Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category
Monday, January 18th, 2010 |
Once you learn most of the more powerful techniques involved in effective Search Engine Optimization, you quickly realize the tremendous power that comes along with that knowledge. The ability to take a web page, and within days to weeks manipulate it so that it rises to the top of Google’s rankings for the most valuable keywords, provides amazing opportunities to the SEO expert.
All of us have “competitors” if you’re in the field of producing online content. Maybe you own a forum or a blog, and you’re competing for organic Google traffic. There may come a point when, during your keyword research, you recognize that a significant number of people are searching for information about your competition.
Or, another situation may be that a specific newsworthy event is taking place involving your competitor. There are a few techniques that you can use to harness those search keywords and use them to your own advantage.
Flanking The Enemy With Aggressive SEO Techniques
Whenever you recognize a newsworthy event, or a large influx of search requests for the web domain of your competition - the best way to handle that information is to turn it around to your advantage.
In warfare, the larger the enemy is, the easier it is to covertly slip behind enemy lines and plant weapons of sabotage. The same is true here - you can take the popularity and size of your competition and turn it around to your own advantage.
Identify the Weak Points of Your Competition
The first step in accomplishing this “aggressive SEO” strategy is by crossing enemy lines. This means using all of the keyword SEO tools at your disposal to uncover keyword phrases that involve your competitor’s website, are very popular (highly searched for in the search engines) and low competition (hardly anyone else is writing about it).
You can see these sort of opportunities with the large online retailers. They have very popular online stores, and many people can’t remember the URL, so they use Google to search for the site. Most other websites and bloggers wouldn’t think about focusing on that keyword phrase, because it’s obvious the person typing it in is looking for the store front.
However, the savvy blogger would take that popularity and do something like write a review about the retailer’s storefront, or otherwise capture the high popularity of that phrase, and take advantage of the low competition.
Exploit the Weak Spots
Once you’ve identified those keyword phrases that are normally “owned” by your competition, then it’s time to produce content on your own domain that focuses on those particular keyword phrases. There is no law that says you can’t write about, or review, your competitor’s products or website - so you don’t have to worry about copyright or infringing on the trademark name.
It’s a free country - and you are allowed to write about anything you like, so long as you don’t claim the products and services are yours. Write a high-quality and very useful review or overview of your competitor’s product or service (or newsworthy event), and then make sure to use the SEO techniques I’ve described on this blog to draw in those search engine queries that are normally aimed toward your competitor.
By using this approach, even small-time bloggers can reroute high-volume traffic of the much larger and more powerful competition.
This should not be your own focus of content - because you want to differentiate yourself from your competition, but by funneling keyword traffic away from your competition, you may be able to show people who were originally looking for your competitor’s site why your site is so much better.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Monday, December 28th, 2009 |
In the process of doing some search engine research tonight to come up with some new interesting topics for my blogs and clients, I decided that tonight I’m going to finally expose a level of idiocy that I’m constantly coming across on the Internet. Unfortunately, it’s one of the most annoying and irritating symptoms of how search engines work today. I call the phenomenon, “Promising Roses and Delivering Stink Bombs.”
The first thing I’d like to say is that this particular post is not SEO optimized. I couldn’t be bothered because this behavior is just too urgent and needs to be exposed this very moment - no need to SEO optimize my vent, it will speak for itself.
SEO Fools Writing Useless Web Content Just for Search Engine Traffic
This is how it works. There are countless guys and girls out there who recognize that once you can identify certain keywords and them use them in a particular pattern, a particular number of times and using very particular rules - you can place your website and your article on the very first page of Google results. That’s the approach of the SEO expert and that’s how the system works, and it works well. But you know what else?
That’s pretty much where 90% of the SEO experts out there finish their efforts. When you arrive at their website, guess what you discover? Half the time it’s one paragraph jam-packed with gibberish - a collection of keyword phrases and a few lines or two of semi-coherent writing. The page is nothing more than an absolute, one-hundred percent, useless and idiotic waste of space. Therefore, I’ve decided in this particular post to run through a few high value SEO keywords to point out some of these brainless twits out there that take part in this kind of behavior.
