ability to regulate their internal system. So that’s medication(for our purposes). Unfortunately though, most of the health products around for affiliates(that won’t give their merchant a lovely phone call from the FTC) are not really based around homeostasis, but rather are for external health.

I could pretend like all the “colon” weight loss offers were excretion, but really the motivation for those products was not the desire to poop.



As for “sex” there’s a few obvious industries that come to mind(adult, dating, etc). However, my understanding of the pyramid leads me to believe that they mean to imply the ability and opportunity to have sex. So according to that, fleshlights and other supplemental things may not be included in that.



Level 2- Safety (The Important One)

This is the one to pay attention to. It’s where a lot of the american public is mentally. “New things” and the excess that has existed before seems like it’d be driven by the consumer’s view of their own success(esteem) being heavily related to that which they could(in theory) afford. Now, it’s not about that. It’s about keeping their job, house, family, etc. So products that convert are going to be within those basic areas, and with those basic goals.



Think about what the term “safety” implies. It’s preservation of the old, not creation of the new. This obviously would ordinarily be a problem, except that people also panic when they feel their safety(in any respect) is threatened. Ever get the feeling that you need to do something, but not know what to do?

A lot of people feel like that right now. Give them a potential way out and they’ll likely take it.



For example, let’s take a look at how online colleges are doing right now.



Using Quantcast Data

Phoenix.edu in december(and as far back as the graph shows) was at around 2 million uniques per month. In January it was edging up on 4 million.

Kaplan.edu - Previously averaged around 180,000 users per month. Last month it was estimated to be around 474,000 users per month.



Using Compete.com Data

Kaplan.edu - Up 61% for the year, 128% for the month.

Phoenix.edu - Up 184.6% for the year, 48.6% for the month



Some More Random Thoughts

The economic conditions create a few more things that pretty wildly play with the marketplace. Whenever a big company goes out of business, look into the conditions under which they went out. Some companies have recurring customers that then all become fair game. Others, like Circuit City, can flood the market place with cheap goods as they liquidate their stock. Loads of fun. Either way, if you see one dive, don’t think of it as “that niche is dead” think of it as “some company is going to benefit a lot from their old customers”.



Oh yeah, and sorry if people have been doing entries similar to this one lately. I haven’t had much time to read lately, so I don’t know if they have.



-XMCP

Traffic From Google Image Search: Re-Claiming Your Visitors

Ok, just a tiny trick for today. This one is complicated, but I also wanted to explain why it’s important.




About Image Searches

Image searches suck. Almost all of them. But they are still constantly used. This is a rare occasion on the web.

Anyone who’s used Google image search has probably realized 2 things.



Do not include the word “fat” in any search if safesearch is off.

Google image search can be gamed quite easily, and is terribly inaccurate.

Why Can It Be Gamed So Easily? Why is it so inaccurate?

Because there’s very little data they can have for images. They have your on page textual elements/pages linking to that site(rarely indicative of the image’s content), filename, and alt text. The latter 2 being the easiest to manipulate, but at the same time pretty relied on. Don’t believe me? Take a look (example - and no, I’m not the guy in the 1st picture). Optimal? Not so much. Not their fault really, just a lack of data. So they’re forced to rely on the fact that I was even mentioned on the site.

So get stuffing dem tags! (or actually in many niches you can get traffic w/o stuffing)



But XMCP, Google Image Traffic is Worthless!

Google violated a very important unspoken agreement they had with Webmasters.

“We give you content to index Google, and we don’t sue you to frequently for caching it without our permission. In exchange, you give us traffic”

So what did we get? Our page framed, and a speedy little link to “Full Size Image” that leads to our bandwidth, and is almost always clicked. Worthless traffic.

So what do we do? Break the frame.



Breaking The Frame - Note: This may have implications for other services, so add in your own code to check referrer if you’re sensitive about such things.





EDIT: While my site still gets traffic like this, it’s been suggested that Google eventually drops the image traffic. So Put that in an external JS, restricted by Robots.txt

That’s all there is to it.

A Little Fun More Towards the Dark Side…

You knew it was coming. Try this one. Load up pictures of music artists, with proper alt tags and whanot. Instead of sending them to self.location, try a ringtone landing page for that artist. Crap, if you’re sensitive you can even include the picture on the page. I’m pretty sure this is outside of G’s “guidelines” or whatever, but I’m also pretty sure manual reports would be low.



