DIY SEO for Tucson Businesses

Although the internet is constantly changing the core of SEO is basically the same.  Many people that begin SEO think there is a silver bullet where there’s not in the SEO world. Websites using auto content software that generate content, using javascript hacks, and cloaking to screen you site’s true content are doomed. If the search engines haven’t caught up with you yet but they will soon. I’d suggest that you learn real SEO techniques that are sustainable.

Doing SEO “right” means: RESULTS.  If you run into a  SEO pro that is promising things like being  front page of Google in a week. Run don’t walk the other way. So many people think there’s a “trick”, some sort of magic and if you open your wallet the traffic will come rolling in. Often when I mention SEO to people they either
think they know everything or their eyes glaze over.

Here’s the “secret” four letter word. WORK and the other one is: HARD. Tons of technical detail that takes careful attention to detail and TIME both in work and actual time. In other words in the not so mysterious world of SEO there are no secrets. Here’s the great news. The basics of SEO are unchanged or in fact more basic in the sense of the basic A,B,C’s. If you play by the rules there is a skill set to be mastered.

The world of Search Engine Optimization is almost as superstitious as baseball. There is a great story about a “guru” who was spreading the theory that by adding the Google tool bar he was getting the “special link juice”. Never mind he was doing the basics of adding constant stunning content and folks across the web were linking him to their site because he was good.

LET ME SAY IT IN PLAIN ENGLISH: In SEO there are NO SECRETS. Unfortunately, in this strange world because no one including most of the folks that work for Google DO NOT understand the algorthims completely. The cause and effect connections are often nothing more than superstition.  Great SEO work is not an accident but a result of processes. The great SEO pros here in Tucson have this in common: a lot of knowledge about how the search engines work and what makes or breaks SEO inside a  web site.

SEO is like brain surgery. It’s a breeze once you know what you are doing but if you get the wrong info the patient dies. Many have tried to mastered wrong
information and wondered why things haven’t worked out for them. Back to RESULTS: most people give up because they get tired of beating their heads against the wall and getting nowhere.

SEO can be summed up in doing five things right.

1.  Have a keyword plan that will bring the right searchers to you.

2.  Having a SEO website.

3.  Stunning,Amazing,Continual content with excellent “on page” SEO.

4. Getting Backlinks from as many revelant sites as possible with the highest PR as possible.

5. Understanding the technical explosions that can blow up your efforts.

Even intellectually understanding these steps you’ve got to have a A-Z plan. Having a map is essential. Being organized avoids frustration when results aren’t instantaeous. SEO take time. It also will help you being sucked into shortcuts that will only waste time.

Does this sound familiar?  You’ve got to decide if you are going to use a thin keyword phrase strategy or a niche and long tail phrases. You write your content and then edit it and make sure it’s written in a key word rich format. You will also have to spend time submitting your information to directories, and trade links.
When that fails you try doing automated linking services that keep charging you and the results never seem to appear. Sometimes you get dinged on some kind of
technical issue and you end up on the forums and get it fixed eventually. All this and more can happen if you don’t have a A-Z plan.

BIG STEPS

Important concepts need to be read slowly step by step. If you want to do something well it’s best if you understand why you are doing it. Also, you have to understand the caveats that can torpedo the whole process and cost you time and effort. Getting beginning results in the first month and front page results with six months can be expected if you don’t try to play games with the search engines.

Trust me, they are far smarter than you are and really all the gimmicks are just a waste of your time. SEO is actually settling down into a very stable way of adding to the value of the web in a systematic way. There are minor changes that occur from time to time but SEO has come of age. Don’t be misled by the “tricksters” that will continue to claim to have found the “fountain of youth” in SEO. Most of them will age quickly with the only result being a smaller bank account.

SEO information that applies to 80% of all website owners is free. The problem is it’s free, it’s on the web and it’s hard to find because the web in not well organized. Anybody can publish anything and you as a newbie really have no way of know if it’s right or not. Here’s the deal: info has to be organized and written up by someone who knows their stuff without being too techy. Tough stuff. Collecting, reviewed, edited and all the rest is not readily available.

Understanding the two way street of the search engines is the first step in understanding SEO. You have to have a knowledge of what the search engines are looking for and what the searchers are looking for when they use the search engines. Why? Well, by taking the time to gain the knowledge about the  Search Engines everything else about SEO will make sense.

Ever hear of “spiders” on the internet? A spider is a robot(a software program) that searches the web looking for what is on the web. The only “spiders” you need to be concerned about is the “spiders” that is looking through the web finding new content on pages. A side note but important to understand is that the “spider” loads a page and follows the hyperlinks on each and every page. I know it’s creepy but in actuality there are millions of searches being done by millions of “spiders” all at the same time. Sleep well! Once the page is loaded up the text of the page is loaded into an “index” which is a huge database of words and where they are occuring on the web.

So to break it down:
1. The “Spiders” Crawl finding “food” pages.

2. The “Spiders” then “digest”what they found and index them.

3. The links are then fed back to the “spiders” to be retrieved

When the Spider takes hits your site it looks for a file called “robots.txt“. It then it keeps the parts to index and discards the rest. The only way to control the “spiders” is by knowing how to use the “robots.txt” and that will be addressed shortly. One of the things that is causing the “settling down” of the SEO world. is that the SE are coming together using a unified standard called the XML Site Maps protocol. The “spiders” usual find a website is following links from other
sites. If you look at reports from analytical software you will see these as “found pages”.