Keyword Phrase: World Wide Web History
This is a huge, highly-searched keyword phrase. So, let’s take a look at the top Google results.
Now, listings one and two make perfect sense. Obviously Wikipedia and W3.org are excellent resources on the history of the world wide web, but let’s take a look at the third major listing on the first page of google - IdealFinder.com (no, I’m not going to link to it and make matters even worse.)
Aside from the page format and coloring that’s horrid enough to make your eyes bleed, take a look at the first paragraph:
World Wide Web (WWW), system of resources that enable computer users to view and interact with a variety of information, including magazine archives, public- and university-library resources, current world and business news, and software programs. The WWW can be accessed by a computer connected to an internet, an interconnection of computer networks or through the public Internet, the global consortium of interconnected computer networks.
Has this guy ever heard of grammar? How about writing a sentence that at least makes sense? “system of resources that enable computer users to view and interact with a variety of information” - what the hell does that even mean? I’ll bet this guy went out and paid a team of foreign guys sitting in a cube in some third-world countries a dollar an article for this garbage. And every day that passes, more and more of this horrendous excuse for content continues to pollute the Internet. Okay then, let’s continue on to the next site that follows this one on Google’s top 10 listing for this search term - Elsop.com. Let’s take a look.
Okay, this appears like a legit site that provides links covering the history of the world wide web, right? Good enough. The page itself doesn’t contain an article, but at least you can click on each link to read the information that you came looking for, right? Right??? “CLICK”….
Well that’s odd - broken link. Let’s go back and try another. “CLICK”…
No, it’s not a fluke. Almost all the links are broken, and there’s no decent content whatsoever to make a visit to this site at all worthwhile - yet there it sits as the 4th item on the first page of Google as though it has any value. As an SEO guy myself, I know the reasons why - but it’s unfortunate. Because, by making search listings so completely automated as Google has, it encourages the proliferation of complete trash on the Internet which exists only for the sole purpose of drawing in traffic,
not to provide valuable and useful content for visitors.
Have you come across the many “traffic traps” that exist on the web, just like these? Share your own experiences and opinions in the comments section below.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Stories From The Web, Website Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 |
If you’re running a free website (one that doesn’t require a reader subscription), then the odds are pretty good that you’re probably depending on ad revenue to support your operating costs (and hopefully some form of profit). In addition to using effective SEO techniques to attract as many visitors to your website as possible, another element of increasing your website’s ad revenue is by getting your visitors “converted” into revenue.
How do you convert visitors? As I mentioned recently in the 4 A’s of Marketing - you convert them into profit by driving them to take action that’s profitable for both the reader, and for you. It’s profitable for the reader because you’ve chosen products and services to advertise that you know are high quality and valuable, and it’s profitable to you because those companies pay you based on referred sales.
Google Adsense is one of the best ways for new bloggers to learn what ad placement techniques work on a website and which methods don’t work. On one of my blogs, for the longest time I couldn’t manage to generate any clickthroughs to my Google ads. On the one hand, I don’t like introducing large and obtrusive ads into my articles or on my website, but on the other hand I could tell that my visitors weren’t recognizing the value of those ads and taking advantage of those links.
After doing a little bit of research about website “heat maps,” I figured out what I was doing wrong, fixed it, and increased my ad revenue by over 600 percent. In this article I’ll quickly review what I learned so that you can put it to use on your own blog or website.
The Website Advertising Heat Map
As I mentioned, Google Adsense is one of the best learning tools for a new blogger that’s looking to get into earning decent revenue through advertising. Google is extremely helpful in that effort, because they actually provide a very valuable ad heat map on their Adsense help pages that shows you exactly where you should place ads on your website for the highest clickthrough percentages.
As you can see from the heat map, according to Google that most effective areas for advertising on a website are first and foremost at the very top of your content area. Now, there’s a tradeoff here. Personally I feel that placing a huge Google ad at the top of your content is very tacky and a major turnoff - it doesn’t look very professional. On the other hand, I’ve seen plenty of websites that do it, and they retain their readership - so proceed carefully.