-XMCP

Site Network Stealth and Uses: Hiding from Google and Competitors

Alright. So I’ve talked a bit about link farms before, but to this day it’s still one of the most common topics I get asked about. Not just for blog farms and whatnot, but for legitimate, interlinking sites. So today we’re going to just handle a few common questions I get(not handled in the above article), and a few tips.

Before I get rolling, if you guys haven’t checked out the Advaliant contest, I highly recommend you do so. It’s well worth it. Those who applied yesterday should be approved by today. Now, back on topic…

Introduction
So for this, I’m going to focus on sites that have unique content and are all within one given niche. For example, if you have a site on tulips, you may have another on gardening, another selling tulip bulbs, and another selling already grown tulips, and another with gardening tools, but not flowers. Or you may have local-specific sites like michiganwidgets.com, newyorkwidgets.com, and californiawidgets.com. The question, as always, is how best to use them to leverage eachother.

This truly has enormous potential. There’s nothing like having a few semi-authority sites to propel a new one into the top rankings for it’s key term. In addition, for those of you who think that hiding your site networks is review for you, that’s fine. I’d scroll to the bottom though, because I’m also going to focus on how best to implement these lovely mini networks.

So Should I Bother Hiding My Ownership of the Sites?
In my opinion, absolutely. Is it against Google’s TOS to have heavily interlinking sites, all owned by the same person? I’ve heard opinions both ways. However, I could care less in all honesty. My thoughts are this: Why give Google more information than they already have?

There is nothing good that can come of Google knowing you own all these interlinking sites. Even if it’s ok today(which to some degree, it is I believe), it very well may not be tomorrow. Either way, I don’t want to have to restrict how much I can leverage my own sites for the sake of preserving their precious terms and conditions. The entire point of creating a site network like the one I’m describing is to truly push the limits of the power you can get from each site.

Ok You May Not Care if it’s within Google’s TOS, but I do.
Take this with a grain of salt. I could not find it during my brief check of their rules. But typically the rule appears to be the site cannot appear to be primarily or excessively supported by the network. We’ll get into how to give the illusion of support later in this entry.

A Brief Review on Hiding Ownership - For the experienced readers, apologies I have to go back over this. But it’d be a bit irresponsible to not bring this up in a post about site networks.

Unique Hosts and IPs - For a venture where you’re investing real time and capital, don’t skimp on getting some fresh hosting accounts. If you’re dishing out $50 for links, or a lot of time to write some decent BH software, why the hell wouldn’t you pick up enough $4 hosting accounts to make it worth your while?
NO You do not use the same registrar/WHOIS Info - Use your girlfriend, parents, or dog if he has a different address. Try and get some in different cities or states. Remember, right here you’re not necessarily warring against Google. You’re warring against the competing SEOs looking for a reason to report you to Google.
Domain Patterns - Though I’ve seen it done so many times it’s insane, I’m not a fan of having sites like chicagowidgets.com, detroitwidgets.com, texaswidgets.com. It makes it obvious it’s a locally targeted site network.
Don’t Be Stupid - Do not put a cute little copyright message with your company name at the bottom of the site. If you’re going to go through all this effort to hide yourself, is that little ego boost worth it? Beyond that, make sure you use a different privacy policy/contact information.
Now For the Fun Part - Ze Interlink Madness Beginz!
Alright. Now that we got that out of the way, we’re at the fun part. Interlinking sites to stay off the Google and competing SEO’s radar. This is something where you should just use your imagination for it, but I’ll throw some ideas out there.
Disclaimer: Heavy interlinking can be a significant risk. Do this at your own risk.