You can submit your URL on some SE’s so that it will be added to their index. It’s simple and something you might want to pause and do now. Don’t fall for the paid or free services that “submit your site” as there are only four main search engines. And you’re not even able to submit to all of those. Again, steer clear to magic software that promises to submit you to a zillion SE’s. The only thing this “junkware” will do is create a sunami of junk mail. Bottom line: have such a stunning site that it compels the search engines to FIND YOU. Your focus should be on setting up the links this will guarantee that the you will
be found. What this will do for you will help you in the rankings.

Here’s what happens when a page is indexed by a search engine. The text on your page is stored in regards to the information about the text not the page itself. Also, very important: what words, when, how and where they occured in the text. Other than text: rich media, scripts, and images are also stored and indexed. But only in specialized searches. Searchers still primarily use words to find what they are looking for so words are paramount in SEO.

Some other factors:

1. META tags are stored in many instances.

2. Textual Content is stored and rated

3. All the hyperlink information is stored

4. The hyperlinks and the text in them give the
search engines an indication of “link popularity”
and the issue of “relevance” and how the pages
link together. This is the primary way pages and
websites are discovered.

Typically even after the search engine finds a site it might weeks before anyone finds you. If it takes longer than a few weeks to find the site it’s typically because
it takes some time to find the links and update the index. While all search engines have their own algorithm to determine where a page will rank for a
particular search term. The system of SEO described here will work across all search engines. When thinking about SEO as it is today you have to keep two things in mind. What’s on the page and what’s off the page. Key in this whole picture is the text used in the hyperlinks that link to the page are very important.

The “on page” the position of keywords is the most vital factor. The Keyword should be in the heading, the page titles, and strategic spots on the page. When a “spider” crawls a page like this it will be seen as relevant than a page where one keyword appears in the middle of a page. What else? Good web sites and pages are packed with hyperlinks to relevant sites that are joined and in the same sphere as the page in question. Sites and pages put together like this will be the game changer in positioning a site.

The next thing to consider is weighting and “link relevance“. So if your “scuba diving page” is linked to a page that actual contains those words in LINK ITSELF is important. Anchoring that to  your site with that phrase or keyword. This leads to the whole subject of page rank. Google is the leader in this area. PageRank translated is:quality of a page. PageRank flows throughout a site from page to page and and divided and is largely from your incoming links. Fortunately, you can exercise some control on page rank which can help what pages are seen.

Something that is “sort of” a “secret” is “user experience”. No one is talking about it much YET. But it will become a more and more of a factor so stay posted. But the key to success is to design our websites so that human beings love them, come back to them and find value in them. It’s a balancing act but one should lean in the direction of human experience. Searchers go online to find “information”. But how they do it is a mystery. Mispelled words, jumbled words, words typed in backwards, and every other type of combination you can imagine. There are a couple types of searching. Rearching usually involves “drill-down” searches and an “authority” on the subject comes up and the searcher is done.

For instance this is usually what I do. For instance http://wikipedia.org is where I go and read the article and then go to the references and go the links there and I’m done. Getting your site connected to an authority or hub site is difficult but should be attempted. The other main search is called a targeted search. This is when a searcher is looking for a specific company or official site like IRS.gov. Often though the surfer doesn’t know the right site.

The way the searcher then decides to go the page that best meets their needs. So a title and  a captivating description. Often when the “drill down” searcher will lean to the results that have the promise of tons of information. So you would want in the description the types of words to attract the click. If you have a online store you’ll be better off coming across as unbiased with comparisons, tests, and analysis as opposed to “buy my widget”.  Getting ranked has become “how popular is my site”. What is on you site is important as well but positioning is contigent on the first piece. And that is determined on “inbound links”.

Steps To Successful SEO

Use Google’s adwords keyword tool and estimate the search volume for a keyword. What you want to do is make notes of your keyword research and place it in themes and make a map for your site. Everything that you need to do is free. You can download Openoffice calc program which is free and interfaces with Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Your goal is to accumulate and see the best return on your investment in regards to the quality of keyword strategy. The main thing to keep in mind is that there is far more to success online than how many vistors a site receives.

What you don’t want to happen is for someone to land on your site when they are looking for something else. It’s far better to get less vistors that are actually on topic than the former. Targeted traffic, targeted traffic, targeted. To understand how searchers search is to understand keyword strategy. On every topic there are a multitude of ways surfers select keywords and phrases when on a search keyword. What needs to happen is that many different keywords should find show up in the top seven. Obviously, the more keywords that are coming up in the search results the more vistors. Don’t be concerned about number one as that changes with the wind. What matters is it comes up in the top results has a terrific title and description and matches what the searcher is looking for in their search.

Put simply:
Formula: How many keyword phrases can you win in?
What place on each search?
How relevant?
How enticing are your page titles and descriptions?
= spread risk of coming up high on the SE
by increasing the number of keyword pharases.

Targeting your keywords plays two rules it targets your audience more precisely and gets you better leads and gives you the opportunity to rank well. Word of caution is to hurry on grabbing good domains because this information is moving fast and this “virtual real estate” will be gone soon.

Keywords:The First Step is Brainstorming

Just go crazy. Just write down every conceivable idea that might promote your website. Next, cut down the list to the core terms. Relevant, popular search terms people are looking for when they do a search. The single most common error a newbie in SEO does is focus on a single keyword. They attempt to build a site and compete with the “big boys”. Why is this a hopeless causes.