The areas of any blog that I recommend concentrating on (if your template design allows for it) is the menu bar on the left and the menu at the top. These aren’t in the reddish-orange area, but they are still in the hot spots that generate the most action from visitors. The website where I tested this heat map concept was TopSecretWriters. I decided to place a large Google ad at the top of the left menu bar.
I did have to slide some of my favorite graphical content down below this ad, and it did involve tweaking some of the template code itself, but in the end it was a smart move because it transformed the almost non-existent ad revenue on TopSecretWriters into a very healthy stream of clickthroughs and profit.
The moral of the story is this - the Google Adsense heat map is accurate, and I would highly recommend taking the time to become familiar with it and then redesigning how you structure the ads on your blog or website so that you are taking advantage of those hot spots.
Posted in Making Money Online, Search Engine Optimization, Website Marketing | No Comments »
Thursday, December 10th, 2009 |
Search spy unfiltered search engines can offer you a competitive advantage in the world of search engine optimization. The SEO industry is very much an industry controlled by information. The more information and insight that you have over your competition, the better you’ll succeed. While this is try in most industries, it’s even more true in SEO, because the fewer people who are capturing the most lucrative search terms, the more successful you’ll be as you capture your SEO niche opportunities.
I’ve covered a number of SEO tools in a few of my earlier posts, such as the 3 tips for optimization and the need to be flexible when you choose your topics, but in this post I’d like to touch on yet another effective tool in gauging the online attitudes and interests of Internet travelers - that tool is search spy unfiltered search engines.
In this article, I’m going to share 8 online tools that you can use to closely monitor what people are searching the Internet for every single second. That’s right - a real-time “spy” peak into exactly what people are typing into the search engines. This insight could tip you off to the hottest upcoming online buzz, which can be a very powerful way to capture the online “Buzz” wave long before other bloggers even catch on.
Top 3 Search Spy Unfiltered Search Engines
The following online tools are considered “search spy” online apps because they simply update a list that shows you an unfiltered list of what people are searching for on search engines right this moment. Sure, you could use tools like Yahoo Buzz or Google Zeitgeist to learn about the hottest trends, but with those tools the moment you find out, just about every other blogger in the world finds out as well. On the other hand, using search spy tools - you can jump on the hot trends before anyone else even knows about them.
The first Search Spy tool that I’d like to mention is also the most popular because it’s DogPile, the most-used metasearch engine on the Internet. Any search engine that’s popular will provide you with a great sampling of what people are interested in. Dogpile’s realtime tool is simply called Dogpile SearchSpy.
When you visit the page, you’ll see a scrolling list of interesting search terms. These terms are what people are actively searching for this very moment. You can either choose to “Omit adult terms or not.” If you don’t, then you can expect an unfiltered list from the search engines that can be somewhat eye-opening at times.
IceSpy is a useful tool provided by the social network search engine known as IceRocket. IceRocket is a valuable and popular search tool that provides search results from networks like MySpace, Twitter, blogs and more.
IceSpy gives you some insight into what IceRocket users are typing into the search engine. As IceRocket continues to grow in popularity, the IceSpy search terms that scroll up the screen will become more and more a reflection of what bloggers and social network users are interested in. This is a great way to figure out what terms are more likely to race up the “DIGG” list.
The next search spy tool is also one of the coolest. Twitter is obviously one of the most popular social networks on the Internet right now, and getting insight into what’s going on throughout the huge Twitter community is a important key to unlocking current trends. One of the coolest tools for monitoring the pulse of Twitter is Twitspy.
So what’s so cool about Twitspy? Well first of all it displays the latest Twitter updates in a graphical way that shows you the profile image of the Twitter user who posted the update overlaid onto a world map, with a pop-up bubble that displays the update. It’s like watching a virtual worldwide discussion going on - and it’s very addictive!