Contextual Links are Your Friend - I die a little bit inside when I see footer links. So does the Google spam team. On the other hand, your competing SEOs love it. It doesn’t need to be fancy. For example, if you have a blog on your tulip bulb site, make it like a diary and say you just got a set of gardening tools, and link to your other site.
No-Follow Clutter - What’s the one kind of link that Google cannot bitch about, and the one kind of link that annoys the crap out of SEOs examining your link profile? Nofollow! Having a few sitewide(yet no-followed) links on powerful domains(so they show up high in Yahoo’s linkdomain results) can make it a true pain in the ass for SEOs to pick your site apart. Even within your own site network, a nofollow or two never hurt and helps to create a kind of reasonable doubt as to your intentions.
Use the Sneaky Sneaky on Your Blog - Try this one. Have a blog with monthly posts or so. Remove the nofollow from comments. Then just only approve your own comments from your own sites.
Do Not Reciprocal Link - Welcome to SEO101. Reciprocal linking sucks. Even if not “excessive”, prepare for a link worth approximately jack. Google sees links as your site saying “the site I’m linking to is the authority”. Reciprocal linking shows a serious lack of confidence on the part of the site.
Do Not 3 Way Reciprocal Link (If You can help it) - This little trick has been beaten to death and urinated upon by the webmaster crowd in general. To an extent, it works still. But on a large scale and under the scrutiny of dozens of SEOs disgruntled because they’re ranking underneath you? Not so much. Try and spread out the links, making them more or less unpredictable.
Keep in mind, this includes not using the same linking sources for sites you don’t own going to each site.
The probability of any given IP linking out to another given IP on more than one domain is incredibly small, so you get more leniency if you have the sites on different IPs.
Promote Your Promoters - So if you have a tinier network(which gives you more ability to ignore #4) but you need more juice going to your fresh site, how about you add a step inbetween yourself. Link to other pages on other sites that link to the one you want to give juice to. Google is not going to think you own digg or propeller, but a spunky link can not only make the linked to page rank to drive traffic back to your site, but can also pass extra juice back to your other site.
Diverse Outbound Linking Profiles - Do not just link to your own sites. Link(on your least traversed pages obviously) to informational sites that are low enough in the rankings to not be a threat.
Variance for Inbound Links - Some linking sources are reusable, but remember that you’re trying to make it look like the site is being supported by links from a variety of sources, not just your own little network. People have a little thing where they mentally look at the number of links going to a site when they’re trying to determine this. So a large amount of acceptable but low quality links can create the illusion you’re getting support from a large number of sites, even if your own ones make up a substantial portion of the actual quality flowing in.
How Best to Apply these Farms (and why to use them)

A truly bulletproof site network can give you a lot more leverage for ranking for specific terms. Especially for locally targeted site.
Let’s say you’re doing a locally targeted site for widgets. So you’ve got michiganwidgets.com, widgetsinwisconsin.net, etc. If this was one large site, you would have to have a deep architecture and several separating/categorical pages to be able to hit the proper anchor text for each page. It would have to go from (Home Page)->Page Listing 50 state names+ ” widgets” -> [State Name] Blue Widgets, [State Name] Green Widgets, etc.
That looks spammy and nasty, and drives your usability into the proverbial shitter. Now compare that to “Michigan Widgets” -> “Blue Widgets” (or “Blue Widgets in Michigan)/”Green Widgets in Michigan”. It’s much more to the point, and spreads your link juice much thicker than the alternative. Of course, having anchor text that is too perfect from an SEO perspective can be a bit nasty to look at, so how exact you make it is up to you.

Local is not the only way to use these properly. I’ve enjoyed them in niches that subdivide into a set of smaller categories as well. Really, look at the online dating scene. Here’s a hint: aside from the big names, most of those sites are owned by the same people. It’s all about subdividing and targeting your specific audiences. While “online dating” might require 5+ economy sized cases of Tylenol to rank for, any one of the sub niches requires less and less to rank for. BBW Dating, Jewish Dating, [STD name here] Dating, [Black/african/african american/ebony] Dating, these are all examples of subdivided niches that generally use a substantial amount of site networks. Especially once you get into the longtail.

Ok, so other major advantage of this. Country targeting. Now for the love of god, don’t use the same Google webmaster account for setting this preference, and don’t use the same IP. Put your laptop in your passenger seat, and drive around for a bit till you find a Wi-Fi hot spot or 20.
Sticking with the dating site example, we’re going to say we’re running a dating site for people in South Africa. So we head over to google.co.za, and search for online dating. The top results have between 96 and 950 inbound links. Comparatively, the US results show sites in the top spots that range from 5,420(high quality) links, all the way to 1.8 million links.

And that my friends, is the beauty of local targeting. It doesn’t take a massive site network to get 96 decent links. Especially considering some of the links should be coming from outside sources and sites located in the given country you’re targeting.

