SEO GURL

Where in the world is Jenny Stradling AKA SEO Gurl?

2012-01-25T15:50:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I hate to abandon my personal SEO blog here, but since I started the blog years ago, I have moved on to bigger and better things. Don't get my wrong, I still think I need a great place to rant on the topics of marketing, advertising and SEO... but for the last year or so I have been writing the copy for my company website: Eminent SEO instead.

If you are interested in staying up to date, I do blog about SEO and industry news on the corporate blog here: Eminent SEO Blog

And, when I have a quick thought, idea, question, quote or something fun or candid to share, I do it on the Eminent SEO Think Tank.

And, who knows.... maybe next time you stop by I'll have a new rant for ya!

Help Name the Eminent SEO Monster Mascot

2011-10-04T18:59:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, my company, Eminent SEO, has a cute little Monster, I like to call him our Marketing Mascot < -- Click for a pic from a previous post.

Anyways, we thought it would be fun to let the staff pick some names for him and then let you, the public, vote on what name you think is best. It’s fun, free and only takes a min.

Here is a video if you are still not sure:

Now that you’ve watched that, how can you possibly resist!??!

GO NOW! Eminent SEO Monster Vote < -- Click here and JUST DO IT!

Google Place Pages - How to Market your Business Locally Online

2011-08-05T13:39:00.000-07:00

A lot of clients have been asking about Local Marketing and how to get better placement with their Google Places pages (AKA Google Maps), so I thought I'd share a few thoughts.

In case you didn't already know, Google will pull in some businesses and create a map to the business address naturally, in order to provide searches with physical directions to the business. However, many times when we check, a client either doesn't have a map page at all - or it's the generic page Google created and isn't optimized for better search placement.

Because Google Place pages are so vital for local businesses online, we have developed packages that include map creation, optimization and further development.

Want to see what an optimized Google Places page looks like? Check out: Eminent SEO Google Places Page

If you are interested in getting your own optimized map, drop us a line: sales@eminentseo.com or 800-871-4130

Meanwhile, here are some other tips to help you rank your Google Places pages higher.

We would fully optimize your listing, but in addition to just creating the map, there are things you can do on your website to increase your Google map rankings, including:

Make sure your address and phone number are on the website, preferably every web page, if possible. This will help ensure Google and the other search engines find you no matter what page they are crawling.
Make sure your city, state, and local (geo targeted) keywords, are in the title tags and meta data.
Make sure your local keywords, for example, "Phoenix Arizona Lawyer", are in your website URL if at all possible.

"How can you optimize for local traffic in other ways?"

From other areas of the web, it’s important to make sure you have plenty of incoming links. These links should be quality links from relevant websites, and should link to you using your niche, local keywords. This shows Google you’re a valid business and adds credibility for not only your domain, but the local keywords you have now optimized your site for.

Want this done for you?

The Eminent SEO Team can:

Do the keyword discovery and research to determine the best local target keywords
On-page Website Optimization to ensure your keywords are represented in your content, URLs and other meta data
Google, Bing and Yahoo Map Creation and Optimization
Map/Places Pages Organic Search Engine Marketing – we can boost your maps and ensure they get search engine traffic, using special techniques
Link Building to your website, using your local target keywords – now you will have local search engine traffic to your map AND your website
For a full list of our services – check out our site here: Eminent SEO Services

Or just give us a call! 800-871-4130

How Google Instant Is Changing Search

2011-05-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

I just found myself waiting for the Google Instant to show up in my search results before typing because I knew it was coming. Do you use Google for your search queries (AKA looking for an address, a map, a website with quick information?) What are you searching for? Is Google using emotional response from humans in order to create an algorithm that is ultimately adjusted based off of human response?

Today I wanted to look up the top Fortune 100 and the top Fortune 500 companies. Doing some research and curious to see who these guys are and what they are doing.

