The Ten Minute Optimization - A SEO Tips White Paper

1) INTRODUCTION

Many small businesses simply do not have the resources to hire a search engine optimization (SEO) company to promote their web site. There are countless resources online for do-it-yourself (DIY) optimizers where professional SEO's offer general recommendations and advice. This article is my opportunity to offer more of my SEO experience in the form of a 10-minute optimization process.

This process will be effective for any page designed in HTML with at least 1 paragraph of html text but for the purposes of this article, I will concentrate on the all-important home page.

2) Setting the Stage

Before I begin, there are a few things that you must know before proceeding and you should spend more than 10 minutes considering:

2.A) Determine Your Target(s)

99% of you know who your target market is, now you need to choose the keywords that you believe they will search for. There is no use obtaining top search engine placements under terms that are not being searched. This step, alone, requires extensive explanation but there are a few simple tips to keep in mind. For one, you will want to check your current traffic statistics and note what traffic you are already receiving and under what keywords. Now, visit the site of a competitor who you know is doing well online (through either conversation or news articles). Look at their titles on individual pages and try to determine a pattern in the keywords that they have chosen. Also look at the source of their pages (Internet Explorer: click "View" then "Source") and copy their META tags into a notepad on your computer. Between the titles and the META tags you should be able to determine with reasonable accuracy which keywords are most important for rankings.

It is important to note that professional SEO's have many more resources at hand to determine such information with higher accuracy.

2.B) Design - Is Your Page Marketable?

This topic can be touchy to bring up but the simple fact is that traffic will have less impact if your web page is unmarketable. Now this covers a lot of different aspects of design, however, a few basic rules should be followed.

i) Avoid using strange color combinations that make it hard for a viewer to read your sales copy (red text on a blue background is a perfect example of a painful design). In the same respect it is important not to use text that is too small; try to keep your font size to a minimum of size 10 or 12 (2 or 3 in Dreamweaver).

i) Unrelated advertisements on your web site provide distractions to your viewers. If you are selling BMW's then it is generally not a good idea to show an advertisement for herbal Viagra.

Every single graphical element of your home page has the potential to add or deny credibility. Using this space wisely will ultimately create happier visitors and generate more profit.

2.C) Spot Check for Relevancy

It is very important for your site to be focused. For example, if your web site is supposed to be devoted to 'BMW car sales' then a page or information on real estate sales is entirely unnecessary. Keep in mind that most of the top search engines will rank your site depending upon the topic they determine you are offering. This determination is largely made based upon the text within your web site. Don't give them any reason to get 'confused'.

3) THE TEN MINUTE PROCESS

Spot Check for Spam

Before optimization begins it is crucial that your page is devoid of any 'tricks' that a search engine may construe as spam. You may not even know they are there! Some web designers with out-of-date information add hidden text because they think it will help your rankings. This is entirely untrue and can cause extreme problems for your search engine visibility. To check for hidden text just hold down the left button on your mouse at the very top of your page and drag it down to the bottom. If there is any hidden text (normally text that matches the color of your page background) it will appear as it is highlighted. Second, you will want to search for unnecessary repetition of keywords on your page. Do you see instances of 5 or 6 keywords being repeated in a row anywhere on the page? If so, remove this.

Polish & Optimize Text

The text on your home page is crucial to maintaining the attention of fresh viewers. In fact, copy is so important that many companies prefer to have a professional copy writer create the content. Since this is not an option for many, you have to keep your text engaging as well as smartly optimized to present an obvious topic to the visiting search engine spiders or visitors. To do this, keep your mind focused on the keyword(s) that you have chosen to target on the search engines while you write the content for the page. Implement the keywords within the text without sacrificing the true intent of the information - to engage and retain your viewers.

Important Note: Often the first 25-30 words of your home page are what each search engine will use for the description of your web site. Try to utilize your target keyword(s) within this area but be certain the resulting sentence is legible and descriptive.

Optimize the Title

The title of the home page can be optimized quite simply by placing the keyword or keyword phrase that you have chosen to target first and then finish with the name of your company or web site. For example:

" BMW Car Sales - MyBMW.com"

The search engines place a great deal of weight in the title of your home page and the keywords within your title will likely be chosen as the title of your listing on the search engines. The title also plays a huge role in the relevance of your site. The topic denoted within your title will be compared to the content within the body of the page, if the topic and content match, you will have a much better chance of obtaining higher targeted placements.


META Tags

The META tags located within the invisible source of your web page. They were originally designed to provide the details of your web site to visiting search engine spiders and they still do, to a degree. Since this part of your web page is invisible, META tags were increasingly used to misinform the search engines of the content of a web site - spamming. As a result, META tags play a lesser role but they should still be properly optimized so that they contribute to the topical relevance of your web site.

META tags are basically composed of the Description and Keyword tags. The Description tag should provide the same or similar 25-30 word description of your web site that you created earlier for the first text within your visible page. The description is occasionally used as your description within the search engines but it is unpredictable. The Keyword tag should include the keywords/phrases that you are targeting in order of importance. Start with the most important and then proceed to less important but still relevant keywords. It is extremely important that you do not repeat any word more than 3 times within the Keyword tag. This includes words within target sentences. Also do not place repeated keywords close together.


Navigation. Provide Clear Paths

Is the navigation within your site entirely graphical or programming oriented? In this case I recommend that you create a textual link menu at the bottom of your page. For added punch (and this is a big hit) you should make each link count by using the keyword/phrase that best describes the target page. For example:

BMW Accessories | Used BMW for Sale | More About MyBMW.com

versus these less powerful links:

Accessories | Used Cars | About Us


Test and Spell-Check

Preview the page and spell check it then once you are certain everything is properly balanced, upload it to your server.


Hurry Up and Wait

What happens now is entirely up to the history of your web site and your marketing budget. There are many search engines that offer paid submission for the regular or prompt indexing of your new page/web site. If you have paid for prompt indexing then you may see the fruits of your labor within a couple of days depending on the search engine.

In this case I am going to assume that you have a non-existent search engine budget. If your site has already been submitted to the search engines then you can simply wait until a spider returns to check for new content, at which time your new site/page will be found and processed accordingly. If you wish this process to proceed post-haste or your site has not yet been submitted, then you may submit your newly revised page to the search engines for what may be a faster response time. Be sure to read the rules that each search engine carefully defines before submitting or resubmitting your web page.

Ten Minute Optimization Complete!


The following are additional elements that will supplement your online promotions. These are all fundamental changes that have occurred in the promotion world since the 10 Minute Optimization was first published in 2003. These had to be added to ensure that this white paper was thorough.

4) Link Building - SEO Tips Added for December 2006

The most dramatic change since 2003 has been the increase of importance of link building. Just how many reputable, relevant websites link to yours? Were these links freely given or did you have to provide a reciprocal link in order to achieve them? The world of search engine optimization has seen enormous growth in the link building sector and it has become a science unto itself.

"How can I build links?"

The following methods will gain you links and they are placed in order of importance:

Have a website that is so well maintained, so informative and effective that users freely provide you with links because they like it so much. Hands down, this method will always win over your competition. Search engines such as Google will reward your site handsomely if it finds many one-way links from reputable sites.

Publish articles via a blog or an online newsletter and syndicate these articles across news websites. For example, I syndicate many of my SEO articles across reputable SEO sites such as SearchEngineGuide.com, SiteProNews.com, ISEDB.com, WebProNews.com, etc. Syndication is actually quite effortless. just write content which is good enough that your industry sites happily post your articles.

Reciprocal link building is a highly popular method of building link popularity. Essentially you have to contact other industry-related websites and request a link to your website in exchange for one from your own. This type of link building is far less effective than one-way links from reputable sites but it does hold some weight.