Conclusion
So to sum it all up, interlinking is a pretty tricky process. Especially if you intend to hide it from SEOs AND Google. But by building the sites like you’re making mistakes(getting nofollowed links or links that are not “golden” for example) it can help to hide your tracks. Whatever steps you go through in the first place when setting up hosting or registering domains determines how paranoid you have to be later. Going through all this effort is not worth it to many. I’m not going to try and hide that. But it’s a tremendously scalable kind of business plan, and it’s far from me to trust Google not to crack down hard on such things at some point in the future. So for now, I’ll go through the effort.

-XMCP

Is MSN Lying About Their Referrer Spam?

Introduction


So several months ago MSN started crawling the web with a new crawler. This one was designed to (in theory) detect sites that were cloaking. The idea behind this was that if the site was serving up a different page to bots, and a lot of cloaking sites bypass their own IP lists to save on CPU usage if there’s a referrer detected, then sending a fake “LIVSOP” search engine referrer should detect the cloaking sites.



Sounds like a good move for them, right? No. The way they did was sending out a lot of referrers that were pretending to be from Live.com search results. Like an excessive amount I still get 30+ per day on this blog.

This was supposed to bypass a lot of cloaking filters, but really only succeeded in dirtying up everyones logs, and causing a handful of people to ban the abusive IP range. If you want to take a look, it is well documented everywhere. Eventually, they admitted they were doing it, and the dust settled.



The Reality

So. I got asked by Gab of SEO ROI to find a domain I had that was completely banned so that he could settle a discussion he was having about Google Bowling(yes, he was testing against one of his old sites). I trust Gab, so I said sure.



Now, at this point I’m running my blackhat off of 2 shared hosting accounts. My one ancient one, and my one super-shared host I have that is running my current software that uses almost no CPU usage, so I can host a lot of domains on it. I reasonably figured that my latest host’s domains were probably still mostly alive in MSN/Yahoo, even if they were banned from Google, and decided to root around my old account for a domain.



Now, on the ancient hosting account, I NEVER updated any databases or software to combat MSN’s referrer spam cloaking detection. All of my domains(as it has been verified) behaved exactly how MSN would expect them to(yes, every single domain on this account cloaks). And then I realized something. Every Single domain I had was indexed on either Yahoo or MSN still. That is not a good sign for them. Some of these are way older than a cloaked domain should be. I eventually had to give Gab a less than successful domain I had that was still indexed!



When I woke up the next morning, I then ran some figures and realized that 85% of the domains I had on that account are still indexed by Live/MSN. It’s been MONTHS since they started screwing with all my logs. They have crawled these domains well over 50,000 times (my database on that account freaks out if I query for more than 50,000 logs in the DB, so that’s all I can confirm) since they began spewing their crap all over my log files.

In fact, my very first blackhat domain (a piece of crap to be honest) is still somehow indexed by Live.com. In fact, it appears(as of this morning) to have increased it’s indexed pages that it had last night to now easily exceed 15,000 pages.



So Why The Hell are They Crawling Like This?

To be honest, I have no idea. A thought by Gab(somewhat jokingly) was that maybe they’re just trying to shuffle some traffic into their Search Engine. A “Hey, I’m still here!” kind of thing. That seems a bit of strech, but who knows? There’s either some other reason for them doing this referrer spam, or they’re just really really terrible at detecting cloaking. I have no idea. These sites were exactly what their referrer spam should’ve detected.



Any ideas?



-XMCP

You Take Your Branding, I’ll Take My Traffic (And Other Marketing Fallacies)

Ok, so first off allow me to say that courtesy of the blackhats and mainstream SEO community I’ve met since my start in this industry, I’ve learned a lot. I accept many things on the idea that people have been doing this longer than me, know more than me(especially on the “people” level, rather than the computer level). However, I keep hearing a few things over and over again that I will never agree with(especially in regards to shady tactics). I decided to highlight them here, so hopefully people will not waste their time.




“But Won’t That Hurt Your Brand?”

No. I have no brand(shit, my sites are only up for a month or so for the most part). But you don’t have one either! Very, very few sites in any niche ever rise to have a “brand”, and even if they do, the audience doesn’t care how you got your traffic. You become a brand by people seeing your site over and over and over.

I’m going to give you guys an example. AdultFriendFinder. AdultFriendFinder is a brand name. They currently claim 20 million registered members, or about 6-7% of the US population(though I believe they have international members) But let’s take a look at their advertising practices.