I was going to search for “Top Fortune 500 vs 100 companies” but instead of searching for that key phrase and clicking on that first result, I waited for Google Instant to tell me what I should choose from. I didn’t even attempt to keep typing, I actually waited to see the results before I typed in exactly what I was thinking… Are we now allowing Google to narrow our natural selection to a “more suitable” selection? If so, based off of what criteria? Are we so common, so similar, that instead of an unlimited amount of things I could be searching for when typing “Top Fortune…” I am now given 10 choices to choose from and that’s sufficient for my search?

I was served the following options from Google Instant:

top fortune 500 companies

top fortune 100 companies

top fortune 500

top fortune 500 companies to work for

top fortune 500 companies list

top fortune 500 top fortune cities

top fortune cookie quotes

top fortune 500 companies in florida

top fortune 510 list

top fortune 50 companies

I chose “top fortune 500 companies” – now remember, I was going to search for “Top Fortune 500 vs 100 companies” which was not even on the “list”.

Are the 10 above that Google offered up the best search queries or top search terms when a human types in “top fortune” according to their data. Hrm. Do you think this dramatically changes search? We do.

Does the search volume of the “keywords” you are targeting reflect what people USED to be searching for, or what they are NOW because of what Google is serving up? When is the last time you checked?

For $200.00 we (Eminent SEO) can do a keyword discovery and research project for your website to determine the overall keyword strategy and make sure your approach matches the changes Google’s algorithm and the implementation of Google Instant reflect in the natural results.

Are you targeting the “right keywords”?

Who is your audience?

When is the last time you checked?

Could you use a fresh perspective?

Does your website need a health check?

Find out now, your $200.00 could MAKE you thousands.

Just contact me:

Jenny Stradling

Managing Partner/SEO Strategist

Jenny@eminentseo.com

C: 480-338-8848

O: 800-871-4130 (ext 1)

F: 866.501.3296

Have You Met the Eminent SEO Monster?

2011-05-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

Have you met the Eminent SEO Monster?

Where in the world is the Eminent SEO Monster?

Look for a contest coming up soon on the Eminent SEO FaceBook to help us name him!

I Love This: Guide To Online Marketing

2011-03-10T22:18:00.001-07:00

Unbounce – The DIY Landing Page Platform

Google Tweaks Algorithm

2011-02-25T12:48:00.000-07:00

I don't have time to write a big old blog post right now, but FYI...

BoingBoing says:

Google tweaks algorithm; content farms and splogs wail and rend their spammy garments

"Google this week launched a significant change in search algorithm intended to push down low-quality, SEO'd-out-the-ass content farms in favor of less spammy sites with more useful information."

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html

"Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on."

So, the QUICK nutshell?

Buy in content links
Add fresh, UNIQUE content to your sites often.

Are “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search” Really That Dirty?

2011-02-22T23:52:00.000-07:00

Whenever anything interesting is buzzing in the SEO community, I’m sure to find out about it right away by way of the SEO Twitter community (I follow a lot of nerds, follow me to join the discussion: dayofjen), my SEO FaceBook connections or the numerous SEO blogs I follow. Recently Twitter was all abuzz with “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search”, a New York Times piece in Business Day, just published on Feb. 12th, 2011… and it created quite a stir, at least in my small corner of the world.

Now, I do a LOT of reading, so although the Twitter banter on the article topic caught my eye and encouraged me to click to read more, when I landed on the site and saw it as a 5 page piece, I seriously reconsidered reading the entire thing. I mean, who has the time? But as the buzz increased and my intrigue grew, I decided to read it, in its 5 page entirety… and this is what I think:

First, I kinda have to say I’m feelin a little sorry for JC Penny right now. I mean, jeez, there they are, organically ranking for all these target keywords “Bedding”, “Dresses”, “Area Rugs”… and BOOM – this little “study” comes along and KILLS their organics.