5) The After Thoughts

Many methods of promoting a website have become available over the past few years; so many that it is a bit mind blowing. In most cases StepForth has written about each offering to provide our readers with the required knowledge to take advantage of them. Here are some places to start if you need a refresher:


6. Conclusion for the 2006 SEO Tips Redux
Do you find yourself overwhelmed? Perhaps you want to outsource your SEO? Obviously StepForth is an option that I highly recommend but there are many other firms out there whom you can contact for quotations. Here is an article by Jim Hedger on how to outsource your SEO needs and what to look for in an SEO firm. In addition, we recommend you visit www.seoconsultants.com for a list of reputable search engine optimization and placement companies.

Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly? Your Personal Checklist

When I sit down with new clients and discuss the status of their new or existing site they are often shocked when I am forced to inform them that their site is not search engine friendly. Encountered with a blank but slightly shaken look I then explain that this means their site has a particular problem that is hindering search engine rankings. Often this is represented by an inflexible design, overuse of advanced web technologies, or simply a weak navigation scheme. As a result, if they were to continue with the site as it stands they are unlikely to attain competitive search engine rankings.

The following is checklist designed to help you gauge the search engine friendliness of your website and, if you are in the midst of planning a website this checklist will help you avoid the common pitfalls of unfriendly designs.

Technologies
First consider what technologies your website is using. There are certain technologies that require a little more hand holding than others to ensure search engine compatibility.

FRAMES
Lets start with this oldie. Luckily, frames are becoming a way of the past what with the use of DIV layers and the slow onset of incredibly flexible AJAX coding. The long and the short of it is that if you have Frames on your website then you are starting off at a disadvantaged position that cannot be truly search engine friendly no matter what you do. There are, however, some remedial fixes that will tie you over until you can redesign your site; yes I said redesign. The fix that I recommend is to use a noframes tag whereby you place another version of your web page inside of your framed page. This ‘backup’ page is what the search engines will view; here you can place relevant content and navigational elements so that the search engines can at least navigate portions of your site that are (hopefully) not framed.

More info on the no frames tags.


FLASH
There was a big brouhaha that Flash had become search engine indexable and you no longer had to worry about its search engine issues. Frankly, I have not seen the fruits of this ‘improvement’ to a respectable degree yet so I still consider it a kiss of death for websites designed solely in Flash. If you have a Flash-only website then I recommend one of these two options; one is to design an html version of your website and make the home page of your website html rather than Flash where you can then allow users to choose between html or Flash. The second option is to redesign the site so that it mixes both html and flash together. For example, this might mean implementing Flash amidst content on an HTML page as you would an image. I realize there are certain limitations to this option but if you can create a slick site in this manner then you will have the best of both worlds; clean search engine friendly content along with an interactive, multimedia feel. Just remember that the majority of relevant text should be in HTML format for the search engines to index.


Search Engine ‘Unfriendly Dynamic URL’s
Unfriendly dynamic URL’s are a common side effect of using a Content Management System that is not designed with search engine rankings kept in mind. Here are some examples of some unfriendly URL’s:

Sample 1: http://www.mydomain.com/myproducts.php&354=prod333&subproduct

Sample 2: http://www.surfboardsforyou.com/boards/filename.php?
id=F98ZF4&productId=39222§ion=wicked&brand=582&template=532
These URLs are problematic because a search engine may consider these addresses too complex to spider. Why too complex? Suffice it to say that the more complex the URL, the higher the chance that a search engine robot will consider the content too dynamic to read; it changes too often to be valuable to a search engine.

The way around these types of URLs is actually not so difficult; it may only require a small investment of time and money. The ‘time’ will be required when researching which URL fix is right for your system. The money may be required to pay a programmer to implement and test the new URLs. Here are how the URLs might look once they are fixed to be search engine friendly:

Sample 1 Fixed: http://www.mydomain.com/myproducts/354/prod333/subproduct/

Sample 2 Fixed: http://www.surfboardsforyou.com/boards/wickedboards/39222/board532/

These URLs are better because they do not include the extraneous characters that are so telltale on dynamic websites. In addition, the URLs are designed to appear like normal website directories when in fact they are dynamic URLs.

Important: it is vital that you minimize the length of the URLs that you use. Search engines may stop crawling a website if there appear to be too many subdirectories. The samples above show fixed URLs that have about as many subdirectories as I would allow (4).
Design
This section focuses on the overall layout and usability of your designs from the perspective of a search engine robot. Search engine friendly design is occasionally quite complex so I have provided a list of the most common issues to consider.


Menus
Are the menus on your website spiderable? If not you may be hiding major areas of your website from search engine spiders and missing out on additional search engine rankings.

The fact is there are very few menus out there that a search engine will have a problem following, but there are definitely some worth avoiding. For instance do not use a JavaScript Jump Menu (example) as the core mode of navigation of your website; search engines cannot index this type of menu. Also be careful of Flash menus, they look slick but they will impede the progress of a search engine spider especially if they are the only means of navigation within your site.

General Menu Rules
The ideal menu would be text based and each text link would include the keywords you are targeting on the destination page. Setting up a menu with this much forethought requires that you determine the layout and content for your site before web design begins. Once you have a clear picture of the content for each page you can then research the keywords that are best to target per webpage. This essential keyword research can be done in house easily enough using systems like keyword research tools that provide you with a glimpse into how your customers think by showing how many searches there are per month (or year) for a particular term.

Remember, almost every page within your site has a very real opportunity to gain a top ranking; all you need to do is ensure that the design, content and site structure is optimized. Ensuring that the menu is carefully thought out and designed is a crucial step for top rankings.

Finally, if you are at all uncertain whether your menu is search engine friendly then be certain to back it up with a text menu in the footer of your page using the same keyword targeting principles noted above.

Tech Advice: a simple text menu may be less than desirable for you; in this case I recommend DHTML menus. These menus use text but in a manner that is quite appealing and very search engine friendly.


Sitemaps
Sitemaps can dramatically help the visibility of your website by allowing search engine spiders easy access to all of the pages in your site. Place a link to the sitemap on every page within your site to ensure easy access no matter where a search engine or user enters your site.

Sitemap Tips
Just having a sitemap will help but how you build your sitemap will also play a role in how well the search engines catalogue it. For example, if you have a twenty-page website it would be ideal to create a sitemap where each page is represented by a title along with a short description. Ultimately, the page may be a bit long but it will have content that the search engines like to index and it will boost the relevance of the linked pages because the titles will accurately represent the content. So in effect, you will now have more than just a sitemap; you will have a table of contents for your site that has the potential of getting a ranking and provides an extra boost to the ranking worthiness of each page.

Google Sitemap
Google Sitemap is an additional design element that you should consider adding. Here is an article Scott Van Achte wrote on how to implement your own Google Sitemap.


Layout
How you layout your page can make a significant difference in how well your site ranks and ultimately how search engine friendly it is.

Tips for Layout
Search engine robots read a webpage from the top of the source code (the programming that made your page – see “view source” in your browser) all the way to the bottom. As a result, it is important to ensure that both of the following elements are found as close to the beginning of code as possible:

A) A short sentence introducing the topic using the keyword targets you have chosen for the page.

B) Your text menu and other navigational aids, or if this is not possible it would be even more beneficial to start with a paragraph or two of relevant content followed by the navigation.

By placing this information near to the top of the page, you will promptly present the search engine robot with relevant text that backs up the page title and backlinks. You will also provide an immediate sitemap of sorts for the search engine to spider, which includes keywords relevant to each page.


Splash Pages – ACK!
With the odd exception Splash Pages are a kiss of death for a website because the home page (the first page seen when someone visits your domain), your most important page, is often converted into nothing but an excess entry point with little or no relevant content on it. Aside from reducing your chances for ranking, you are also making your visitors take another step to get to content or sales material in your site. Any additional steps you add will lessen the likelihood of a successful sale.

