Archive for January, 2013

Where to Focus Your Time as an SEO

Search Engine Optimization is a tricky “art form” that a majority of “web designers” or “web masters” don’t truly understand.  There’s constant changes with Google’s algorithm, new shiny objects being promoted every day telling you that you can press a button and your site will rank #1, where does the madness stop?  Or better yet, where does your madness as an SEO begin?

Most importantly, search engines recognize RELEVANCE to the keywords that you wish to rank for.  If you construct your page half-decently and provide content on your site that your target audience actually wants to read, it doesn’t really take THAT much SEO wizardry for your page to rank – that is if you aren’t competing against thousands of other sites trying to rank for the same market niche.

Having said that, learn how to do proper keyword research, look for pockets of traffic that are thematically related to the kind of traffic you are seeking, and provide some backlinks from relevant sites using properly formatted anchor text.  Long story short, if you want to rank, find authoritative high PR sources that are RELATED to your market, and get some links – more quality and related backlinks – the better… That’s a fundamental requirement to appear in search – if not the ONLY requirement.  All the other hocus pocus out there about link wheels and web 2.0 backlinks and keyword density etc etc, they all contribute to your ranking but seriously – if you find a high PR site that is related to your market, and you get a proper keyword anchor text link back to your site – you’ll probably rank for the keyword you’re going after on just one or two links alone (of course depending on your competitors and how many authoritative links they have).  Now what keywords should you go after?  That’s a whole different story in itself, so stay tuned and we’ll get into that in an upcoming post.

Questions About Seo Tips For New Websites

Mark asks…

What is the successful percentage to open up an online selling website?

SEO Tips:

Successful percentage of what?

You mean what percentage succeed? Less than 1% of online sales websites succeed……

Here are some things to think about though.

1. What are you selling? Do people want it? Is it sell-able? Can it be purchased for cheap and sold in mass quantities?

2. How will you market it? Word of mouth only gets you so far.

3. What is your marketing budget? You will need to do SEO and PPC advertising as well as viral marketing, most likely adwords etc… Adwords can get very expencive very quick, ESPECIALLY if you don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t just throw a bunch of money at it and hope to get hits.

4. Do you know a DAMNED THING about web design? If you don’t you will have to pay someone to do it for you, and will have to pay another person to do what i said above.

There are ways however to make money online.. I’ve done a lot of it myself. Affiliate programs are the biggest and easiest to figure out.

90% of the ebay stores are selling items from an affiliate program or a drop shipping company.

Do a search for “97 honda civic headlights” or something like that on Ebay, and you’ll see all kinds of crazy modified headlights and xenon bulb lights and random crap for your car… And you’ll notice that 10 people are selling the same exact headlight!!! They are NOT purchasing these items, stocking them in their bedrooms and selling them on ebay..

They sign up with that company as a drop shipper and they put an add on ebay. If it sells, they collect the money from the buyer, send it to the shipper and the shipper sends it to the purchaser, the seller on ebay collects their profit and repeats process.

That’s one way to do it.

Another way is like i said. Affiliate marketing.

Lets say that John the “dating guru” sells E-books about how to meet women in bars. You sign up as an affiliate, and you get on forums and say “WOW this JOHN guy changed my damned life! You should really really check out his book.. Here’s a link!! ”

people go to that link, and they like what they see… There are 3 ways John the dating guru will pay you.

He’ll either give you something like 10-50% of the cost of the Ebook (which by the way costs him NOTHING to reproduce since it’s a damned PDF file on john’s server), or.. John will pay you $.02 for each person who clicks on the link you spammed on the forums, or, if you have your OWN website, john may pay you for impressions, meaning, every time your website shows his banner, he has to pay you$.001 (typically its a dollar per 1k impressions)

if you have 10 or 20 affiliate programs going, are decently good with adwords, etc, you can create mini sites or landing pages that link to these affiliates, and you get paid when people visit them. Adwords can very easily eat up 130% of your profit though if you don’t know what you’re doing..

I’ll give you a little tip… 90% of the links you see on yahoo right now about random things – in fact i’m almost positive there will be 2 or 3 HERE by the time i send this….. – are affiliate programs, and these guys get paid when someone clicks the link or buys the products.