5 More Useful Search Spy Tools
While the first three tools listed above have the greatest user base, so are the most useful and the most accurate samples of general online interest, the following lesser-known tools are also worthwhile. Even though they don’t have quite the user base as the big sites above, they still offer a select snapshot of a segment of the online population. As I mentioned earlier, in the SEO field information is power - so every source of information you can find is important.
- Infotiger.com - Get a snapshot list of what people are typing into the InfoTiger search engine. Refresh the screen for an updated realtime list.
- Ilectric Logs - Provides you with a list of the 20 most recent search terms typed into the Ilectric metasearch engine. Press refresh for an updated list.
- Yahoo Buzz Updates - While Yahoo Buzz itself isn’t updated every second, this list of what Yahoo Users are “buzzing up” or “buzzing down” gets updated immediately - and provides you with an instant update into what Yahoo Buzz users are interested in.
- Search Hippo Logs - Check out a list of the 15 most recent search terms typed into the Search Hippo search engine. Press refresh for an updated list.
- Meta Eureka Logs - This page provides an unfiltered list of search terms for this metasearch engine known as Meta Eureka.
The list of search spy tools above comes from my personal private SEO research toolbox, and by keeping a close eye on the trends at each of these sites - you could easily capture the next big “thing” that could drive your blog or website into the stratosphere.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Website Marketing | No Comments »
Monday, December 7th, 2009 |
I’m sure your first question is, “Why are you writing about the 4 A”s of marketing on a website devoted to online writing and search engine optimization?” The answer is that owning a successful website or blog takes two parts well-written and insightful content, and two parts brilliant marketing. Why marketing?
Well, the first thing you have to realize about having a website is that it’s existence alone isn’t going to generate a crowd plowing down the door, anxious to read your wit and wisdom. The first step in growing any website is getting folks to notice it, and not just any folks, but the folks that you are specifically writing for.
So, how do you know who you’re specifically writing for? This is where the 4 A”s of marketing come in. This was also the title of a very in-depth and detailed e-book written by author and lecturer, Brian Norris.
While Brian isn’t a website marketer or an SEO guru, he is a sales and marketing expert, and ultimately the techniques he describes will work effectively in marketing your website and converting your visitors into cash revenue. In this article I’m going to briefly outline how the principles he describes in his e-book can be used not only to drive tremendous traffic to your site, but also to generate a lot more profit from your website as well.
The 4 A”s of Marketing Applied to Your Website
The first thing you need to know about the 4 A”s of marketing are what each A stands for! The four A’s are as follows:
- Analyze your target audience. Who are they and what are their typical characteristics such as their age, interests, gender, purchasing trends and more.
- Attention of your audience. Once you know who they are and what they like, you’ll have the insight you need to successfully get their attention.
- Accept your product. This is what you need to make your audience do - accept that your ideas, your products, or your services are exactly what the need even though they have many other choices. You need to convince them to accept that yours is the best of the best.
- Action. The moment you convince them that you’re the best, you’d better have some sort of option available that they can act on once you convince them. This may be as simple as purchasing your services or buying your e-book. If you’re simply writing to generate ad revenue, then make sure that those ads are placed within the “hot spots” on your page (more on web page hot-spots in an upcoming post).
By following the simple guide above, you’ll be able to move from gathering your target audience from all disparate areas of the web that they visit, and drawing them into your website where you’ll guide them comfortably through the process until you’ve convinced them with very little effort how and why they need to perform a particular action. That action is what will generate your website revenue.
Analyze
The analysis part is something that I actually stumbled upon during my early freelance writing years. One particular client sold niche marketing analysis reports for a very hefty sum. He contracted me to research and write them for a few hundred dollars, and he turned around and sold them for a few thousand. Pretty good deal for him, and I didn’t care because I needed the money. However, what I gained more than money from the experience was the training on effective ways to perform a niche analysis to identify the demographics of your audience, depending on what niche you’re serving. For example the online gaming industry is actually dominated by white, middle-aged women - and you learn this as you conduct the niche analysis, using the sort of resources I described on my MUO article outlining resources you can use to conduct that research.