Please Let Me Change Your Mind
If you think you need to use a splash page then you need to talk to someone who will change your mind. No, honestly, give me a call if you want because there is nothing more painful to a SEO or search engine friendly web designer to see a Splash Page in use. If, in the unlikely scenario your splash page is required, there are ways to make it slightly more search engine friendly.

a) Add a highly relevant and well-worded paragraph to the page so that the search engines have something to index that shows them they are in the right place.

b) Either provide a link to your sitemap or implement a text menu in the footer of the page so the search engines can access the internal workings of your website without having to take an extra step.
In Summary
Creating a search engine friendly website requires a basic to advanced understanding of how a search engine works, depending on the complexity of the planned website. Complexity aside, the notes above provide a good basis for you to evaluate the friendliness of your website and make changes where necessary. If you have questions regarding your website you can email me at voravite@gmail. and I will do my best to help or I will direct you to someone who can.

“ทำอย่างไรให้ PR เราสูงขึ้น Traffics มากขึ้น Backlinks มากขึ้น “ Part 1

หลังจากที่เขียนบทความแรกเกี่ยวกับ SEM (Introduction to Search Engine Marketing) มีเพื่อนๆเข้าไปดูและให้ comments กลับมาบ้างครับ แต่วันนี้ผมจะขอเขียนถึงประสบการณ์ที่ได้เคยทดลองเองและ ทำตามคนอื่นในการทำ SEO กับ เว็บไซต์ของตัวเองนะครับ ในการสร้าง Backlinks และการเพิ่ม Link Popularity หรือ PR นั่นเองครับ เนื้อหาในหัวข้อต่างๆผมจะเขียนแบบไม่เจาะลึก(เพราะไม่มีอะไรให้เจาะ) เอาแบบเข้าใจง่ายๆครับ บทความนี้ไม่รวมในส่วนของการทำ SEO นะครับ

1. Search Engine Submission (SES)
ถือเป็นสิ่งแรกเลยนะครับหลังจากที่เว็บไซต์ของเราเสร็จสมบูรณ์ พร้อมที่จะโลดแล่นอยู่ในโลก Internet การทำการ submit เพื่อให้ Search Engines ต่างๆรู้จักกับเว็บไซต์ของเรา สำหรับบรรดา Search Engines หลักๆก็คือ Google, Msn, Yahoo, และ Search Engines อื่นๆเช่น โดยเฉพาะเจ้าพ่อแห่งวงการ อย่าง Google อย่าลืมที่จะ Submit นะครับ ซึ่งหลังจาก Submit ที่ google แล้ว เว็บของคุณอาจจะติดเจ้า Sandbox ก่อน (เป็น algorithm ชนิดหนึ่งที่ทาง Google สร้างขึ้นเพื่อเป็นการป้องกันการ Spam ครับ) ข้อดีของการ ทำ SES ก็คือท่าเว็บเราอยู่ในระบบ รับรองได้เลยว่ามีแต่ได้กับได้ครับ

2. Major Directory Submission
พวก Web Directory ก็มีมากมายหลายแบบหลายชนิด Directory ยอดนิยมที่ผู้คนให้ความสนใจที่สุดก็คงไม่พ้น พี่ DMOZ ซึ่งไม่รู้เป็นอะไร Submit ง่าย แต่อยู่ในระบบยาก แต่อย่าท้อครับ พยายามทำให้เว็บของคุณอยู่ในระบบ DMOZ ให้ได้ เพราะ เจ้าพ่อ SE อย่าง Google ก็ใช้ฐาณข้อมูลของทาง DMOZ ด้วย เหตุผลก็คือ พี่ DMOZ เขาเป็น Human Edit Directory หรือใช้แรงงานคนในการตรวจสอบนั่นเอง ซึ่งก็คือ Google Directory ส่วนอีก Directory ยอดนิยมของคนมีตังก็คือ Yahoo Web Directory ครับ แต่การที่เราจะเพิ่มชื่อเข้าไปในระบบจะมีค่าใช้จ่ายด้วย แต่เขาก็ไม่รับรองนะครับว่าจะผ่านการตรวจสอบ 100% แต่เท่าตรวจสอบมา เว็บไซต์ที่มี อยู่ในระบบของ DMOZ และ Yahoo Web Directory มักอยู่ในตำแหน่งที่ดีใน SERP (Search Engine Result Page)

3. Paid & Free Directories Submission
ของฟรีไม่มีในโลก อาจใช้ไม่ได้กับหัวข้อนี้ ผมจะบอกว่ายังมี Directories มากมายที่ให้เราได้ Submit Free และแบบเสียเงิน ซึ่งสามารถที่จะแยกออกตามหัวข้อต่างๆดังนี้

Regular Link ฟรีไม่ ชัวร์ว่าจะได้อยู่ในระบบไหม
Regular Link with Reciprocal อันก็ฟรีแต่ต้องลิงค์กลับให้เขาด้วย แต่มีแนวโน้มจะได้อยู่ในระบบสูง!
Featured Link ได้แน่นอนครับ เร็ว และได้อยู่ในอันดับต้นๆเลย แต่เสียเงิน!

พูดกันตรงๆเลยว่า พวก Directories เหล่านี้สามารถที่จะสร้าง Backlinks มาให้กับเว็บเรามากแค่ไหน ผมก็ขอตอบในส่วนของผมว่า หากเว็บเพจ ใน Directory มีค่า PR ซึ่งก็จะส่งผลดีให้กับเราอยู่แล้วยิ่งเป็นของฟรีแล้วยิ่งคุ้มครับ แต่การที่เราจะได้อยู่ในหน้าแรกๆในหัวข้อเช่น Travel ได้นั้นก็ยากพอสมควรครับ ขอให้เรามีความอดทนในการ Submit นะครับ( ตอนนี้ผมเองก็ทำทุกวัน เฮ้อ สู้ๆ)

4. Signature ลายเซ็นพิฆาต
หลายๆคนคงรู้จักทิปนี้แน่นอน(โดยเฉพาะตัวผมเองชอบมาก) ขอให้เป็นลายเซ็นที่ไม่เป็นในลักษณะการ Spam หรือขายโฆษณานะครับ (อาจโดนแบนได้จากเว็บบอร์ดนั้นๆ) เอาแบบเนียนและสวยงามครับ ผมจะบอกถึงผลดีที่เราได้รับตรงๆก็คือ Traffic จากจำนวนผู้คนที่จะเข้ามาในเว็บของส่วนผลพลอยได้แบบดับเบิ้ล ก็คือหากเว็บบอร์ดนั้นๆมีเนื้อหาสาระในหมวดเดียวกับเรา ละมีค่า PR ด้วย รับรองได้เลยว่าจะเป็น One way Link ที่มีคุณภาพคับแก้วแน่นอน

5. Link Exchange แลกลิงค์กระจาย
หัวข้อนี้ไม่มีอะไรมากครับ แลกลิงค์อย่างเดียวครับ ผมขอแนะนำให้เพื่อนๆสร้างหน้าแลกลิงค์มาโดยเฉพาะเลยนะครับ เช่น Link.html เป็นต้น เพราะว่าลิงค์ที่เราจะทำกลับไปให้ Partner ของเราจะได้ไม่ต้องทำจากหน้า Home หรือ index ของเราครับ ยังมีเว็บไซต์เช่น linkmetro.com Linkmarket.net ให้บริการโปรแกรมแลกลิงค์ ด้วยซึ่งก็มีประโยชน์กับเราตรงๆเลยครับ

6. BackLink for Sell ถึงเวลาต้องซื้อลิงค์
มีเว็บไซต์ทุนหนามากมาย ที่ต้องการให้เว็บไซต์ของตัวเองได้อยู่หน้าแรก อันดับแรกๆใน SERP ใน Keyword นั้นๆ การซื้อ Oneway Link จากเว็บไซต์ที่มีค่า PR สูงๆ ก็เป็นปัจจัยหลักๆในการสร้าง Link Popularity ครับ แต่หากเราจำเป็นต้องทำ ผมขอบอกเลยว่าทำให้เนียนนะครับ ผมขอยกตัวอย่างการซื้อ Oneway links ที่มีคุณภาพไม่ใช่ PR สูงอย่างเดียวและอย่าลืมดูว่าเนื้อหาต้องมีความ สัมพันธ์ กับเว็บไซต์ของเราด้วย โปรดอย่า!ซื้อลิงค์จำพวก 50$ for 10,000 oneway links เป็นต้น ตอนนี้เราคงต้องกลับมาถามตัวเองดูครับ ว่าถึงเวลาที่ต้องเสียเงินหรือยัง (ผมทุนน้อยชอบของฟรี)