1.Your traffic will be diluted.

2.The competition is intense.

3.The dominators have extremely deep pockets.
Bottom line: Don’t waste your time.

Don’t make your aim to dominate major keywords but use them as a backbone for the keywords/phrases that you can rank well for on your site.
Next drop down in the “hierarchy” that should consist of two to five word phrases that will form the major amount of your traffic. You should understand that these keyword/phrases will not be the mass of the search phrases you came up with in your brainstorming session.

Initially focus in on at least 10-20 core keywords/phrases for your site. Keep in mind though that this list will be endless as time goes on and as long as your site exists.
Keep this growing list organized under the major words you came up with:
Dogs
Minpins
German Shepherds
Pit Bulls
Jack Russell Terriers
Poodles

It’s a science and a art to know in your research and writing if Thai and Thailand and Thai Food should all be included. You have to be discerning because of the principle discussed before of someone being sent to the wrong site. Think about stem/s. One is a plumbing part and the other is a part of a flower. So be careful.

A couple little problems is the use of root words as synonyms such as “diving” and “scuba”. Or to make it complicated “surfers”(online) and (on the ocean) The key is matching up words that are relevant search phrases that the searchers are actually using. The other little issue with keywords is “misspelling” can be complicated. By purposely including common misspellings into your list you’ll get a little more traffic. Don’t use them in your content but we will get to that later. Basically the Search Engines do a great job on catching the mispellings but you can go to Google and “aito repair.”

Researching keywords is tedious however http://www.marketsamurai.com/ is the greatest tool I’ve ever found and they have a free trial. However, start with keywords that are obvious. Starting with a list of obvious choices can help you get started. Next, focus on the group of keywords in the set of related terms that your site describes similar to what your site is about. Often your main list will contain related terms but you should always be ready to be adding to your list and making a new list.  These are the little terms that will strengthen your “off page” clout. Also, be on the look out for possilbe collaborators, partnerships and contributors that will be open to cross promotion. There’s an excellent keyword brainstorming tool Google has created a nice keyword brainstorming tool, the “Adwords Keyword Tool”. It suggests terms for that are related for your site at http://adwords.google.com/select/keywordtoolexternal Google will display the actual volume, season trends, and has really become a keyword discovery and research one stop shop.

There’s a cool tool on MSN’s Adcenter Labs called an “Online Commercial Intent” tool – What it does is show whether a search term is being searched to buy something or just research. http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/OCI.aspx During the next phase of your process you will need to us some
online tools. By working through the list of possible search terms and working through the list of possible search terms you will “mapping” out the core terms that will form the basis of individual pages.

As you were researching and making your list you probably didn’t give any thought how vitally relevant your web site might be to the searcher. You’ve seen at the end of a FAQ section. Did this answer help you. The big boys take this stuff deadly seriously and you have to as well. So what is relevance. It’s simple, how likely are searchers are going to find you and LIKE what they find and find it RELEVANT. For instance, if your keyword is scuba diving less than 1% of the searchers are going to find your page relevant but if it’s Turks and Caicos Scuba, 100% of your searchers will find your page relevant.

In addition to the Google Keyword tool you can use one of these two tools for lower-volume search keywords. Trellian’s Keyword Discovery http://keyworddiscovery.com has a trail that then gives moves you to a subscription. If you’re broke I’d still sign up for it and get some intial research done. Once you have some cash the paid subscription will help on core terms and the next stage expanding clusters.

Wordtracker database (http://www.wordtracker.com) is a free tool (freekeywords.wordtracker.com) which you can use in the next stage (expanding
keyword clusters), but not in this stage. Again there is a paid version of Wordtracker, that you can use it in this stage. The paid version has a lot more options for some of  the advanced stages of your research.

An easy way to settle on the relevance of these variations to go over your list by saying “yes,no, or maybe” to each keyword/phrase. So if you are selling Jack Russell Terriers, you would probably want to include “training jack russells”. On the other hand you wouldn’t want to say “Free Jack Russell Terriers” because that would be misleading.  Say “yes” to several of the variations and these candidates will be a good term core term. List your core terms and also their varitions. Next to the words put the search count found in the keyword database. These core terms and variations are “clusters”. You should have at least a dozen maybe more. You are now ready for the first round of SEO.

The secret sauce of SEO is high traffic comes from lots of searches so the top priority should be those keywords that show the greatest number of searches.
If you’ve done your research well, you should have little trouble. High traffic comes from a lot of searches, so your top priority should be those keywords or
phrases that show the greatest number of searches in the keyword database. Now comes the part where most folks mess up. Look closely at how closely each keyword will target your desired audience.

A term that gets 20,0000 searches a month might look great at first glance but is it really a good fit. If only 5% of the searchers looking are looking for what
you have on that page the math only indicates 2,000 searches a month the effective value is really only 1,000 searches a month.

Now you want to expand those clusters with your important core terms.

Next for each cluster come up with a list of  modifiers that you will apply to the clusters. For instance for bronchitis you might add chronic, cough, different types of
medicines, smoking and maybe other related diseases. Look at the top hundred or so variations of each modifiers attached to your clusters using one of the tools mentioned above. There will be extra words on the list which don’t appear in the top variations. Those will be the modifiers for that cluster.