So what happened anyways? So what if JC Penny’s ranks for “Bedding”, “Dresses”, “Area Rugs” and such, I mean, they do offer these products on their website, so why can’t they rank for them all? Well, apparently high rankings for such a large amount of really hard to rank for, competitive phrases (such as bedding) strewn across such a vast amount of products and terms raised some suspicions over there at The NY Times and caused them to seek out an expert in Search Engine Marketing. So, they bring in Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media. Never heard of him, but I wasn’t surprised at what he said. Did I agree with it? Not really.

According to Doug Pierce, the JC Penny link portfolio contained dozens of links using the same keywords and often the links were found on sites deemed irrelevant by the “expert”… specifically saying “There are links to JCPenney.com’s dresses page on sites about diseases, cameras, cars, dogs, aluminum sheets, travel, snoring, diamond drills, bathroom tiles, hotel furniture, online games, commodities, fishing, Adobe Flash, glass shower doors, jokes and dentists — and the list goes on.”

So?

So far I have heard:

If multiple sites link to you using the same keyword, it’s bad?

If random sites link to you and they aren’t related to your direct topic of relevancy, it’s also bad?

If these two statements were true and if they also were deemed “black hat” and actually caused a penalization in Google’s algorithm, couldn’t we all just go out and buy a bunch of spammy, black hat links using the same keyword phrase(s) over and over to our competition and cause them to receive a penalization? I mean come on, think about it. In fact, if the above were true, they wouldn’t even have to find real black hat websites, they could simply buy links on sites that are about jewelry or something else legitimate – as long as it was deemed “irrelevant”. TOO EASY. The spammers would have us all banned in a heartbeat.

Instead, consider this. Google CAN NOT build a penalization into the algorithm and say a site (especially a large site with 1000’s of content pages, 100’s of products and household branded name like JC Penny’s) should automatically lose organic rankings for keyword terms relevant to their content and products because certain pages linking to them appear to be off topic. I personally own 100’s of sites and manage dozens of social media profiles and micro blogs. I could chose to link to JC Penny or anyone else I so chose at any given time for any reason from any of my sites, relevant or not. Who is Google or anyone else to say the audience of the site/blog I posted that link on might not also be interested in the subject I am linking to? It’s not relevant because I talked about prom dresses or bedding on my jewelry site? Why? Who decides this? It just doesn’t scientifically make sense. I mean sure, Google can say if a link doesn’t appear to be a strong match by certain criteria then perhaps the link doesn’t pass as much value as a stronger match, but to say you’ll get penalized is quite a stretch.

So why did JC Penny lose their rankings?

The truth is, Google is a walking, talking contradiction. Links are a necessary and vital part of the algorithm. Without them, Google would have to rely on things like content and clean code – not really a sure fire way to serve up the best, most reliable websites and information, right? So, links are the perfect solution to that algorithm problem. By building in links, Google allows the public to vote for the best sites – it’s the perfect solution… kinda.

Years ago, after Google updated their algo to include the in-coming links as votes for organic placement, they had no idea how the SEO community would evolve, how technology would change and how vital a role links actually play. But, with these changes, these evolutions, Google found themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. Once the SEO’s caught on to the effects of linking, it was only a matter of time before the spammers, and basically the whole world knew the secret. So why not just devalue links?

Devalued links = devalued search results = unhappy users = less engine usage = ruined ad opportunities.

Not a smart move when you make your money from your ads.

So the answer? Just tell everyone paid links are bad. Write it into the Terms, have Matt Cutts talk about it on his blog… spread the word – LINKS are good! PAID links are bad. Scare the public. And when a high profile company gets called out, penalize them – use them as a martyr. But, for the most part, let people do what they want, as long as they play by the rules.

But wait a minute. How does Google even know the difference? And why do they care?

Now I can go on and on (and on and on) about links, the difference between black hat, grey hat, white hat… the multiple variables in which to gauge the quality of any given link location and whether your site will actually increase organically from having a link there. I can talk about 1000’s of case studies and years of experience with link building and the trends I’ve seen within the major search engine algorithms, but why? Isn’t this just the same old fear and propaganda?