7. Content is Everything เนื้อหาดี สาระดี ชีวิตก็ดีขึ้น
พวกเราคงเคยได้อ่าน Content is the King ใช่แล้วครับ ถ้าเว็บไซต์ของเราเนื้อหาดีมีข่าวสารน่าติดตาม
ข้อมมูลที่ดีและมีประโยชน์ต่อผู้เยี่ยมชม รับรองว่ารุ่งครับ ตัวอย่างง่ายๆก็คือหากเว็บของคุณเขียนบทความเกี่ยวกับ
Google Adsense ซึ่งเป็นบทความที่มีให้ประโยชน์กับผู้อ่านมากๆ อาจจะมีเว็บไซต์อื่นนำบทความของท่านไป ลงในเว็บของเขาและทำ ลิงค์กลับมาที่เว็บเจ้าของบทความซึ่งก็คือเว็บคุณ สิ่งที่คุณได้รับ Oneway Link ชื่อเสียง(สำคัญมาก) ไม่แปลกเลยที่หลายๆคน เขียนบทความและ Submit ไปที่ Articleห Directory (หัวข้อต่อไปครับ) อย่าลืมครับว่าไม่ใช่แค่ บทความยังมีสิ่งๆอื่นมากมากมายที่สามารถสร้าง Backlinks กัลมาได้อีกครับ

8. Articles Submission บทความ เสริมสร้างบารมี
หัวข้อภาษาไทยอาจจะดูอลังการ (นิดนึง) แต่ของอย่างนี้ไม่เจอกับตัวคงไม่เชื่อแน่ๆ บทความดีๆ บางทีสามารถที่จะทำให้จำนวนผู้เยี่ยมชมสู่เว็บคุณมีมากมายถล่มถลายจน Bandwidth –v’คุณหมดได้ครับ (ระวังไว้จะเจอกับตัว) แต่ก็อย่างว่าครับ มันขึ้นอยู่กับคุณภาพของบทความและคุณค่าที่มีให้กับผู้อ่านและ เว็บไซต์ที่ดึงไปลงในเว็บเขาครับ เพิ่มเติมอีกนิดนะครับว่า พวก Free Articles เว็บไซต์ที่ได้รับความนิยมมีเยอะครับ เช่น www.digg.com

9. PPC Pay Per Click คลิกแล้วจ่าย(ได้คุ้มเสีย)
เจ้า PPC หรือ Pay Per Click เป็นวิธีการหนึ่งที่ใช้ใน SEM (บทความแรกเลยนะครับที่ผมเขียน) ข้อดีของมันก็คือเราสามารถเจาะจงกลุ่มเป้าหมาย ที่เราต้องการให้เข้าชมเว็บของเราครับ จุดสำคัญจริงๆแล้วไม่ได้อยู่ที่จะนำคนเข้ามาตามคลิกที่เกิดขึ้นครับ แต่อยู่ที่ทำยังไงจะให้คนที่เข้ามา กลับเข้ามาอีกเรื่อยๆครับ(ย้อนไปที่หัวข้อ Content is Everything) หากเราต้องมาเสียเงินเรื่อยๆแต่สิ่งที่ตอบกลับมาคงไม่มีอะไรเลย หากมีแต่ลูกค้าหน้าใหม่ๆ เพราะเราคงไม่โปรโมทเว็บไซต์ของเราทั้งปีแน่ๆ สำหรับ PPC ก็มีหลายเจ้าที่ให้บริการอยู่นะครับ หลักๆก็ Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, Overture อื่นๆอีกมากมายครับ

10. Email Marketing โปรโมต เว็บผ่านอีเมลย์
อันนี้เป็นวิธีเก่าเอามาทำใหม่ อย่าลืมเติมน้ำจิ้มและอุ่นก่อนทานนะครับ จริงๆแล้วเป็นวิธีที่ได้ผลพอสมควรถ้าให้ดีควรทำแบบที่ไม่เข้า ข่าย Spam นะครับ เช่นเมลย์ไปแนะนำเว็บไซต์ใหม่ที่เราทำกับ Contact List เพื่อนๆหรือคนรู้จักของเราเท่านั้นครับ ไม่ใช่เชิงพานิชย์ขายสินค้านะครับ สำคัญที่สุดก็คือ เว็บไซต์ที่ติด Adsense โปรดระวังอาจโดนแบนได้นะครับ แนะว่าไม่น่าใช้ถึงไม่น่าใช้ที่สุดครับ

8 simple SEO tips for blogs

Follow these simple rules for search engine optimization and your blog will rank much higher in Search Engines.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain
The first thing to do is to ensure that your blogs URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for. Using the targeted keyword in subdomains also helps.
For example, if you want to start a HTML tutorial site then the primary keyword you want your URL to contain is html. So choose a URL like www.htmlhelp.com.
You can also use the keyword in subdomains like www.web-design.com/htmlhelp

2. Use your primary keyphrase in the title of your posts
If your primary key phrase is html help make sure that the word html and help appear in your blog headers such as H1 and H2 tags as well as the title of each of your posts.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post
If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post. The theory is that the more times a keyword appears within a Webpage, the more relevant the page is likely to be for someone searching those keywords.
But do not overdo this by repeating the same keywords over and over again. Google bots can find out if a keyword is too frequent on a page and might just remove your site from their index.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links
Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages of your blog. Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily
Make sure your navigation bar is present on all pages of your blog. Your previous posts or atleast the popular ones should be linked to all pages so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs
You need as many links as possible to link back to your posts or blog because it will help you build pagerank and get your blog to rank higher in search engines. The more links you have the higher your blog is ranked in Technorati helping your blog to be found easily.
So how do you get backlinks?
* The first thing to do to get high-quality links is to submit your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories.Start by submitting your blog to all the directories listed on this page:http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
* Link exchanging with other similarly-themed blogs will help you to form richly interlinked networks or communities.
* If you find an interesting article on another blog, link to it generously. The trackback will become a link back to your blog.
* Lastly posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs will help you get backlinks. Regularly post legitimate comments in similarly-themed blogs with high traffic to get many backlinks.

7. Update your blog frequently
Update your blog frequently using all the rules mentioned above and your blog will surely get top rankings in a short time.

8. Stick with your blog
Once you start posting on your blog, stick with the same domain or you could end up losing a lot of your traffic and regular readers.
Also stick with the topic you selected for your blog. If it��s about pets don��t suddenly switch to another topic such as Gadget��s because you will loose traffic.

Tips to get blog traffic with blog directories

There are hundreds and hundreds of blog directories out there for people to get their blogs listed. But apart from being included so that your blog can gain more exposure to the Internet users around the world, what else can a blog directory help to drive more and more traffic to your blog? Here's the answer!

With all the submitted blogs classified into various categories, bloggers can easily find blogs that are related or similar to your own blog. With this, you can start your own free advertising campaign by promoting in these related blogs. One of the easiest (and of course cheapest) way to achieve this is to leave a comment in the latest post. By leaving a comment, not only will the owner take notice of your blog but most importantly the visitors. Most visitors (me included) like to read comments very much and makes the so-called "comment advertising" so powerful.

Here are some tips you should bear in mind about leaving comments:

1. Never leave short, useless or canned comments
Comments like "Nice!", "Cool!", "Great Blog!", etc will not get you any attention from smart bloggers who would delete spam comments promptly. Take some time and read some of the content and give some solid suggestions for improvements or tell the owner why you love his/her blog. Afterall, everything is free so it takes you some time to do this. (But actually, I got a really nice tip for those who really don't have the mood to go over some tedious blogs out there. Try to give suggestions based on the layout of the blog. In this way, you only have to glance through the blog without bothering to read the content and it's always easier to criticise one's layout. You can try this: "It would be better, in my opinion, if you blend the advertisements in to your blog by setting the background colour of the ad units." By using this technique, you can give long but useful comments and gives the owner a feeling that you are here to help rather than to advertise.