They have the most consistently misleading ads online today. You know those ads that show several nude or partially nude females, saying they’re looking for a date and *somehow* live right near you? That’s them, and those people don’t exist

Several have said they use spyware/adware to promote

They use fake members in chat rooms to try and convince people to upgrade.

Another example for you. Awhile ago, I joined an affiliate program for a site. I was the only person promoting at the time(according to the management), and they had a steady amount of traffic before I joined, neither losing nor gaining. My job was to pick up the long tails w/a blackhat site. Well, 1.5 months after I had begun doing this, their type-in traffic had increased by 13%.

Both examples tell us one thing. Users have no idea when a shady tactic is being used. If a site is shoved in front of their nose enough times, it becomes a brand name for them.

The Users are Too Smart For That

Some users are really intelligent. I will not deny that. But a large piece of them, are damn stupid. Awhile ago, I was stumbling around the internet, and found this little gem. Now before someone jumps on this, no, it’s not a stoner thing, it’s a “decline of America” thing.

Now Really? Are these the people I’m supposed to be worried about marketing to? Are these people the reason I’m supposed to avoid shady tactics? Really?

It Is Possible to Compete In Any Given Niche Playing By Google’s Rules

I consider myself pretty adept at SEO, especially given my age and experience level. But whoever spews this stuff out, come on now.

I’ve taken a look at some of the sites leading SEO firms and members within the SEO community have done linkbuilding work on, and I’m going to share a secret. If they were in a competitive area and they are ranking, they did not play by the rules.

In most cases, this means paid links. In some cases, there were other tactics I won’t call them out on here. And keep in mind, this is not to make what they do less impressive. They’re awesome at it in many cases. But that doesn’t change the reality.

If Google were to truly force people to play by their rules, they would have to abolish every single site currently ranking in anything related to mortgage, insurance, lawyers, medications, pornography, dating, escort services, and a bunch of others. There are certain categories where Google has essentially accepted that it’s going to be saturated by naughty tactics. Penalizations will eventually occur there, but they do not pay attention. Why? Because if they banned one site, they’d be putting another site that is just as guilty into it’s spot.

Your Site Is Failing Because It’s Ugly

Everyone, raise your hand if you’ve ever been to Craigslist.

Sites need to look professional. Not pretty. And even that’s debatable. Right now I’m actually doing battle with a PR5/4000 inbound link geocities page that hasn’t been touched since the mid 90s. All 100% organic. Yes, I’ve defeated it thank you very much, but every so often it surges for a week or so. And it is ugly as sin.

I’m Playing By The Rules, so I Can Afford to Have My Eggs in One Basket

Go onto some newbie SEO forum, and search for “banned by adsense”. You can’t control everything. Invalid impressions/clicks? Out of your hands. Diversify for god’s sakes!

That is probably the one of the most major things that keeps me from going Whitehat. Putting all your time/effort into one site, and having it be completely at Google’s will to destroy or prosper. Why do that when I can turn the tables?

Hope You All Enjoyed this lovely installment.



-XMCP

SEO Standards: Are We Really Pretending these Will Work?

I’m going to take my turn kicking the dead horse that is the “seo standards” because quite honestly, I’m absolutely amazed that this is even being proposed. The entire concept of SEO standards is both wrong and impossible for so many reasons, that I will probably have to skimp on a few to preserve some hard drive space on my server(a hyperbole, but deal with it).



For those unfamiliar, the term “seo standards” refers to a set of “best practices” and “risk ratings” for SEOs. Reasons for it include it being a guide for newbies, and as a way for customers to tell if they’re getting ripped off by high risk SEOs. And it’s a way for “ethical” SEOs to separate themselves from the rest of us riff-raff.



“Risk” is a Variable that Is Impossible to Define

Chris Boggs has very much hit on the point of “assigning risk ratings” to various SEO tactics. Let me explain something. Risk is dependent on niche. Someone trying to rank(and stay ranked) for “buy viagra” is going to have a LOT more leniency with certain gray area tactics than someone trying to rank for “knitting supplies”.

Or how about cloaking vs. IP delivery? They’re quite similar. Is IP delivery, specifically okayed by Google risky? Oh…well what if it’s IP delivery by geographic location? Or what if the page changes by language? Or what about what some forums do where they add a “You must register first” window, and move all the real content down the page? What if I want to show Yahoo and Google different pages?