If your business is geographically centered you are going to want to lean heavily on modifiers that point the search engines to your area. Almost anyting that will
point in your direction will be helpful. For instance: my site, http://localmarketingtucson would use Pima County, Arizona, Southern Arizona, Tucson, Old Pueblo, downtown Tucson, East Tucson, Tucson Barrios, South Tucson, and so forth. The same principle stands for brands and product names. For instance “Sea World” might carry a lot more weight than whales and seals.

The next big step in your SEO plan is to decide which pages you want to show at the top of your search results. Since you have more URL’s listed on the first page of search results you should select a minimum of two pages per cluster. Best choice and second choice should be your guide. It will be difficult within one cluster to optimize for a single page and know that you will probably have to add new content to highlight the totality of all the core terms.

When dealing with extremely popular keywords your best strategy is going to be to have sub-pages so that your site will be broadened in it’s profile. You don’t have to be concerned about this right now but as you dig deeper it will be logical to expand content for your clusters in most instances. The page that fits your search term should match the search term and then working down to second best in the site’s structure. An example would be if you had “U.S.Wild Edibles” you might go with “U.S.North West wild edibles”. And if you had a large inventory of “U.S.Wild Edibles” you may even want to create another category.

Your map will lead out to internal pages for almost all your clusters. So what about your home page? Taking your best clusters usually no more than two or three of the most popular core terms you will target those toward your home page. Moving through rounds of SEO you will see that your home page will arrive in good position for more and more keywords but getting the first few is obviously a good start. So we’ve discussed creating a “keyword map” for the site you are ready to complete your keyword startegy.

The Next Phase is Structure.

How do we improve the structure of the site to optimize it for better results on the search engines? First of all let’s look at the “so what”. Why should you even care about structure? Most of what you read (and often pay for) in the world of SEO is links. How do I get links? Where can I can get them? On and on, and not that links aren’t vital but the way in which you get them is much easier by controlling the structure of your site than running around willy-nilly doing the blog thing and other strategies that abound. Please don’t hear me being negative. I just think there is a better way. Paying careful attention to how your site is linked together
(something you have complete control over) will bring steadier and more stable results.

So let’s say you are reading this and getting depressed because you all of a sudden realize that what you have been doing is maybe spending most of your time and in some cases money doing the wrong thing. No worries. Let’s go over the main ways to either structure a new site or if you are already in the mix restructure your site.

1. The first law is to make your users experience better and better and better.

2. Send all your links to the pages you want to get ranked.

3. Improving individual web pages by adding content to those pages
using anchor text within your site.

4. Index Obsession: Constantly be adding pages to be indexed as
it will dramatically improve your rankings.

Next to the human side of things. The experience your vistor wants to have when they visit your site is that it meets or exceeds their expectations and that is most acheived by have terrific content that matches the Title and description of the site and that the links within the site that are clicked on provide even more relevant information for the viewer.

Your homepage is where most surfers will land and this is where you establish what the site is about, what you are offering and frames the feel of the vistor as to whether they are going to hang around or not. If it’s easy for vistors to navigate their way around your site you will have happy customers if not then bye bye birdie. One thing to be aware of is that folks don’t mind clicking their mouse as long as it’s taking them across the finish line.

However you should use standard conventions on your site:

Blue Underlined links in the body text

Tab Navigation

Breadcrumbs

Left hand navigation

and other standard issue elements.

Also, dividing your navigation into small chunks will minimize stress and friction on your vistor. Be sure to include a site map that has the links and description to the many pages on the site. Looking at this stage of your site you could consider it a second level where ALL links point toward the home page.

The next level is where you will have your important content. In real terms this level is anything that is two clicks away from your home page. Often this is as far as you need to go. There can be literally hundreds and even thousands within the first three levels of your site. Although for instance in an online store for instance you might have a fourth level that would be considered a supporting page with shipping options and rates. Again from a SEO vantage point the fourth level would be any page that is three or more clicks away from your home page.

When making your decision on where to drive your traffic you can lessen the number of links to less important pages or increase linking to the important pages.
Also, avoid linking to web sites from your home page. The way to control outbound links from the home page is to control post summaries on your home page.
Have site map pages linked to your home page as this will help them get indexed and the more indexed you are the better your rank.

If you dealing with a “global” navigational site you should do this on all of the pages on the interior of your site. The second and third levels of your sites pages should all link to your site map. Since you are limited to 150 outbound links per page limit it to that or you can add more site map pages. My choice would be to make a decision about what is the most important content. Maybe the “spiders” get tired but more than 150 doesn’t work so I’d advise to reduce the number to 80-100.

Focus your site map that’s linked from the home page to the pages you targeting for ranking and then link from the site map other second and third level pages that humans might be interested in finding. Crawl pages. Why would you have a “PageRank” issue on the third level on your site in the first place? Well, the second level pages are all picking up a link from the home page. The third aren’t getting that connnection.

A crawl page is the idea of creating additional category pages and point them to your home page but not in the main navigation. A crawl page would use a link in the footer. In much the same way you are linking the sites map pages. You could also create sub categories and link them from a parent category adding a crawl page that is linked to your home page will produce much better results. Crawl pages can also be used to send anchor text links to your third level pages and help them get better page rank.

Circle Navigation

Remember webrings. This is the strategy you want to do on the third level. In other words A-B-C in a circle. This will add a little PageRank for and between your third level pages. The main thing you want to keep in mind in regards to the structure of your site and links and “spiders” is that just about anything goes as long as you are adding links not taking them away.