2. Never be rude or too "hard-sell".
Try to be humble as you won't want others to leave comments such as "I GOT A REALLY REALLY GREAT BLOG ABOUT ENGINEERING!!!! VISIT PLEASEEEEE!!!", would you? So try to keep your tone nice and kind. Use sentences like "I also got a blog about engineering, you might want to take a look at it, here's the link." or "Can you give me some advice about my engineering blog?" Your commentwill always appear to be acceptable and pleasing if you don't sound like a salesperson.

3. Visit the blogs you have left comments on frequently and keep an eye on any replies to your post.
Only if you follow up on your comment will you gain a positive impression from thr blogmaster. Always be responsive if the owner or visitors reply to you.

4. Leave comments again when you have written a new post or changed the layout.
This keeps reminding the blogmaster of your blog as they tend to forget things after they find the first one not interesting. Keep on trying and you need some time to build up a large audience. But remember, never over do it or you sense that the owner dislike your doing so.

Starting from today, don't just use blog directories as a listing place only, use them thoroughly by discovering blogs that are of the same category as yours. And drive traffic to your blog by commenting on them. Try it yourself and see how powerful this "comment advertising" is!

5 Myths about SEO

When you size up the search marketing industry, you really have to marvel at all the different information sources, many of them conflicting, and how search marketers are able to stay on top of what’s current and relevant compared to noise and malarkey.

In the course of talking to prospective clients, prospective business partners, attending conferences and events, reading blogs, books, discussion threads, forums, newsletters and industry publications, you can get exposure to an amazing variety of observations about SEO. Many of them are spot-on. Some of them are tales of a mythical nature. A few are just plain bunk.

For some context on this post, I think it is important to note the distinction in intent for most search engine optimization efforts: SEO for publishers, blog networks and affiliates is a different thing than SEO for lead generation and on-site transactions/sales. Many tactics are the same, but the intentions and outcomes are very different.

The myths outlined below are more concerned with SEO for lead/sales generation that we work with at TopRank.

1. “Search Engine Optimization is a collection of tricks to fool search engines“.

If you’re “fooling” the search engines, then you’re probably fooling users too. Guess how well that kind of activity converts? “Real” SEO involves a lot more than optimizing content, getting links and using disposable marketing “tricks”. Tricks and tactics may be a matter of semantics depending on who you talk to, but many of the tactics we associate with productive and long term SEO include:

Search Marketing Strategy
Benchmarks
Competitive Analysis
Keyword Analysis
Creative Copy Writing
Web Design & User Experience
Information Architecture
Server Side Issues
Code Optimization
Other channel marketing that affects SEO (social media, news search, blog search, etc)
Ongoing Content Development
Ongoing Link Building
Web Analytics
Conversion Analysis
2. “People in our market don’t use search engines.”

I actually used to keep my laughter to myself when people would say this. You don’t have to do too much research to find out if a market is viable for marketing via search engines.

According to a study by comScore qSearch, there are 4.9 billion internet searches per month and 133 million unique searchers. Those numbers have actually gone up a bit since the study. It is certainly true that in some market categories in the developed world that search usage is minimal, but I have a hard time thinking of any.

A quick way to start investigating a market is to search and find out if how much relevant content is out there. If your market is brand new, then you may have an easier time dominating it on search engines by becoming an authority on the topic earlier than your competition.

3. “SEO is a single event”

This one is still pervasive and indicative of what search engine optimization used to be. Sort of like “SEO circa 1999″ when all you had to do was update Meta tags, add keywords to web pages and submit. Those are the Model T days of SEO.

Search engines like Google look at 100-200 factors or “signals” to determine relevancy and to decide how to sort search results. Add in the increasing numbers of competing documents from various media, blogs and web site along with more savvy search marketers and it’s easy to realize that effective SEO requires ongoing attention. “Attention to what?”, you might ask. How about: creative link building, creation and promotion of new content, integration with other online/offline marketing, social media, analytics and optimization refinements.

4. “SEO is a function of IT”

Search engine optimization started out in the cubicles of IT, but has moved it’s way into the executive offices for many companies. I believe the most recent SEMPO state of the search industry research shows that companies are no longer borrowing from other cost centers to fund their search marketing initiatives. It’s a business decision line item like any other marketing expenditure.

However, IT and Web Design/Development “buy-in” are critical for proper implementation and it’s important to understand that in larger organizations, SEO is multi-departmental. Marketing, IT, Public Relations, Legal, Creative and possibly operations might all be involved in some way with a strategic initiative to help reach business goals through improved organic search performance.

Regardless of the size of the company, SEO initiatives should be managed strategically by the business like any other major marketing initiative

5. “Our site doesn’t get a lot of visitors, so SEO wouldn’t work for us.”

With comments/myths like this, you must be wondering, “Who in the world is Lee talking to?” You would be surprised how many intelligent, accomplished corporate marketers have said the above. It appears to be the classic “chicken before the egg” type of thinking.

The reality is that comments like this are an indication of insecurity about search as a discipline or about search as a viable marketing channel for a particular business. Smart people say things like this because they are not confident about the solution being presented and want to get out of or avoid the conversation. Anyone else who uses such logic just doesn’t understand marketing.

Either way, I always recommend to companies that if they’re considering search engine optimization, regardless of who helps them, they need to look at it long term. SEO is not push button marketing and it is not for the impatient. The minimum amount of time we recommend is 6 months after implementation before evaluating whether SEO has promise as a profitable marketing channel. Anything less than that is not worth starting.

I can’t let you go without a few Bonus Myths:

Flash is bad - No, it’s the absence of text and complete reliance on Flash that is bad.
Database generated urls are bad - The major search engines are very good at indexing complex urls. Stay away from session ids though.
Keywords in meta tags is optimization - Just say no.
Extra domain names boost rankings - Pure malarkey. Make sure you redirect them properly. See Bruce Clay’s explanation on this.
Multiple copies of my site helps rankings - Can you say “duplicate content”? Don’t do it.
My competitors get away with spam techniques, so I can too - I can hear my mom now, “And if your friends told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?”. If a competitor is “getting away” with blatant search spam, you have a few decisions to make. One of them is how to be more creative and more aggressive (within guidelines) at becoming the authority for your category and topics.
Are there more myths and misconceptions, misunderstandings and pure bull$#@! out there about SEO? Sure there is. And the fact that, in some ways, keeping up to date with search marketing best practices is like putting a puzzle together when the picture likes to change from time to time, makes it even more challenging.

It’s all the more reason to find trusted resources that you can rely on and to build a network of people to bounce ideas off of so you can separate the facts from the myths. There is no substitute for firsthand experience.

25 Simple Blog SEO and Traffic Tips

This is a nice concise list of 25 ways to greatly increase your blog’s traffic and search rankings.

1) Content is king!

2) Submit your site to as many search engines as possible. After the initial indexing I would recommend resubmitting every 6 months.

3) Comment on as many blogs as possible. Make your comments thoughtful and not spammy.

4) Link up with popular blogs - trackbacks can be good for SEO as well as your traffic.

5) Write a good article and post it on a site like http://www.digg.com, although this won’t help as far as traffic goes (you will get a HUGE boost for a few hours, then it will tone back down, you probably won’t get any permanent readers from Digg) and it sure doesn’t help with your relationship with your web host, it can create some new inbound links.

6) Use http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ . Instead of the GoogleBot searching for your pages you can tell it where your pages are. This is a great way to get your whole site indexed.

7) Content is king!

Get listed on web directories like http://www.dmoz.com/. Although many SEO “experts” think it is overrated no one disagrees that it can help boost your site’s rankings.

9) Add some links for feed readers and blog aggregators like http://www.bloglines.com/, http://www.google.com/reader/, and http://myweb.yahoo.com/.