If You’re Doing Everything the Same as Everyone Else, You’re Doing Something Wrong

I’m sorry, but with so many people in this field charging ridiculous fees(some, not all) you BETTER be packing something that won’t be in their little “seo standards” manual. Most people who I know have their own tricks for getting in, and hell if they are going to want to spill these to a “seo standards” just so their clients will ok them. Keep in mind, these aren’t tricks like doorway pages. Whitehat all the way.

There Will be a Loss of Competitive Edge for those who Comply

People taking on clients are going to want to comply with these all the way should they come out, just because the client will want this. But that will likely leave out most personal tricks, gray area techniques that most SEOs end up doing(including, but FAR from limited to paid links). So in order to keep the client happy, you get the joy of trying to compete as essentially the SEO version of amputee. And also, this could have severe legal implications. Someone that wants to rank for, let’s say “las vegas casinos” is going to most likely need a few things at least a little against Google TOS(some self made links, purchased links, whatever). Now, if that client ends up getting the Google smackdown, they can come back and complain that the SEO was using “high risk tactics” that anyone familiar with the industry is going to know is quite necessary for the niche. And they have a concrete document that will probably be written incredibly naively agreeing with them.

What Happens When the Google TOS and These Rules Disagree and it’s already circulated?

I’ve heard a few references that these could serve as guidelines for newbies as a shortcut to reading the blogs.

But obviously these “standards” would be copied all over the net. So what happens if some day Google decides that something “low risk” in the standards doc is high risk? Who among us really things they can manage to get every messageboard post, every local copy, and every PDF changed so we don’t end up advising newbies to do things that will get their sites nailed?

How about this ladies and gents. How about instead, just point them to the Google TOS, and then SEOBook (no aff link) or something similar? Or how about they just learn like EVERYONE else did?

Conclusion: You are SEOs. Deal with Your Problems Like SEOs

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Don’t like all the dirty SEOs out there? OUTRANK THEM. I’m not a commercial SEO. I don’t do consultations, I don’t do linkbuilding for others. But everyone who is, come on guys! Allow me to illustrate this example.

Right now, when I search for “search engine optimization”, 3 of the top 10(and indeed in the better ranks) are several sites bragging about how they can “submit your site to 40+ search engines” and other such crap. Does NO ONE out there wonder how these obviously crap services ranked for such a competitive term? Here’s a hint: It’s probably not in Papa Cutt’s “best practices”, and it’s insane how long they’ve been stable in the top 10.

So to those people out there better than these people, how about just outranking them? Kill their business off as an SEO should. Not with some bogus standards that will only serve to confuse and complicate the environment.



-XMCP

How NOT To Get a Backlink From Me: Crafty Wordpress Theme Designers

Introduction

Whenever someone downloads a free template or a wordpress theme, there is a certain understanding that yeah, there will probably be a backlink or two to the creator in the footer. I’m fine with this.

There are only 3 situations where I will remove these footer links.

1) If It is going to be a popular blog[hopefully], and will get a lot of extra link spam as a result of the backlink/keywords

2) If It is going to be a template for a blackhat site, and I think there’s question that you would WANT a backlink from it. Especially if it will be highly used.

3) If you try and plant really really un-related keywords(linked, of course) in the footer. I get penalized enough on my own , without your help thanks.



The Story

Today I was downloading a theme for a new project I’m working on(grayhat), and I was looking around the template, making my changes. I wanted to include some of my own stuff in the footer, and wanted to remove a single backlink that they had out of 3. Two of the footer links were fine in my eyes. The place I downloaded it from, and the designer. But the third one, a link for a web hosting company, I thought had no place on the site I was making. It was going to be hard enough to rank without having nasty spammy links at the bottom, and leaking link juice to a site I’d never heard of.



Upon opening the footer file, what I saw really, really pissed me off.





bZC9bsMwDITnFOg7XD21g+PdVWSgS7t1CZCxkCLa

EixLqqTECNCHrxX3ZwkXHu7IDyA7zh7qGpIG49B7

nymirvn93WbDGmXOq+qCDhgofySjSIr4+PSMrkR/

M0UvEkbtqhVTFRtggUNRMoMjBXlpwQR0pH5X6ZxD

2zTzPG8nMdLnyRzH7dFPFX931jjCgWQymfByMlZR

ZI3gEE7dRswktU/ZuGEgGtMKWgh4W12U9dcS4Qvi

LIwV0hL6SASRW+x9uIXNPswha5roB4mDjypESgn7

q124rAnLtVjq9yH/XXp1uQqdJ8tZ9w0=

‘))); ?>



That was the footer code. They were effectively attempting to FORCE their backlink. Now look.