Link Reputation and Anchor Text:

There is probably nothing more important than anchor text and link reputation in SEO. Using the right words in the links pointing to the page in question are vital.
There are limitations to what you can do on a page but there is NO LIMIT to the amount of links you can add pointing to a page. With your most important search
terms you’ll be able to boost the pages reputation with anchor text from other sites.

Making links point to the pages you are trying to get ranked. Use all the search terms that you are attempting to rank for online. Cover all your bases the first time
through your SEO plan and have anchor text for every search term, every variation, at least a couple times. You will have to take each page and cross link them with each other with keywords in the text of the link.

Specifics of linking pages to each other.

Goal: Get page A ranked to page B
So if you wanted page to get page A ranked for “scuba diving equipment”
then you link B to A with “scuba diving equipment” in the text, like
this: “When scuba diving we have everything you need <a href=”a.html”>scuba diving
equipment</a>.

What you have done is added some link reputation to page A. What this means is
page A should rank a bit higher when searching for scuba diving equipment.”

If you competing for tougher terms you are going to have to go back and add even more text links to accomplish the same result. At the end of the trail you can
only go so far with this strategy and then the focus must be to bringing in links from the rest of the internet. Knowing a search term is highly competitive add more links at this point. As you proceed to the next stages of the plan you will be able to measure and refine your results.

There are two types of links to attract links to your site. First navigational links that you can add in the footer of your pages. Secondly, there are contextual links. These are in the text of an individual page and will help with conversion, usability and boosting the pages reputation. Because Search Engines handle anchor text use a format that allows you to put some keywords in the first link on every page back to your home page. And to reiterate always have a navigational link that
links back to the home page.

I could give you a thousand tricks to “stuff” links but at some point it becomes inappropriate. The secret SEO word is CONTENT. Add more content that relates to the content you want to rank. Content is king however use it wisely by broadening the site’s profile and target more keywords. How important is this strategy?
Have you noticed how Wikipedia comes up so high in your searches. The reason is that it is the kink of interlinked with text links. Same thing with Amazon. All this
adds to a links reputation to the rest of the pages on the site. In other words, in both cases when you look at an article or look for a book there hundreds of
keywords and phrases pointing to the anchor text all from Wikipedia itself.

Index Penetration

When it comes to a site more is better. The more pages the more index, the better the rank. The search engines have their own way of indexing your pages. In the search engines mind if a page is not indexed it doesn’t exist. So what? Well, it’s important that you understand which pages are indexed and then take steps to
improve the ones that aren’t being indexed. The first step is to see if your pages are being indexed. The easiest way I do this to run my site through http://mywebsitegrader.com. If your page isn’t indexed you will need to getting more PageRank into your site. PageRank into your site. Simply put more links into the site in general and getting links from other sites into pages that aren’t showing up in the ranking as high as you want. For established sites, you can usually do a lot simply by using links from within your site.

Basic SEO Sections

First before you even start reading this post you are going to need to have a understanding of HTML. Here’s a site where you can beef up if you are a little rusty http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/

Some basics.

1. Breaking rules doesn’t matter when it comes to readablity.
You can correct it with anchor text.

2. The HEADSection
Keep Title 5-10 words
2-3 primary keywords
Goal: Attract clicks for surfers
<title>Local Tucson Marketing</title>

3. Only the first 65 characters in your Title show up in a SE result

META TAGS – total waste of time

Description META Tag: Writing a separate description for each page is important.  The first dozen words should draw vistors with a keyword or phrase if possible. What is displayed in the search results influences click-through rates for your listings. For long queries it can be more influential than a title tag. The limit on description is 155 characters.

Robots META Tag: This tag is important as it allows you to contol what the robots follow or not. <meta name=”skipper” content=”noindex, nofollow”>

<meta name=”skipper” content=”noodp, noarchive, noydir”>

NOODP tells the search engines that you don’t want them to use your Open Directory description (DMOZ.org) on SERPs. NOARCHIVE says that you don’t want
them to keep a cached copy of the page. NOYDIR says that you don’t want Yahoo to use your Yahoo directory description on SERPs. You can combine:noindex, nofollow, noarchive, noodp, noydir, etc.in your robots META tag. The search engines will all observe noindex and nofollow, the rest are “extensions” that may not be supported by everyone.

Headings&Links

Use core terms and variations in H1,H2,H3. Work these terms into text of links on the pages. You will be be attempting to get two search terms for each page
so just linking them to each other using keywords/phrases. Don’t feel like you have to use every keyword into links, you can use them in the text.

BodyText and Modifiers

This is really the best part. Just write naturally and put in your keywords where they make sense.  Write to inform, sell, and persuade and make sense. If you rank number one in Google for the rest of your life and your site doesn’t grab your vistors then you are a failure online. What is important is using your modifiers that you discovered in the beginning of your SEO plan. Here’s why. 80% of queries fall into the thousands of different combinations people type into the search engines. So write your copy with this in mind, mixing up the modifiers and using different variations of the core terms.

Content Creation

One of the most important things in developing a keyword plan is getting a feel for what your vistors need. The most important thing in creating content is to avoid duplicate content. You must be original. Even if you build content using articles directories you’ll rate far better by adding some editorial add-ons. Writing content is a breeze if you use Google alerts with your keywords and rewrite the articles in your own words. This will prompt totally original content that is created from reading others articles.