10) Add some social bookmarking links at the bottom of each post

11) Make it easy for your users to find your RSS feed

12) Add a “E-mail This!” link either on the header or the footer of each post

13) Content is king! (see a pattern?)

14) If you write a really good post try e-mailing the URL to some big-name bloggers with a short personalized message. You never know, they might like it and link to it.

15) Try asking some big sites who are in your niche if they would like to trade links. More often than not they will say “no”, but at least give it a try.

16) Don’t obsess over “get rich quick” schemes.

17) Don’t obsess over “get lots of traffic really quick” schemes.

18) Submit your RSS feed to a bunch of RSS directories, http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-directory.htm has a large list of popular directories.

19) Use http://pingomatic.com/ to notify a ton of aggregators that your site has been updated.

20) Don’t obsess over the numbers - it takes time to build up a good reader base.

21) Make your posts as keyword rich as possible. Whenever you can use a word that has to do with your niche, use it!

22) Use lists, especially if your site is targeted towards more tech-savvy users

23) If you have a MySpace page or a home page on a similar service put up a link to your blog.

24) Tag important keywords, using this site ( http://www.richardrodger.com/tags.htm ) you can tag keywords.

25) Last but not least, offer free stuff. Everyone loves free stuff!

The really important thing you have to remember is, just have fun. If your blog is causing you to become stressed out then it probably is not a good idea to continue blogging.

If your readers can tell you are having fun while providing good content they will become permanent readers.

by: Jeremy Steele

8 Quick Ways to Fix Your Search Engine

Over the past year, I’ve evaluated the search experiences on a number of popular content sites.
I picked apart the search and result designs from sites like Apple.com, NASA.gov, SchwabFoundation.org, and a variety of others. We focused on content sites, rather than e-commerce or Web applications, and we avoided general Web search engines entirely.

Our finding, not surprisingly, is that almost every site’s search engine could use improvement. We also found that most organizations’ Web teams couldn’t really affect the quality of their search results — they were stuck tweaking search technologies that had already been purchased and installed. Often, the most dramatic change they could make was in the design of the search and results interfaces. In some cases, as the old saying goes, this was like putting lipstick on a pig. But cleaning things up does help users find answers to their queries.
Through our research, we discovered eight quick fixes that will improve your site’s search experience:

1. Question search engine defaults.
Before turning on your search software, evaluate every option the software provides in terms of user needs. For example, do they really need to hide or show the result summaries? Take away as much as you can; it will simplify your results page.

2. Relevance is relative.
Ranking results based on their relevance is a subjective practice at best. Every piece of search software has its own algorithm for determining which documents best match which queries. Make sure the default ranking you select matches your user needs.

3. Help users avoid mistakes.
Check your search logs. One of the top queries will inevitably be an empty submission. While we’re not sure why this happens so frequently, users often accidently submit forms before filling them out. One of the simplest usability enhancements you can make to your site’s search experience is a single line of JavaScript. Make sure the search field has something in it before allowing the form to be submitted.

4. Roll your own results.
Even if you can’t change your search engine’s algorithm to be more relevant for your users, don’t give up hope. Frankly, one of the best ways to improve your results is to do them by hand. Get a report of the top search queries on your site. Take the top ten and find three to five pages that satisfy those queries. Then, create a simple script to match them up on your results page. When you have time, do the next 20 most popular. Stop when you get to 50. That will likely cover the majority of your users’ queries. Check the report once a month and adjust the canned results as necessary.

5. Simplify your page layout.
Almost every search engine can be more effective with a simple layout.
Include a wide text box with the user’s search query and a submit button labeled “Search again.”
Use a header that displays the total number of results and a control for displaying the next 10 (preferably an arrow pointing to the right).
List 10 results with ranking numbers hanging in the column.
Repeat the navigation controls at the bottom of the results.

6. Offer help for zero results.
If a query doesn’t find any matches, display the following:

• A text box showing the user’s query that allows them to edit it.
• Possible spelling alternatives, presented with the phrase, “Did you mean [alternative]?”
• A couple of other tips as a bulleted list. “Try a broader search term.” or “Try using a synonym.”
• Include a link to search help, a site map, and contact page.

7. Use categories if you’ve got them.
If your search software offers different search categories (often called catalogs or indices), use them to organize your results in a similar structure to your site’s architecture. Then include links at the top of the results page that show how many results match each category. This will help users narrow their search to a more manageable list.

8. Advanced search and help should be the same thing.
If you link to a page that offers usage instructions for the many features of your search engine, include interfaces for those features so they can be used without switching back and forth. See the advanced search page at HotBot for an example.

Jeffrey Veen is the Director of Product Design and a founding partner of Adaptive Path. In conjunction with author Darcy DiNucci, Jeff has just released our latest report: “Site Content Search : User Experience Analysis.” Full of real-world examples, this report provides a feature-by-feature best-practices guide to use as a design reference when developing the search experience on your site. When implementing a feature, you can easily reference how others have used it across a range of sites.
Jeff will also be speaking on this and related topics at our User Experience Week in Washington, D.C. from August 16-19, as well as our “Beyond Usability” workshop in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on September 28 and 29.

The 80/20 Of Search Engine Marketing - Part 2

In The 80/20 Of Search Engine Marketing - Part 1 I covered the first four of the Top 8 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques as explained by Brad Fallon. The first four methods were applicable to On-Page SEO, techniques you can manually apply to your website internally. The remaining four that I am about to discuss cover Off-Page SEO, which in my mind is a lot more difficult to control since you are dealing with external variables.

As I mentioned in part one, these techniques come from a special seminar recording that I received as part of my welcome package for joining Perry Marshall’s Renaissance Club.

Off Page SEO
If you are at all familiar with search engine optimization you are probably more interested in Off-Page techniques. With a bit of study and practice you can quickly grasp the most important On-Page variables to play with on your website. There is always more you can do of course, but as long as we are talking 80/20 rules there are only a handful of really important On-Page things and most of them were covered in part one of this article series.

Off-Page SEO in my mind is more important than On-Page. You can get your On-Page content perfectly optimized but without any good Off-Page SEO your On-Page efforts are wasted. No website can be a success in natural search engine results unless there are links flowing into it. This is what Off-Page SEO is all about, getting good quality links coming through.

Quite frankly I don’t believe there are any consistent, easy and affordable ways to conduct Off-Page SEO, and that is why I was so interested to hear what Brad was going to cover in his presentation. To be honest I wasn’t blown away by his comments. It didn’t cover anything new to me but I have been reading about SEO for a number of years, including some of Brad’s other materials, but it did reaffirm what I currently practice in my own Off-Page SEO activities and it’s always good to be reminded of what is smart practice.

Let’s go through the final four of the Top 8 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques so you can also do a mental check list and be certain you are following what the experts do.

5. Links and PageRank
Brad mumbled this first point out but later it was clarified that he said links. Really his Off-Page SEO technique discussion was more of a gradual break down than a top 4 list, with each point flowing into the next (which you will see is mimicked in this article) so the first place to logically start is links.

Links to your site is the most important Off-Page SEO technique. Simple but true. Incoming links are what determines your natural search engine placement. Yes all the On-Page SEO techniques will influence the variables but the links will determine the strength of your web pages to compete for the top places in search engine results pages. The more strength, the higher in the search engines your web pages will be. Nuff said.

PageRank
If you read my blog you should be well and truly familiar with PageRank. Most of my SEO posts are laden with the term but just in case you don’t know about PageRank head over and read this article to get yourself introduced to the topic - PageRank Explained - Keeping SEO Simple - this is one of my most popular articles and it should answer your basic questions.

Brad Fallon did not do anything more than a basic introduction to PageRank but he did make one interesting comment that I think is worth repeating. He gave a typical scenario of a person conducting search engine marketing for a website (or a company hired to do so), which usually starts with submitting to directories and hunting around for link exchange partners. Not exactly the most effective means of SEO because you tend to get low quality and low PageRank incoming links.