The entire template deal is based on good-faith agreements between developers and webmasters; an agreement I abide by whenever possible. Now, realize that this is taking a risk. Static anchor text, footer links,etc….welcome to something Google regards as “link scheme”…but I am willing to risk getting my outgoing link juice dropped. Except when they force me to. This is my damn option.

I really do understand, my longterm readers know that from time to time I design a script or two, and I say there must be a backlink somewhere on it if it comes into public use. And I get angry if someone removes it. However, there is one backlink on mine, and it is not a spammy looking footer link that blends into the footer color(something Google frowns upon), and I do not try and promote every damn site I run.



Obviously, I have a bit of a temper. So i tried to remove their encoded text. And, naturally it broke the effin template when I tried to remove it.



So let’s take a look at what happens when we decode what they do here.



>

designed by: Online Website Builder and:



Web Hosting Geeks
available free at: Top







Wordpress Themes

So by calling the get_sidebar() function within the encoded data, they make the template completely useless if you remove the footer data.



Well guess what guys? I put the footer back on. And I just might re-delegate the template to blackhat sites. Your wish, is my command. Let’s see how you fare after dozens of sites it’s on get banned. (Ok, ok, I probably won’t do this, but damn I want to)



I know most people do not get as worked up as I do over things like this. I thought it was a decent story, and a decent look into this kind of thing. If you want to use it on your own, feel free. If you want to decode it to remove the crap from something you yourself download, feel equally free.



I’m an amiable guy most of the time, but not when I’m forced into it. I’ll get my damn template from somewhere else.



I’ll try and spit out another entry tonight, I just have to do some checking and see if everyone already covered this past the point of saturation.



-XMCP

Why Calacanis Should Not Be Allowed to Speak at Conferences

Should I be taking this flamebait? No, probably not. But as promised last time I did, these are going to be few and far between. And I’ve kept that promise. Sometimes a guy just needs to rant on a soapbox for a bit. I have fought the urge to do a post like this in the past, so we’re going to see how this turns out. Eventually will I stop burning bridges on this blog? Probably. But not yet.




Introduction

Jason Calacanis is the incessant troll of the affiliate marketing/SEO world. He is an astounding marketer himself. He is very bright, and very good at creating an environment beneficial to his product. Lately, that product has been Mahalo. Jason has been speaking at various affiliate marketing conferences, talking about how evil/crappy/pathetic the SEO and IM industries are, and how we’re destroying the internet. Since Mahalo is a “human edited” search engine (read: a web directory with a search bar), it is in theory “immune” to spam.



So Why, for the Love of God, do we keep giving Jason Calacanis Keynotes?

Normally, I would complain about people mentioning him when he said whatever he said. But apparently that just doesn’t matter. People are going to hire him to speak anyways. So I’ve decided to go to an alternate route.

I am going to state the following, and adhere to it the best I can. Any who agree with me, feel free to take the same statement, and make it your own. Twitter it, post it to your own blog, or send it to the people that are running the conferences.

“I will not buy a conference pass that will ‘allow’ me to see Jason speak. It’s not just that I won’t attend him speaking. I will not actually purchase a ticket that would even make it possible.”



Edit: I’m seeing a lot now about having “alternate views” at conferences. If someone wants to put a qualified SEO up who disagrees with me, and even agrees with Calacanis, that’s fine. But at least then it’s someone who is a part of the industry(Jason himself says he’s not an SEO), and probably won’t just use the keynote as an infomercial.



Why Jason Should Not be Allowed to Speak at Affiliate or SEO Conferences



He’s Not Relevant - He is admittedly NOT an SEO. Or an affiliate marketer. Why don’t we just bring in the founder of Burger King while we’re at it? Or wait, I think Hugh Hefner might have some openings in his schedule. Playboy has a website, right? Does Kanye West?

His Method of Marketing is Not Relevant - Ok. So Mahalo is by no means a success yet. And that is with him rambling about it anywhere that will let him speak. That is his entire marketing method it would appear. I cannot do that. If anyone else in the audience were to somehow get a keynote speech, and chose to ramble about some service they launched all the time, they would not be speaking again.