If you have discussion forums, allow comments on your blog, take user reviews, etc. you are actually creating a lot of content. Not only is this great for the user
experience, it creates a great deal of keyword rich content. Content that you can use to bring links into your site, send anchor text to your other pages, and which may even bring visitors in from search results.

Blogging for Content

Good news and bad news. If a blog is great you can get tons of  links, interaction and of course of content. That’s the good news. The bad news is if your blog has no other purpose it can crystlize and not lead readers to your home page. And you still have to create optimized pages outside your blog.

Website Pages that are “Search Engine Friendly”.

1. No frames

2. No flash

3. No Quicktime

4. JavaScript

5. Image Maps

6. Having said all that you can use all the above but it won’t help with SEO

HTML Validation – Ignore all “warnings” – Fix all errors. Errors can cause problems with indexing and spidering. However, just for kicks here’s a validator for you to use: http://validator.w3.org/

Link Building

PageRank started a new day in search engines and links equals higher PageRank and higher PageRank equals more traffic and therefore more sales. Link building
has become a sub domain of art and science within the world of SEO. Entire books and thousands of blog posts, sites and conversations and debates revolve around link building.

Link Building Campaign and Promotion

Link Building must be seen from the perspective of the search engines. Why? Because as discussed earlier every search engine uses link analysis to partly determine rankings. The one thing you can’t afford to do is get labeled as a “spammer” by the search engines. This can happen if your links don’t “jive” with your site. Wise intelligent link building strategy is essential is your site is going to go to the top. What are those Search Engines looking for if you are going to do this?

You may think that the only pertinent questions are:

What page does this link point to?

What words are used in the text?

How much does this text count?

How much “link juice” (if any) am I going to get?

Is there any risk of being penalized?

It’s fine to answer these questions but to answer the questions you’ve got to understand the questions. So we are back to understanding the search engine point of view. The search engine is going to want a “little explaining” before they are even able to answer your questions. The first question a search engine wants answered is a given link exists. Is this link going to help the viewer? Will it enhance the experience of your vistors. So let me ask you do think the SE’s are going to trust your text copy links or the little tiny links snuggled in the footer of your page. All linking must be relevant to avoid being labeled spam. It’s that way for internal links but for external links the search engines ask the question in a slightly different way.

There are four major links when it comes to external links.

1.Bartered links – low value includes:
Signature links in forums
Social Networking Sites like Squidoo

2.Manufactured links – Also known as “link farming.” It’s where someone creates websites for the sole purpose
of linking. So far the search engines can’t detect this strategy.

3.Bought Links – Legitmate and O.K. as far as the search engines are concerned.

4.Editorial Links – cream of the crop. What the search engines really get excited about.
What the SE really want is “natural links”.

All your link building should be mainly based on trust and authority. Our goal is to get links from sites that fit into this category.

Step by Step Strategy for Link Building.

The “steps” overlap but are laid out for your understanding of the different parts. That way you can develop a plan.

1.Inventory Current Assets

This involves studying the landscape of not just where you are at but where the competition is sitting. After doing that go to the “Google Webmaster Tools” and verify your site. There’s a whole toy box there that will help you and show all the links pointing to your site.(www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps)

The Yahoo Site Explorer will allow to look at the incoming links for a single page or an entire site. (siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com) Comparing the number of links to the home page vs. the total number of links will give you an indication of how many “deep links”.

Backlink Analyzer– Backlink Analyzer (tools.seobook.com) analyzes the links to find anchor text.

Even though it takes some time you should take a look at who is linking to you.

1. Some may be willing to change the text or context of the link.

2. Some may be interested in gettting some free content with a link to you of course.

3. And you may find affiliates to marketing and business partners.

Every link has two sides. Your side is to get your pages ranked and you want people to link to your pages using the right anchor text. Now let’s think about the person who is giving you a some “link love”. What pages would they want to link to and what types of improvements would help to make those pages even more appealing.

Something I find is that if there is a page that is packed with well organized and useful resources there will often be thousands of links pointing to the page. One such example is a resource of HTML character codes: (http://www.web-source.net/symbols.htm). Building pages like the one above for your site can improve your chances of getting those coveted natural links. If you are creative with this line of reasoning not only will your links be linked to the first comers but will be passed on and on and on.

On a side issue but core to the whole discussion of user experience is to answer this question. What is unique about my site? Does it express what you are offering in exciting, clear and stunning content. Is it special? Or just another wanna be. A good exercise is to list your strengths and weaknesses and strengthen the weaknesses and focus on the strengths. One major question to answer is: do you have more time or money? Obviously this makes a huge difference in how you manage and develop a SEO plan.

You will want to take some time to make a detailed analysis of your competitions position, backlinks and look at their strengths and weaknesses. You’ll want to get as many of the same links as your competition but after you’ve gotten on the same directories and verticals it’s time to go get your own links. You can identify your major competitors by installing the Google Toolbar. Turn on the the advanced feature to enable PageRank. On FireFox get the searchstatus plugin and then go to the “toolbar PageRank” and compare the scores with your main competitors. See:(go to http://toolbar.google.com).

If you do nothing more than submit to the top few general-purpose directories, the additional search engine referrals and direct traffic should more than justify the investment. At this stage in the game, though, it’s worth expanding our definition to include vertical (topical) directories, and topically related “resource listings” on other sites. In almost any market, the potential for listings like this is huge.