Actually, honestly, most of them aren’t even real people. The people who REALLY got it down, have software which goes and auto-posts junk on here, which is why they don’t always make sense to the question asked.

Anyway, i made 4 -10k per month every month for a year doing this IN MY SPARE TIME, and worked a 40 hour a week job with a photography studio, and did my own freelance stuff on the weekends…

However,

1.. I am a web designer and developer
2. I know how to use adwords correctly

can you learn? Hell yeah…..

Will you have what it takes to do it?

I dont know… You need the patience and the ability to research, investigate, read read read study read more study, learn, and get REALLY damned frustrated without giving up, and also you need the ability to waste about 2k while you learn how to do this correctly…

Good luck in your ventures

Sandy asks…

What do you guys think about my new site?

Hi, i like some feed back and tips to be more SEO friendly.
Thanks in advance.

SEO Tips:

We could give you feedback if you actually give us your website address.

Make sure your site has

– great original content
– title (title metatag) must have the keywords you want to rank for your site
– keywords you want to rank are actually on the content
– avoid black hat tips such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, etc

Ken asks…

How increase ranking my site (Give list & link website free submit if u have)?

I would like increase ranking my site but i don’t place free submit url somewhere must pay money for SEO service but i would like make by myself (free submit)
I would like list & link site for submit free

Thank you.

SEO Tips:

You can increase your site’s ranking if the traffic is good.
So all you got to do is promote your site.
There are plenty of ways to promote your site.
1)Article Marketing
Really a powerful method in getting audience. Write a good article based on your niche topic and submit it in article directories. Just go to google or yahoo and search for “free article directories”. It will suggest you a host of directories that you can easily submit your writings. When people surf in that certain directory, they might stumble into your article and you got all the fame needed to be successful in Internet Marketing.

2)Blogging
This method is just like the article writing. You write what you want but good contents for your audience in blogs. The better you got, the more audience you get. You can also submit the same contents that you wrote in blogs in article directories. You get instant viewers if your article is in top 10 within your niche

3)Offer free stuffs
It’s always good to get free stuffs. Everyone likes it.So offer some free stuffs such as e-books or software for your audience. You will get a good, loyal and repeating audience. If you are looking for FREE e-books to market it in your site, check out this link.
Www.abc-netmarketing.blogspot.com.It provides a host of e-books on internet marketing. The e-books will be updated weekly. So hurry up and get your best one soon.

4)E-mail Marketing
It’s as easy as ABC. Just promote your site to all your online contacts using e-mail.Write a good email that will attract your audience. If you got the contents right and able to convince your contacts , you are on your way to success.

5)SEO-Search Engine Optimization
Check out
www.ezinerticles.com for HOT tips on SEO

6)You Tube Videos
Use free videos from you tube and paste the links in your site. People like video tutorials better than articles or e-books.

7)Google Adsense
I strongly suggest you to visit www.abc-netmarketing.blogspot.com and learn about google adsense.If it’s not the best, atleast one of the best income generator for your websites. Visit the link and watch the video tutorials for FREE.

Daniel asks…

How do i make money since i am 13?

Can anyone tell me some tips or ways to make money online or offline i would rely prefer online since our country has went down like a lot in economy i don`t have a credit card because i am 13 remember that is there anyone who can tell me some tips or ways.
I seed i want online and i don`t have a credit card so i cant buy from e bay

SEO Tips:

Hi Borjan,

There are lots of ways to make money fast, even for teenagers =), but one of the easiest ways is to do internet marketing and become an affiliate marketer and sell other people’s stuff, and all you need is the right information to get started!

Lots of people have their own affiliate marketing websites. In today’s competitive markets, nearly everyone has a web presence and many of them are increasingly joining or starting up their own affiliate programs, which provide them with opportunities to make money online today.

Although the opportunities may be be numerous and seem highly promising, it is important, however, for each internet marketer to choose their niche carefully.

As an affiliate marketer, you will be setting up a website that promotes the products of another company or the products and services from several different companies.

In order to start your own site, of course, you’ll need to choose a suitable web host as well as a niche that you understand very well, are extremely passionate about, and is popular enough to help you generate interest in your site as well as sales on your partner’s site/s.

Choosing the right web host is crucial to your success. You need to find a host that provides you with reasonable annual costs, an uptime service guarantee, and dependable customer support.