So what am I supposed to learn from him?

How to advertise a site once I already have millions in funding, have hundreds of connections, and name recognition coming out my hindquarters? That’s a real challenge guys.

Don’t get me wrong, all this uproar and such is a brilliant means of marketing. Or at least very effective. But there’s nothing to be learned from it. But if it weren’t for that, no one would know, or give a shit about Mahalo.

All he’s doing is spamming the crowd trying to build up press for Mahalo - I’m sadly aiding his effort with this entry. But I would go so far as comparing paying to go to a conference where he’s speaking to if it cost $400 to ring a doorbell. I suppose people would be more willing to grit their teeth and listen to whatever religious cause was on the other side of the door a lot more easily(if they weren’t screaming obscenities) Because damn, it’s costing me money. So I might as well try and get my money worth and just hope something constructive will be said.

It’s worse than internet advertising, because you pay to be spammed.

You Can Get Your “Buzz” From Somewhere Constructive - That’s right folks. It is possible. I lose a little bit of respect for each conference when I hear about him speaking there. You want controversy? There’s plenty of people that can inspire controversy and be constructive. Shit, try a blackhat on and watch the blogs flare up. Let them talk about the future of SEO. Not into blackhat? Try someone constructive. I would trade half a pound flesh to listen to Diorex speak at a keynote. Get people that people will be excited to get information from. People with real future thought. Not people who are going to criticize not even because of legitimate sentiment, but rather because they they went to slut out their product.

His entire “Make a Great Site Instead of Affiliate Sites” Speech is Bullshit - We do make great sites, but we don’t all have the flexibility wait months or years for something to profit….read below for the rest of this tangent.

Countering Calacanis

Ok, so first, here is the formula for a Calacanis keynote: Profession_Here is spamming the web+Profession_Here is evil+Mahalo will fix this because of XYZ+Can’t you all just make something useful?



We do make useful sites. We make sites with good information. But the things he talks about really require venture capital, or saved up funds to live off of while awaiting magical success. We can’t afford to wait months(or years) for a site to profit like Mahalo.

These are statements you will see spoken almost only by someone with the good fortune to fall into the internet “industry” in 1996 when you could pretty much get venture capital for heading off to the shitter for a moment. After all, who knows, that shit may look like Elvis and be worth billions. (though granted, his successes did appear after 1996, he already had the contacts to make this happen)



For reference, I was 8 years old when venture capital was falling from the sky. Nowadays, I have a credit line of approximately $3000 with my Venture capitalist, and his name is American Express.

I’m (barely) 20 years old, and I got average grades in school. Rewind time to before I was at all known in SEO/internet marketing, and had none of the success I could now at least put on a resume.

So now imagine me walking into the office of these VC billionaires, pitching an idea.

Me: “Ok guys. So I want to make this search engine.”

Them: “Like Google?”

Me: “No, I’m going to have a bunch of employees making pages for it, and finding the links”

Them: “Like Wikipedia? But you pay editors instead of getting free ones? Or is it like a web directory?”

Me: “No man, it’d like…be searchable”

Them: “Why do you want to do this?”

Me: “Because like..all these guys are making websites with the idea of making money..and it makes the web nasty”

Them: “So wait. You want to get VC to put an end to people making money? But we want to make money! How old are you again?”

******Silence******



I’m really impressed with some stuff Jason has made. Really, I am. But it’s time for everyone to acknowledge that if he did not get into this business when he did, and have an early success, he would not be getting any of this funding. I’m sorry, but most people in this industry making the “thin affiliate” sites cannot afford to lose even $100 per day, nonetheless the thousands Mahalo loses as it develops. And I’m sorry but quite frankly, eventually I get shit tired of Ramen Noodles.



So what’s a marketer to do? I’ll tell you what. Market. And market their ass off.

A lot of my sites are of high quality. But here’s the catch. I’m writing the content. I’m doing the design(for better or worse). I’m coding the backend. I’m managing the financials. And more than that, I’m running it on my own Credit.

I have 30 Days to Be Turning a Profit, and I’m going to be doing whatever the hell is within my abilities to do to make sure that happens.





Ugh. I’m getting more incoherrent, so I’m going to call it a day on this entry.



Burning Bridges Like It’s the Cedar Village Riots,

XMCP