Is the real problem here the links, or the fact that JC Penny didn’t play the game correctly?

If JC Penny didn’t get called out so very publically, and by the SEO community at that, and then pretty much fess up to the fact they “bought links”, they could have been ranking for their target terms forever. I didn’t evaluate their entire link portfolio and I certainly don’t have information on the exact links they were purchasing, however, I can say this:

Links are a necessary part of any successful organic SEO campaign. Google knows everyone is buying links. Come on, it is THAT obvious. You think JC Penny is the only company out there actively building links? Of course not. Take a look at the top 10 for just about anything – they are buying links. Google knows, but they turn their cheek. Why? Because your paid links help them serve up relevant information. That information keeps the Google users happy. Happy users are happy to come back, happy to click on paid links, and even happy to host ads on their own sites…

What do you think Google is really concerned about here?

Convinced you still need links… But now what?

Buy links from a trusted provider who understands the risks and can put together a strategic approach to link building that is SEO friendly and can fly under the radar a bit more. If you are worried about risk, there are creative link strategies out there that can still get the job done, while still remaining virtually undetectable.

Need to know more? Well, you’ll have to ask me: jenny@eminentseo.com

A few tips:

KEYWORD RESEARCH: Every great organic link campaign starts with expert keyword research. If you are guessing, or simply going after the “top” keywords in your vertical, you are not only missing a great opportunity to target low hanging fruit – but you are seriously telling Google the links coming in are potentially artificial – remember, people who chose to link to you naturally will pick a term that makes sense to them, which is not necessarily the top keyword for your website. Know your top keywords and work on supporting them with similar secondary phrases for a more organic looking campaign.

ON-PAGE SEO and CONTENT: Links certainly play a big role in your organic SERP, but your links better be pointing to optimized pages with unique and relevant copy. Great content should justify a lot of in-coming links. If you are out there buying links and pointing them to a crappy site, it may raise a red flag with Google. Why would people link to a terrible site with outdated content? Not a good strategy.

LINK DIVERSITY: So, you know your target keywords, you have an optimized site and you are adding fresh content, now what? Go get those links! But, be advised, Google is looking for a link trend they can trust. Trust comes in many forms and levels, but what you NEED to know:

• Links should be from unique sources across the web – avoid networks where the sites are all hosted on the same Class C IP’s. If you think you are getting a deal by buying links in bulk from a network, you better ask them if their IPs are unique, if not, you might as well tell Google you just bought into a network – and the credibility the individual sites could pass if they were on unique IPs is completely diminished.

• Links should be natural looking, instead of buying hundreds of the “perfect” links, consider that only higher PR, higher quality inbound links actually looks more suspicious then a diverse array of sites. Why would everyone who chooses to link to you naturally all have an authority site? Instead, some people will socially bookmark your site, some will share on their blog, some will write an article and link back to you as a reference, etc. etc.

• Avoid ACTUAL black hat practice. Without getting too technical, there is a fine line between black and grey. Black hat techniques WILL get you banned and aren’t worth the risk. Practices such as Gateway/Doorway pages white text on a white background – no bueno! And although it can’t hurt you (remember – Google cant penalize you just because a site links to you! That is out of your control) BUT bad neighborhood links do not help, so don’t bother – if you aren’t an adult site yourself, don’t buy links on one (stay away from gambling and pharmaceutical too).

• Relevancy is important, but not imperative. Yeah, I said it. Links can come from any family friendly website and still pass value. It’s less about topic relevancy and more about site audience relevancy. Name one site that doesn’t represent multiple categories of relevancy anyways. If you are worried about relevancy, buy links that come with content unique to you. Get creative. There are ways to make a link relevant almost anywhere.