Brad went on to note the perils of over optimizing, which often happens when techniques like low quality link exchanges and free directories are over used, generating thousands duplicate anchor text incoming links from sites with low PageRank. He stated that the search engines don’t reward these techniques well, but strangely enough these are often considered the foundations of SEO campaigning but don’t lead to great results.

What Is A Good SEO Plan?
A more sound search engine marketing strategy is all about quality over quantity. Get your site listed in the best directories - DMOZ (the open directory project) and Yahoo! - and then slowly, but consistently build incoming links from good relevant sites. This pattern is considered more natural and hence is rewarded with better organic search engine results. Yes it takes longer and you better be a patient bunny, but it will lead to better results in the long term. It’s all about spending your time finding the 20% of links that will give you the 80% of results.

Brad pointed out that 1000 low quality and low PageRank backlinks generated in a short period of time will not be nearly as good as a handful of high PageRank incoming links added over many months. The emphasis is on oh-na-tur-al. Don’t follow the crowd and exchange links with anybody and everyone that comes asking for a link (perhaps I should drop my link exchange practices for this blog?) and don’t spend all your time asking for links from any site you can find that is remotely relevant to yours.

How To Get High Quality Links
It can be especially difficult for a commercial site with no interesting content (for example, nothing but sales pages) to get quality incoming links. No self-respecting, high PageRank site will have a good reason (besides money) to link to a site that is just selling something. Okay yes Apple will probably have no problems getting quality links to its iPod pages but that’s obviously not a position most businesses enjoy.

Unfortunately I don’t have a full-proof method for gaining quality links other than what I have already written about before and what is repeated over and over again all over the Internet - Content is King. The better the content the better the backlinks. Of course you can’t expect quality backlinks to come immediately unless you are willing to buy them. You need to slowly build up an audience that will eventually lead you to enjoy some exposure in the eyes of the quality sites and quality backlinks will come. The best thing is that links from one popular site tends to give you exposure to the owners of other popular sites and momentum will build.

If you need a practical example of how to get high quality backlinks using content read the second part of this article - Smarter Online Marketing. This article explains how one of my blog articles enjoyed some major exposure around the web resulting in lots of links.

In the case of commercial sites the same rules hold true, content will bring in links and visitors. With a commercial site the secret sauce is great content that is tightly aligned with your target market. Whitepapers, articles, free reports, resources, anything and everything you can come up with that will bring your market to your site. If you have just launched a new site put together a whiz-bang whitepaper, it doesn’t have to be too long, just a few pages of really really good stuff and make it available on your site for free.

Once you have the resources on your site you just need to get out there and tell everyone. At the moment one of the best ways is to comment on blogs and forums where your target market congregate. As I mentioned above, if one popular site owner reads your whitepaper, thinks it’s great and tells her audience, your job may be done already. This alone may bring in hundreds of backlinks and definitely lots of real visitors. It’s not easy but good content will lead to good results - it’s almost guaranteed!

6. Page Reputation
Back to the wisdom of Brad Fallon. Page Reputation is a relatively new concept in the eyes of the web public and has been gaining more and more credence as an important SEO consideration. In a nutshell reputation refers to the value of the sites linking to your site and the value of the links linking to the sites linking to your site. Confusing isn’t it!

Every website has a reputation value and incoming links determine that reputation, however it’s not about the number of incoming links but the quality and reputation of the sites that link. The reputation of a mainstream news site, for example CNN, is quite high and will have incoming links from other high reputation sites. If you get a link from CNN then your reputation will rise. Basically it’s measure of a site’s value based on the network of sites linking to that site going back multiple levels of the network.

That’s about as far as my understanding of the concept goes and in my mind ties right back in with the quality over quantity theory.

7. Anchor Text
Number three in the Off-Page SEO technique list is anchor text. Anchor text is the text used to link to your site and like your internal linking structure, your external link text is very important but often harder to manipulate. You don’t decide how people link to your site, all you can do is encourage people to link in a certain way.

This issue is all about your keywords. First you have to know what keywords you want people to use to link to your pages and then you need to figure out ways to make sure people use those keywords. For the basic link exchanges you usually communicate with the person providing you with a link and stipulate what anchor text to use. However most of the valuable links will come in response to you writing some good content and it will be quite random, the linking person won’t approach you to ask how they should link to you, they will just slap up a link as they feel appropriate.

In most cases people linking to your pages will use the title of your article, or part of the title, as the anchor text and as such you need to be extra careful when deciding how to name your articles. Yes usability and marketing comes first - you want to grab the attention of human beings with a tempting title, but if you can get some good keywords in there too you will be killing two birds with one stone. Other areas to consider are your name (now don’t go changing your name just for SEO!) and your website’s title as these are often used as anchor text.

I wouldn’t stress about external anchor text too much otherwise you can become bogged down in little details. Often the people linking to you will use completely random text that means absolutely nothing (for example - visit Entrepreneur’s Journey - click here - “click here” is not good anchor text) but at least will bring in human visitors. Just stay consciously aware of the importance of keywords in anchor text whenever you produce new content.

8. Link Popularity
Lastly Brad noted link popularity as the final point in his top 8 SEO technique list. Link popularity is all about the numbers, not the quality. This is purely how many incoming links there are to your website.

The one interesting point Brad mentioned in this section of his presentation was the difference between Google and Yahoo! regarding the top variables in their algorithms.

Google - 1.Title Tags, 2.PageRank and 3.PageRep
Yahoo! - 1.Title Tags, 2.Keyword Density and 3.Link Popularity

Now I can’t verify that in any manner but it does make for some interesting discussion. This shows that Google cares more about quality and Yahoo! cares more about quantity, but I’m sure there is a lot more to it than that. I’ll leave it up to you to test this theory on your sites.

Link Relevancy and ‘Do Keywords In Domain Names Matter?’
Before I wrap this article up I want to make one comment regarding how relevant backlinks have to be and whether keywords in domain names matter. Brad made some interesting comments about these topics.

My assumption was that relevancy meant that the pages your incoming links come from should be relevant to a pretty high degree, for example, Entrepreneur’s Journey would appreciate links from business, marketing, SEO and entrepreneurship sites but universities, sports clubs and cooking sites would not be relevant. Brad stated that Google’s relevancy scope is quite wide, as wide as the top categories in the DMOZ directory. A site that on first inspection may not be relevant may actually in fact offer some relevancy even if the connection is obscure or drilled down (is every link from a blog relevant to a blog simply because they all belong in the “blog” category? I think not). It’s a hard thing to judge given that determining whether a result (say a search engine ranking increase) has a direct correlation to a single backlink is next to impossible.

What was really interesting and actually makes total sense is what Brad said about domain names. One of the age old questions in SEO is whether keywords in your domain name are important. Brad straight out said that the Google algorithms do not consider keywords in the domain name, however when people link to you they often use your domain name and if your keywords are in your domain name then the anchor text people use to link to you will contain your keywords. In a round about way, yes, keywords in domain names matter.

Conclusion
There you have it, the top 8 search engine optimization techniques as presented by Brad Fallon, one of the web’s most respected search engine marketers, along with lots of additional commentary thrown in from yours truly. For some people there won’t have been much new material but what these two articles do provide is a solid list of the 80/20 variables that you should work on if your organic search engine results are business critical. For solopreneurs with little time on you hands knowing what the key two-to-three things you need to worry about makes for efficient business.

A few people have emailed me questioning the validity of Brad Fallon and I can say one thing only - Jay Abraham would not have selected him as the presenter on search engine optimization if he wasn’t the real deal. If you don’t have any confidence in Jay Abraham then perhaps you need to start studying business and marketing.

The 80/20 Of Search Engine Marketing - Part 1

I joined Perry Marshall’s Renaissance Club to get my copy of the Definitive Guide To Google AdWords at the discounted rate, however I’ve started to realize there is a lot more value in it than just the AdWords eBook, which I guess makes sense since Perry wants people to stay subscribed to his club, so he must keep dishing out good stuff.