One thing I can assure you is that the research looks much more difficult than it is. Once you start using the resources listed in that MUO article and you discover a few studies from Pew Research or government agencies, you’ll discover your niche audience fairly quickly.
Attention
Once you learn more about your target audience, including what they believe, how much they typically earn and what they spend their money on, you’ll be in an excellent position to get their attention. The most important things you should learn about your audience is what websites they typically enjoy the most, what periodicals they read, and where they spend most of their time. For example if you know that your audience is made up of mostly college-age male computer gurus, and that they flock to large multi-user games and like to read computer magazines - then you know where to go to get their attention.
You would find a local LAN party near you and put up fliers, or sponsor the event so that you could advertise your site throughout the event. Or you could invest in an ad or two on a computer website (choose a small one with a decent readership if your budget is small). Through creative marketing, you’ll get your website name in front of the eyes that will appreciate exactly what you have to offer.
Accept
Convincing someone that you’re the best isn’t always easy. According to Brian, at this stage you need to focus on what the outcome that your audience is looking for (you’ll have learned this by now through your niche research).
If you know that middle aged, female online gamers are desperately seeking a free source of online games - then you need to convince them that you’re not only a good source for those games, but that you’re the absolute best resource on the entire Internet and that by sticking with you and taking a specific action, they’ll get the outcome that they desire.
Action
This could be anything - submitting a survey, submitting their email address to you, purchasing a product or anything else. Ultimately the action should be obvious and easy to accomplish, and it should flow directly from your effort to gain your visitor’s acceptance. One click and they get what they desire, or submit their email address in a form and they receive the outcome they want. That’s the secret.
And the real secret to doubling or tripling those profits is by following through and providing those visitors-turned-customers with the quality product or service that you offered. This results in return visitors and repeat profits - the bread and butter of any successful business.
Posted in Making Money Online, Search Engine Optimization, Website Marketing, Writing for Income | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 30th, 2009 |
I was very pleased to discover the the website of Ardan Michael Blum - Yahoo SEO expert who volunteers his expertise and time to assist senior citizens in Geneva with taking advantage of the Internet. Who better to profile than this guy? Ardan Michael Blume, Yahoo SEO consultant and owner of the Blum Advisory, is one of those few industry powerhouse figures who serves prominently behind the scenes, yet seeks out very little publicity for what he does. In this article I’m going to provide a profile for this SEO leader and detail the amazing work that he’s been doing in Geneva, Switzerland.
(image: Blum Advisory)
Ardan is not one of those self-proclaimed SEO “experts” who promise website owners the world in the form of traffic, deliver “fake hits” for a short period, and then leave website owners high and dry with no real additional traffic and, even worse, negative marks against the site in the eyes of Google and Yahoo. Ardan, on the other hand, uses his expertise to make the world (and the Internet) a better place.
Ardan Michael Blum - Yahoo SEO Consultant for Senior Citizens
At first glance, it isn’t immediately obvious how an SEO expert can use his services to help older folks get on the Internet. However, Ardan Michael Blum does just that. You may never have heard of Ardan, because his website for Blum Advisory is based in Geneva and written entirely in French. However, thanks to Google Translate services, I was able to learn a little bit more about this amazing fellow and his generous service to the elderly of Geneva. While he earns his living through is consultancy, Ardan devoted a great deal of his time and resources to create and manage a wonderful website called Geneve - 1910-2010.
The website is actually the online face of the charity organization called “Living with the 3rd Age,” which Ardan founded. The organization seeks to help the elderly in the region better access the Internet and computers in general. The organization is not a fly-by-night group - they work with some impressive computer industry names, such as Compaq, Logitech and even Microsoft, to provide free software and computers to nursing homes, senior citizen clubs and even the Geriatrics Cantonal Hospital in Geneva. The website is part of the group’s effort to provide the elderly at these locations with Internet access and, in effect, providing those who might otherwise be considered “shut-ins” with access to the outside world.