This will ensure that your site stays up and that any problems which arise on the host’s end are resolved quickly. Customer reviews and recommendations from friends may help you choose the right host for your site.

To become an affiliate marketer, you can join a program that is hosted by your current web host or you can join a company that specializes in affiliate marketing programs. Some companies even offer their own schemes, which require you to advertise only their products and services on your site.

To choose your niche, be sure to select something that actually interests you, since you will be writing about it on a daily or near daily basis. The niche should also be popular and preferably not overly saturated with websites.

A popular niche to write about currently is web hosting services, for example, but the level of public interest is still high enough for new affiliates to make money writing on the topic.

By joining an affiliate program through your web host, you may even be able to get your site hosted for free. For instance, you can join their program and add a “powered by” or “hosted by” link in the header or footer of each page on your website.

When one of your visitors clicks on this link, you may be able to start generating affiliate payments. However, your website needs to be interesting because you will need a lot of clicks or buys on your host’s site in order to get paid a decent wage.

There is no specific formula that you can use in order to be a successful affiliate. However, you can increase your chances of becoming a super affiliate by ensuring the SEO on your site is up to scratch, choosing the right market, promoting your site, and creating quality content on a regular basis that keeps your readers coming back for more.

So this is just one of the ways to make money fast. Once you get the hang of it and start generating some cash, you can look for more ways to make money.

Hope that helps and good luck!

Richard asks…

How Can I get US traffic to my site?

I have site related to shopping deals. I want more traffic from US. How can i get it?

SEO Tips:

To get people to go to your website effectively, you have two options, spend time or spend money.

For gaining traffic to your website without cost, you will be looking at some time being spent.

Back links are very important and can arguably be the best way to increase your website exposure. Effective back links are one way links (meaning not a link exchange) from other websites to yours. For example, had you put a link to your website in your question, you would have created a back link as yahoo instantly indexes the Q&A section of their website. Even Google picks it up. You can build back links in placing your url in ads such as craigslist, creating or comenting on blogs on wordpress and myspace as well as other blogging websites. These are all methods that give you white hat back links.

Caution: do not pay for your back links through back linking companies. This is considered black hat SEO and will actually drop your ranking or get you suspended all together from the big boys of search engines.

As far as paid methods, look at pay per click as a great option. PPC is the process of advertising your business on a search engine within the sponsored results. You choose what keyword phrases you are willing to pay for being in, I.e. Website design.For cost effectiveness, consider narrowing your results as much as possible. For example, Sacramento website design instead of website design would be a more focused result and would by proxy cost much less than the broad term.

SIA Professional Services has an articles section in their website which has a ton of website marketing tips that should help you at www.siaservices.net just go to their blog or their articles section.

Be sure you are submitting your website on a regular basis, especially whenever you are doing some good updates on your site. The search engines will see your site being updated on a regular basis and index you accordingly. There are some free submission sites, but I have seen in my experience that those don’t nearly perform as well on a regular basis as professional SEO and marketing companies.

There is plenty more that you can do, but hopefully this give you a good starting point.

Good Luck and hope this helps

Betty asks…

How can i do SEO of my website?

my website http://zingro.com/ that checks performance of a website, is not performing good in search engines, I can not believe in seo companies as they have negative feedback. i want to do seo my self. please suggest me tips.

SEO Tips:

I have checked SEO of your website by a tool http://websitemeaning.com and the report is at http://websitemeaning.com/zingro.com-www.aspx

It is good to see that your website is not spamming, you have sitemaps, robots.txt etc.

But you are lacking credible backlinks from valuable websites. Your website is quite new,

Keep on adding quality content rather than wasting time in Big SEO techniques.

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Questions About Google Panda Update Seo

Maria asks…

How much SEO do I need?

I have an online biz and it’s been growing slowly and steadily but extra traffic would be great. I’ve done a lot with keywording, meta tags and descr., linking anchor text, keeping text relevant and fresh, social bookmarking and networking, using press releases, landing page and check out cart page optimization etc.

Now that I’m at the next stage of growth, I’m wondering if I need to engage the services of an SEO company. There are so many and for a small biz, they’re quite costly. Are these services really going to help or should I just keep doing what I’m doing? I’m sure they’re trained and know a ton of stuff I don’t plus the one thing they say they’ll do that is a bit beyond me is backlinking to my site from authority sites.