Directories

Major

It’s a pain($299 for yahoo/yr.) but Yahoo and DMOZ are the directories behind Yahoo
and Google and it will help with traffic.

In addition by coughing up $299 on Yahoo shows the SEO world that you are serious.

1. Yahoo.com is expensive – http://dir.yahoo.com and click the suggest a site,
read the guidelines, and submit. This is NOT an
ad – it’s a description. If you mess up you get
one chance to correct the submission.

2. DMOZ.org of them.      – Get your yahoo submission accepted first. Then repeat
above the process with a few changes in the text. No
advertising and then keep your fingers crossed that
they get around to looking at your submission
(inside joke).

Once accepted be sure to add (NOYDIR and/or NOODP) to the META tag(”robots”meta tag)

Minor

I will just give you the URL’s: http://www.botw.org,http://www.gimpsy.com,http://www.goguides.org,http://www.jayde.com,
http://www.skaffe.com,http://www.stpt.com

These directories are often indexed completely. So here’s what you should do. Go to the category where your link should show and then check if it’s indexed in Google.(info:URL) If it’s indexed in Google and not a supplemental, submit. If supplemental and there are no sites on the page, in other words an empty category go ahead and look at categories that aren’t empty. If you find indexing in one of those “close” categories move add your site and get it out of a supplemental index. If you don’t see your page indexed in Google I’d forget about it for now and come back to it later.

Finally:

SEOPros has a list of directories that have been reviews and you can spend gobs of time submitting to all of them but the law of diminishing returns comes into place at some point. Again, rule of thumb is if category page is indexed in Google the link on the lesser directories.

Verticals

In any particular niche there are many more directories for any subject imaginable. Sometimes called “vortals” sites like http://searchengineguide.com and http://isedb.com offer search able listings of vertical directories. Verticals can also be found by using Google and simply typing in ABC directory. Finding inbound links of major competitors is valuable and finding a strong vortal is powerful as the traffic it generates is often profitable.  Another site that can be helpful is Hub Finder (http://tools.seobook.com) This site is pretty cool as what you are doing is a search that links to many competitors.

Forums and Blogs

Relationships, relationships, relationships. In the area of forums and blogs the key to success is to do what? Yes, develop relationships. You have to jump in, engage, listen, make intelligent contributions to discussion and provide valuable information. Not everybodies cup of tea but very satisfying and profitable AND time consuming. If I had some money I’d hire some of the other things that can be done to promote my site and spend my time in the back waters of  the blogosphere and forums getting to know people as what can develop can truly be exciting and people actually get to know you and the feedback you get after you get to know them is gold. http://www.seopros.org/search/dirlist.asp

Knowing the players that are speaking to your target, linking to the key sites in your industry is valuable. Blogrolls on blogs can be looked at as well as the FAQ on forums that have gold hidden in the recommended resources.

More

There are two major types of sites. Online stores and content focused sites. Reviews, articles, news, tutorials and other items make up the site and if you can come up with valuable content to these sites it’s one of the best way of getting links. To sum up look for opportunites and type in your most important keywords and start
examining the top results like a CSI scientist. By doing everything outlined above you will be in the top results in a few months. Congratulations you are ready to begin.

Stage Two on the SEO Plan

Not really, but it’s time to run around the track again, creating more links and promoting your site in a pro active way. Now you want to “woo” other sites to link to your site. How? Create strategic link targets that are compelling on your site. It might be seen in the analogy of fishing and is even called “link baiting” and is another sub-domain of this crazy world of SEO. Bait, bait, bait is the key. You’ve got to give people a reason to link to your site.

1. Do something positive
2. Give something away
3. Lists that are valuable

Have or make up a reason why that makes sense and then make noise about it.

SEO:Build it and they will come or….

Creating an awesome website, having it added to some of the social networking sites and there is value in great content, tools and creating a terrific user experience. Natural links and goodwill and patience will cause your site to be promote it. However, to make it easy for people to bookmark your link targets, you add your  site to the social networks and do many of the things talked about previously. Tell your friends about you and ask them to link to you and give them a strong reason why they should.

SEO:Blogging

Blogging and writing continuously will create traffic and links. Why? Because the content goes on a RSS feed and it will be syndicated. Blog about other blogs. Huh? Yes, blog about other blogs and the “trackback” links and interchange between blogger and reader(you) can give you a tremendous amount of links and traffic. Jump in the conversation and keep talking. The more intelligent, pertinent and “friendly and positive” your responses are the better.

SEO:Presence builds presence.

1.Paid search results
2.Organic Search Results
3.Magazines
4.Billboard
5.Homeless individuals carrying signs
6.Radio Spots
7.T.V.ads (did you watch the Superbowl)

All these and a million other methods will get you some exposure and therefore links. Hope you have deep pockets on many of these.

SEO: Promoting,PR and Content

Article marketing is at present probably one of the most powerful ways to build links. Everyone who has been around long enough for a cup of coffee in  the SEO world knows this. So let’s say you write an article for http://ezinearticles.com and get a link. What most IM (internet marketer) do at this point is “spin” the article sometimes with automatic software and shoot it out across the web. The result is that you get tons of links and some “link love”.