Just this morning I had a listen to one of the CDs you receive when you first join the club. This one was with Brad Fallon, the search engine optimization (SEO) expert. It formed the third part of the Jay Abraham’s Power To Profits seminar series that was completed earlier this year with Perry, Brad and Ken McCarthy. You get this CD, titled “The 8 Essential Things You REALLY Need to Know About Search Engine Optimization“, when you first join Perry’s club, along with the two other CDs that make up the seminar.

Who Is Brad Fallon?
You have probably noticed Brad Fallon’s name, his free e-course and SEO product, Stomping The Search Engines, pop up in the yellow boxes on this blog lately. This is because I know Brad is the real deal after reading his material and listening to his audio and I feel confident recommending him to you as one of a handful of SEO experts that I trust. Much of my understanding of SEO, in particular about sitemaps, has come from Brad. He also has the credentials to back up his products, having grown his business My Wedding Favours from brand new in January 2004 to about $700,000 per month operation 15 months later, mostly thanks to his position in the search engines (his site is number one for most of his key phrases, including “wedding favors“).

As a result of his success with his online store he went on to teach others how to get great results in natural search engine rankings. The audio CD I just listened to had some fantastic materials on the 80/20 of SEO activities we should all be doing. Brad’s skills have come from testing things on his websites and research - lots of real life testing to see what works and what doesn’t. Perhaps more importantly he knows what might be sound SEO practice but falls into the 80% of activities that only have 20% impact on your search engine performance, so shouldn’t be prioritized, and the 20% of activities that have the greatest impact that you need to devote most of your time to.

The 80/20 Rule For Search Engine Marketing
When I say 80/20, I mean the 20% of activities that account for the 80% of results you get. In this case it’s the 20% of things you should spend the most time regarding optimizing your website to get the 80% of results in search engines. Wasting time with the other 80% that produces 20% of the results is obviously not a good idea. If you are at all familiar with this principle, and you will be if you read my blog regularly since I reference to it a lot, then you know that the 80/20 equation is not a strict mathematical rule but definitely is something that every business should heed.

There are very few variables in any organisation that account for the majority of results. When I say variables I mean anything from people, marketing methods, customers, infrastructure, systems, suppliers, products, pricing points, seasons - anything and everything, can usually fit nicely into a 80/20 relationship. In this case I am discussing the 80/20 of search engine optimization techniques - these are the activities that you should spend the majority of your time on.

The Top 8 Search Engine Optimization Techniques
I’m going to list the top 8 techniques that Brad discussed in the seminar. Bear in mind that I’m only going to briefly review them since it wouldn’t be fair to Brad, Perry or any of the guys selling this stuff if I simply reposted all their materials. The fact is I couldn’t do it anyway, it would take a 50 page post to cover everything Brad discussed in the audio CD. If you are interested in having a listen to this CD I suggest you try Perry’s Renaissance Club.

Brad broke down his top 8 list into two categories - On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. On-Page refers to things you can do to your website, Off-Page refers to the things that happen to your website from other sites (usually talking about incoming links from other sites). Let’s start with On-Page since you can action these items immediately and test results.

On-Page SEO

1. Title Tags
If you are at all familiar with SEO then I’m sure you would have seen this one coming. The fact is, and this has been proven time and time again, what you put in your title tags is the most influential variable to determine how your pages show up in natural (organic) search results.

Brad gave an excellent example of how he played with slight changes to the title tag of his Wedding Favors home page causing a dramatic change to his search engine result page (SERP) placement. He was sitting at number 2 on Google and was testing methods to get his site into number 1. With Google you can make a change to your title tags and within 24-36 hours you will see the results. His results were often quite dramatic, dropping to number 9, then completely gone, and finally finding the combination of title tag phrases that resulted in a number one ranking. He now owns the number one ranking in Google and Yahoo!.

During this process Brad recommended that you optimize for only two to three key phrases per page. The keyphrases that start the title tag (the ones on the left) have the most power, so should be selected very carefully. His example was interesting because it showed how his three key phrases for his homepage were adjusted to create a number one ranking for all three of his phrases (Wedding Favors - Wedding Party Favors - Bridal Shower Favors). It wasn’t very complicated, just moving words around and seeing what happened. Not rocket science, just practical testing. I have since added an entry to my ‘to-do’ list for BetterEdit.com to start testing title phrases again.

2. Keyword Density
Keyword density was listed the second most important on-page factor in the 80/20 of SEO activities. Keyword density is the percentage of times your keywords appear on a given page. There is no strict rule or percentage to aim for but Brad offered a very sound practice to determine what works - copy what your competitors do. Search for your key phrases, the phrases you want to show up for in the search engines and see what the current top result site’s keyword density is.

To do this Brad gave away this fantastic little gem of a resource - go to this website - www.Ranks.nl and use it to test out the keyword density of your competitors pages and your pages. See how the number one site handles their keyword density - how often in title tags, heading tags, alt tags, body content and other areas of their site certain keyword phrases appear and then copy their techniques. Once you have your on-page keyword density equal or better than your competitors then all you have to do is worry about your off-page SEO to beat them (and test test test!).

3. Site Structure
Site structure covers the way your site is linked together internally. Brad didn’t talk too much about this and I know why - he’d need a full seminar just to explain all the different things you can work on! However I think there is one really important thing to mention regarding site structure and I know Brad would agree with me - it’s your sitemap - whether you have one to begin with and how you structure it. My suggestion is you do Brad’s free e-course that covers a lot on site structure and in particular sitemaps. It’s free so there is no reason why you shouldn’t do it.

4. Internal Links
You have to remember that Google treats each webpage as a single page, not as a part of a website, so when it comes to linking to your own pages it’s very important you take great care to optimize your keyword linking methods. The beauty of this technique is that you can control it, it’s an on-page technique that in lets you add backlinks to your own pages (What is a backlink and why should you care? Read this - The Backlink FAQ and this - Monitoring Your Backlinks - How Popular Is Your Website?).

The two most important things to consider is how you anchor your internal links (what phrases you use to link) and that you take advantage of all the opportunities to link your pages together. Make use of a footer by linking to all your most important pages using the appropriate anchor text keyword phrase (especially your sitemap) and make sure your navigation structure links with keywords, not just blanket statements like “click here”.

Two words of warning with this - don’t forget about usability and don’t over optimize. Brad mentioned that Google recently added technology to their algorithms that penalizes sites that appear to be over optimizing. This is usually indicated by too much use of a particular keyphrase, for example always using the exact same word or phrase to link to one page in your site and all incoming links from other sites are also use the same phrase. To avoid the penalty just mix up your phrases a bit and, leading to the other warning to watch out for - usability -keep it human, use phrases that humans will understand. Afterall your goal with all this SEO is to get humans to your site and there is no point if they can’t figure out how to navigate to what they want because your linking text is all the same or poorly labeled.

Off-Page Search Engine Optimization in Part 2
That’s it for the on-page SEO tips. In part two of this series I’ll go through the final 4 tips Brad Fallon mentioned regarding off-page SEO and then you will have a complete picture of the top 8 most important search engine optimization factors. Part two will be posted in the next couple of days.

Part 2 is now available - The 80/20 Of Search Engine Marketing - Part 2

8 essential search engine marketing techniques

Yaro Starak has written an in-depth review of The 8 Essential Things You REALLY Need to Know About Search Engine Optimization, a CD where Brad Fallon talks about ways of improving search engine rankings. The review is split into two parts: The 80/20 Of Search Engine Marketing - Part 1, which contains on-page SEO techniques, and The 80/20 Of Search Engine Marketing - Part 2, where off-page techniques are discussed.

The techniques are these:

1. Title Tags (which should be document titles or title elements, since it’s the text between the opening and closing title tags that is important, not the actual tags)
2. Keyword Density
3. Site Structure
4. Internal Links
5. Links and PageRank
6. Page Reputation
7. Anchor Text
8. Link Popularity

All in all, a good list of techniques to use when working on increasing the number of visitors a site gets from search engines.