How much SEO do I need to grow my business? Is it worth the monthly expense of hundreds of dollars?

SEO Answers:

If you’re a small biz with limited amount of money to have a good seo will cost you lots of money. Make sure you have great content on all pages not just your front page for example if you’re selling a product or service makes sure that page has great body copy with the keywords you want to be found for say about 300 words will do it. This also helps with the Google panda update. You find out how to write this body copy if you go to the link in the source from mattseo.com… Also NOTE with any seo guy what you pay for is what you get.

Richard asks…

what is meant by google panda?

pls tell me more explanation

SEO Answers:

That is the name Google assigned to a filter that is periodically run to identify sites with low quality, unoriginal content. Many small sites have lost search ranking due to this filtering as well as major sites like Ezinearticles. This is in greater Google’s trying to counter the effect of their Adsense advertising system that has encouraged the creation of thousands of “made for Adsense” sites with little real value to users.

Here’s an early report on some of the first sites effected by Panda:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers

A newer filer that Google added to identify sites using SEO manipulation tricks is the Penguin filter:

Google estimates that the initial Penguin version effected 3.5% of searches.

The folks at SEOmoz have some insightful thoughts on the topic, it’s too early to measure what’s being targeted since the fallout from Google’s recent de-indexing of private blog networks have muddied the waters, avoiding too many keyword anchor text links, keyword stuffing and perhaps keyword domain names is high on the suspect list.

Here is some positive advice:
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/5-penguinfriendly-link-building-tips

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/penguins-pandas-and-panic-at-the-zoo

Joseph asks…

What has happened to my website on google?

I built my first micro niche site and I ran into a problem. I’ll be quick.

I did me SEO research (6 mo worth) trying to figure out google and feel like i’m onto their scent like flies on a monkey. Well here’s the problem..

Day 1 – registered my site

Day 4 – on page 5 of google

Day 5 – on page 2 (spot 1)

Day 7 – on page 1!!! (10th ranked for keyword)

Day 11 – its gone!!!

I didn’t get banned, did change anything I was doing, kept the same momentum… what gives?!

my site is powerchordschart dot com

if anyone has any input it would be greatly appreciated…

thanks!

SEO Answers:

First, I don’t work for Google so I cannot profess to be an expert in what they do, however, I have spent many years doing SEO for people – with specific concentration and great results thereof on Google so I do believe that my insight can be valid.

Unless you are paying for links or doing anything unethical – you probably didn’t do anything wrong.

Instead, here’s what I think might have happened… It was a Google Algorithm change. It didn’t just happen to you it happened to millions of websites. (Do a search on Google Panda or Fresh updates and see for yourself).

If this is what happened to you please don’t give up or get disheartened. It’s simply how things work and we have to accept that if we wish to stay in business online.

Besides…there are over 500 algorithm changes rolled out every single year by Google as they continue to strive for better results. Yes, it makes it very hard for us to CHASE top positions or expect to stay there when we get there. But it also keeps site owners and SEO’s honest – so we have to appreciate that.

One thing I should tell you is if you did launch your site back in November, you might have been one of the lucky ones who got to the top because of the Google Fresh update. This update was focused on making FRESH and NEW content available to users – not just the same old same old. A lot of new websites experienced a quick rise at this time and you might have been one of them.

Then…with the next update….

Many of them, along with many of the previous TOP SPOTTERS did experience a decline thereafter too.

So long story short – you probably didn’t do anything wrong. You just fell pray to a Google update (or two) like the rest of the world.

Going forward…

As long as you are working on providing good valuable content to your readers – you may very well climb back up from time to time and it will be nice when it happens. Chances are some of your solo posts are getting top positions even if your main home page isn’t.

That said, it will be wise to always be mindful that staying up top is not something you nor anyone can guarantee so IF you do get there, my recommendation would be to appreciate it while it’s happening but don’t bank on it forever.

You certainly don’t want to base your financial projections on the results you get from being up top either. This can run you into a lot of missed revenues. I’ve seen it happen many times.

Sorry I can’t give you any better info – but it’s how things work.

Mandy asks…

Why is my website so volatile on google?