Here’s an alternative for your consideration. If you want the edge over your competition you may want to consider getting links from other web sites besides article directories. Now comes the hard part. The topic and quality of writing that is “hot” is much more likely to be picked up from an article directory and placed on other sites. All your writing should be generic, not ads, not articles about your products, no promotion. That way it can be used across the web and the reward to you is “link love” and exposure. If you really get good it will almost become automatic for your links to be passed on. Don’t sell products. Don’t write advertisements. Write real articles.

There is a twist here to be aware of in doing this method. Search Engines hate duplicate content so the same article on tons of web sites will be ignored as well as the link. However, on the flip side 20% of the dups won’t get caught at least not immediately. Duplicate content is why professional article writers tend to “spin” them. The problem here is that the readiablity suffers, quality suffers and it becomes even more unlikely that the “article” gets picked up. In other words, what happens in many cases is you make things worse.

Let me ask you a question. If you could:
1, Solve duplicate content issues
2, Build strong relationships with owners of great content sites
3. And do it by doing one extra step

Would you do it?

If your answer is yes here’s the answer. Go direct by contacting the web sites who have picked up your article and offer to give them a updated and/or expanded Here it is: go direct. Contact the web sites that pick up your article, and offer them a unique article in its place. Offer them an updated or expanded version. Tell them you will create content for them and write good high quality original content or at least a unique introduction for the article

You can track your articles by putting in the articles name (http://google.com/alerts) and then seeing where your articles is showing up. If you don’t want to mess with the article dirctories themselves just set up alerts that capture articles about your topic and contact them directly. This isn’t new but if you can work with sites like http://hubpages.com that hold a high standard it is easy to see why vistors greatly appreciate sites like this and the SE love to share that love. Take your time, study the rules, write well and it will pay great dividends.

Viral Marketing and Affiliates

Obviously is you can give folks a piece of the action and provide them with a HTML code that they can throw on their site you are going to get links and maybe make some more money. Right? There are several SEO affliate progams one of the best is http://linkconnector.com. It lets you give a direct link and earn commissions.

One way to great viral traffic and links is develop a tool of some sort that when used gives you a link every time it is used. Really this whole link building world is only limited to your imagination. Ask yourself what can I do that my competitors aren’t thinking about. Again, the SE strongly consider the quality of the sites that link to you when they evaluate your site. So when you are looking at a site and considering linking to it consider QUALITY.

SEO: Link Building is Forever

If you practice the techniques above you can easily have page one rankings within 3 months. But you can’t stop you have to continue connecting relevant inbound good quality links. You’ve got to keep your eyes out constantly for promotions that will give you links automatically. Pages vanish, websites go down, and the links you had to them can disappear with them. If you don’t keep your eyes on this your ranks will slip and it’ll take months to correct the problem.

SEO: Every Situation is Different

Every business is a little or lot different. And because of that the variations in SEO are endless. However, every site should have certain measurements of performance. Like they say at my gym. What gets measured improves. We’ve said that SEO produces “free traffic”, we know that it takes time, effort
and money. This is easy. Do more of what works and don’t do what doesn’t.

SEO done as we’ve outlined it is a circle. You do the keyword research, the next steps examine the results and then start again. The next question is to decide what you want to measure.

Here’s some suggestions:
Rankings
Referrals and Traffic
Links
Leads and Sales
Costs

SEO: Tools

Tracking Rankings – http://digitalpoint.com
http://advancewebranking.com
Check you rankings for the top core terms 10-30 times a week.

Tracking Referrals and Traffic: There are two main analytical solutions:
http://google.com/analytics
http://clicktracks.com

Tracking Links     Two Tools:
Yahoo Site Explorer http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
Google http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps
Look at your incoming links every week. Look at the “before and after” link count.

Tracking Leads and Sales:    Google Analytics and Clicktracks can track leads and sales, conversions
and even the value of transactions. With this information you can
This powerful feature can attach value with search terms with total value.
And dollars per visit and average time on the site.

Tracking Costs:    The money piece is something a fourth grader can do and then just make up a number that you
are worth per hour.

Tracking Resources: Do your own thing.

SEO: Planning Cycles

If you didn’t know the basic steps before you should by now have a good idea but how much time do you put into the different steps. I think a 90 day “mad man” cycle should be adopted. Put your head down run and don’t look up for 90 days. You really shouldn’t even give any thought about what you are doing in regards to results for at least 60 days. After that a little more analysis may be warranted but not much. Wait until the 90 days are up and then give yourself a break. Reflect, plan and execute for another 90 days. By having the above steps you can tweak any and all aspects of your site.

After you have done the onsite stuff you will want to carefully examine what is happening off site. Look at your links, how effective your building strategy was during the cycle. Drop the ones that aren’t working, work on the ones that work and maybe consider trying a few new ones. In short, everything we’ve talked about should be examined, tweaked, thought about and examined. SEO.

I close with a warning:

SEO: How to drop from #1 to #100 in a day

1. Very little new or unique content.
2. Borrowed, copied or stolen content.
3. Broken links – internal links to nonexistent pages
and links to nonexistent pages on other
sites.
4. Machine amount of automatically generated, “scraped” pages.
5. Pages that are nothing more than RSS feeds.
6. User turn-off

Are you ready to launch into the world of SEO with your present site or a new on here’s a few final tips.

SEO:How to launch a website

1.Submit site to Yahoo and DMOZ
2.Have a active pay-per-click with at a minimum
Google Adwords.
3.Press Release
4.Advertise in Vortals/Vertical directories
5.Ask(and offer a few bucks)to the biggest
bloggers you can find to review and write
about your site.

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