This website is an amazing collection of photos, histories and other accounts of the wonderful lives of these senior citizens. As you preview the images and stories - you can’t help but smile at the wisdom, strength and the beautiful effects of time and experience upon the lives and faces of these elders. The entire website is in french, but I highly recommend taking a look through the site using Google’s
translation services.
About Ardan Michael Blum
So who is this impressive SEO expert who founded one of the most innovative charities in Geneva? Ardan Michael Blum promises that he can help your business achieve top ten Google placement. Being involved in the SEO industry myself, I can tell from the wording and the personal activities of Ardan, that he’s one of the few legitimate SEO professionals who can truly accomplish what he promises.
Although he was born in Switzerland and currently lives in Geneva, this fellow came to the United States to attend Bennington College in Vermont before heading back to his homeland to make use of the skills that he learned in Vermont. He approaches a decade of SEO experience, and his efforts with his senior citizen Charity is a testament to his drive, his character, and his ability to accomplish great things. If you’ve never heard of Ardan, and you’re looking for an SEO expert within or around Switzerland, I highly encourage you to contact Ardan at his website and sign up for his SEO services.
Not only will you achive success with your own website through effective SEO optimization techniques, but you’ll also be employing the services of a man of high character who deserves the business.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Stories From The Web, Website Marketing | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 |
Through the years, I’ve learned through trial and error and by working for so many different clients, and seeing so many different results - what works and what doesn’t when it comes to search engine optimization. Like so many topics computer related, everyone is an expert. The truth is that when push comes to shove, the proof is in the pudding. How well can that person achieve long-term and consistent traffic?
The following are the top 3 tried and true methods that I’ve learned over the years that will consistently and effectively increase your search engine traffic significantly every month. These are not techniques that will instantly multiply your traffic numbers overnight, but over time and used consistently with every post you write, they will lay a very solid and powerful foundation for your website or blog.
Tip #1 - Choose the Right Topic
Probably the most important aspect of SEO is selecting a title that you can cover with experience and knowledge, that a lot of people are searching the Internet for, and that very few websites provide information about. Identifying such “niche” topics is the very heart of truly effective SEO. Trellian’s Keyword Discovery tool is one of the most effective free tools at your disposal to “discover” what topics are in demand right now.
The Keyword Discovery tool shows you how many searches for a particular term take place every single day. For basic blog postings and online writing, this information is good enough. However, if you you are looking to extract competition information (how many websites are already covering the keywords), then you’ll have to pay for the premium version of the tool.
Tip #2 - Focus on a Niche, Don’t Write About Everything
One of the mistakes that many online writers make is that they want to capture all of the keywords they find that have tremendous traffic. Hot keywords are only one aspect of attracting repeat visitors - you also want to dedicate time and energy into those topics that your visitors are coming to you for. If you’re running a website about Cars, then focus on a niche within that general topic - don’t try to cover car insurance, car repair, car racing, car tuning and every other imaginable topic with one website. All you’ll do is overwhelm your first-time visitors and drive them away screaming.
The website above is a perfect example of a website that’s simply trying to do too much in a very limited space. Keep your website straightforward and simple, and your visitors will appreciate it. Give them what they came for - don’t try to be everything for everybody.
Tip #3 - Effectively Distribute Your Keywords
The area that most online writers fail miserably at is effectively distributing the keywords that they’re trying to target. Unscrupulous SEO “experts” will take a clients money and then spam keywords throughout the client’s website. Initial traffic will be significant, but once Google catches on (and the SEO expert already took your money and ran), you’ll discover that you’re blacklisted and without any traffic at all. The key to effective keyword SEO is in discretely and very carefully placing a limited number of keywords throughout your article, in a way that the reader doesn’t even notice.
The example above is from a recent article here at FreeWritingCenter titled “Free Writing Classes.” As you can see, I carefully inserted the phrase into the article, and in one case included it as a bolded header for a section. Finally, I included the keyword text as “alt-text” in the various images throughout my article. The real science to distributing is knowing how many times to distribute the phrase based on the number of words in your article - and this is where the true value of a real SEO expert becomes apparent.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization | 3 Comments »