Hello. Thanks in advance for your responses. My website is www.resolvedhypnotherapy.co.uk. I released it back in October. It is well optimised in terms of key words, is regularly updated with new content and I’m building links. Now, if it were static I could understand that things take a long time to progress. I’ve read a lot of SEO stuff and I hear it’s more a marathon than a race. What I don’t understand is why it has plummeted ten pages in the previous 24 hours. It’s not penalised by google. I do nothing of a “black hat” nature. No weak sites have linked to mine. All I have done is add content of the normal nature.

Is this normal in a young site? Should I be worried? Until yesterday it was making slow progress through the ranks. Now it seems to be free-falling…

Thanks, again, for any suggestions.

Paul

SEO Answers:

It’s still a pretty young site in search ranking terms, people talk of the Google Dance, when they introduce some algorithm change ranking positions can shuffle around for a time. You didn’t mention if this drop is just for your primary keyword or multiple keywords. I didn’t see obvious reasons why a Panda filter pass or human review would shake your ranking. If you were using Google’s paid Adwords system they would want to see a terms and conditions as sell as a privacy link to gain the best quality score.

Load speed is a factor, maybe your hot was down on last spidering, on my second access it felt like over 10 seconds load time, be sure you have a wordpress cache installed.

Be sure you are using a search rank checker to monitor your position for a list of important keywords you can identify with the Google Keyword Tool.

Use either the free rankchecker for firefox http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/ or the rankcheker in the free evaluation version of SEO Powersuit http://www.link-assistant.com/rank-tracker/ to generate a search ranking report for the list of keywords, the latter has some other analysis functions.

Unfortunately the Open Site Explorer hasn’t indexed your backlinks as yet.

Http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=resolvedhypnotherapy.co.uk

I trust you have a vitally important Google Places page (and the Yahoo counterpart)

Try a Google search for: hypnotherapy, oxford

The A-G lettered stick pins symbols are places listings, see the additional info rolling on the >> symbol brings up, these don’t look well developed, you should see stars from client reviews and photos rolling over >>. There are ranking methods to get a places page on results page 1, mainly reviews and citations non many other directories.

Lizzie asks…

website/ blog link exchange?

I have a website with pagerank3 and wanna have link exchange with other pagerank3 website or blog

SEO Answers:

Much of the advise being given out on generating web traffic through Google is either incorrect or out of date since the introduction of Google Panda. The Google Panda Update was designed to put high quality web pages on their front pages despite PageRank. Although link building and PageRank are still important there are several new features added to Google’s algorithm that has effected many website. Many website owners are totally unaware of the reasons why their websites have fallen in ranking or are not receiving the web traffic they feel it deserves. I feel it is important that every website owner should become familiar with the Google Panda Update.
Http://panda-seo.blogspot.com/
The Panda Update only effects search results from the Google Search Engine but Google handles almost 3/4 of all search queries.

Betty asks…

How to recover the rankings?

I have a website http://www.cheapwebdesigncompany.net. It is 7 months old. It was under 50 for my all 3 keywords (web design company, web development company and cheap web design) but suddenly it dropped down to 600+ for all keywords.

Is excessive link building is the reason for this?

Here is the link count for my website.

Total Links–3,986 (google webmaster tool)

Home page links- 3,776 (google webmaster tool)
Inner pages links- 210 (google webmaster tool)

Please analyze and suggest me that is it because of excessive home page links?
or
How can i recover my site’s position?

SEO Answers:

Odds are you were hit ny the Penguin SEO spam filter. Did you not receive any “Unnatural link pattern” warnings from webmaster tools?

I has a look at your links they at least seemed to be on vaguely related pages, unlike the worst spambot generated paid links.

Some webmasters are scrambling to remove the worst of the junk backlinks in order to improve their profile. Your pretty much stuck with the large number of links you have, seeking only quality links from ranked sites might be the best compensation. And go easy on the keyword anchor text links, no more than 20% o total links.

They then alert Google that there is no longer a connection with these links:
Google’s Disavow Tool
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-disavow-tool-take-a-deep-breath

The smart people at seoMoz have some insights into the Penguin filter.

Some advice on avoiding getting axed by the Penguin SEO spam filter.
Http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/5-penguinfriendly-link-building-tips

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/penguins-pandas-and-panic-at-the-zoo

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/7-achievable-steps-for-great-seo-after-the-penguin-update

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