The Nutshell:

Links are GOOD, when done correctly. Don’t get too caught up in the propaganda. If you know you need links, make sure you have a quality site to justify those links and then find an expert to help you.

Social Media Revolution

2011-02-22T22:34:00.000-07:00

I didn't make this video, nor am I affiliated with the makers... but someone asked me today why they need Social Media.

Well, here's why:

Do You Work for Free?

2011-01-18T11:57:00.000-07:00

This makes me laugh AND cry.... I think I work for free :-/

Do you?

http://www.shouldiworkforfree.com/

Response from Erica Bailey: Manager vs. Leader

2011-01-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

In my last post named "Calling Out Erica Bailey" I asked Erica, to give me a little somethin somethin... Well, here you have it:

Jenny, I have written and re-written my response to your challenge and nothing has felt like an adequate response until now. The business side of the SEO business keeps me awake at night. This is actually due to excitement, like a child on Christmas Eve; I am filled with ideas and dreams that this business model creates! Take a quick look at a few of the most successful companies, according to Hoovers FT Global Fortune 500 List, Apple ranks at #5 and Google #30, and both organizations are well known for being original both in their products, but their business model in reference to employee relations.

ESEO, like Apple and Google, embrace that side which is apparent through their leadership team and even more with the staff that have been hand selected to make this company where clients WANT to go when they need results. What I found while doing research for my graduate degree was that the successful organizations that have remained powerful during the recession, have leaders in senior management, not just managers. In my professional opinion, a company is bound to succeed if they follow a few simple steps, starting with having the right people.

In my paper entitled “Great Leaders are like Mothers” I explain the difference between a manger and a leader:

Manager vs. Leader

Typically a manager and a leader are considered one in the same, but they are not. Certainly a good manager should be able to lead, and a great leader should be able to manage within a company, but it is difficult to find an individual who can do such in cooperation.

“Both leadership and management are important in an organization. The key difference between the two is that management is about processes and leadership is about people. You manage accounts payable, but you lead an accounts-payable administrator” (Schulz, G., 2008, p. 1).

Unfortunately the business world does not see a great deal of leaders within the management positions and that is because people are promoted within a company for the wrong reasons. Most of the time an individual is promoted due to tenure when in fact they may or may not have any leadership skills, or the ability to seek out the technical problems within a company, and how to lead the staff, teach them to resolve issues themselves. This most likely stems from our early childhood development as we are told what to do by our parents, siblings, guardians and mentors when rarely we are taught what to do, or to think for ourselves and seek out the answers to the questions on our own. Instead of teaching little Johnny to think about why he should not stick a fork in a light socket, or why he should wear a helmet while riding his bike in the street, we just tell him. Of course, as parents, we are concerned about his safety, but as he grows will he be able to be come to his own conclusions regarding such issues? This is probably why we see leadership traits get passed down from generation to generation, because true leaders are taught how to be such through their mentors, who were also great leaders themselves.

Going back to management through advancement, as Warren Bennis says in On Becoming a Leader, “the manager administers; the leader innovates. The manager imitates; the leader initiates. The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it” (Buss, D., 2001, p. 45). These traits are difficult to find as the breed seems to be declining every generation, so what characteristics should one be looking for when trying to fill a management position? Gregory Nelson, vice president of Development Dimensions International in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania explains, “There’s a difference between a leader by title and a leader by profile. Leaders by profile are the people who are the biggest influence in the organization – the people who get things done. Very often, that doesn’t follow the organizational chart” (Buss, D., 2001, p. 45). Thus, unfortunately businesses do not find themselves putting an individual with a leadership mentality into the role of management as they most often just select the next person in line, or they hire someone outside the current staff who has management experience, however they should be looking for someone who has the behaviorisms of a leader if they really want to succeed in the future.

Calling Out Erica Bailey

2011-01-04T21:32:00.000-07:00

Dear Erica,

As I sit here pondering what to write on this darn SEO blog. I find myself thinking more and more about the conversation we had today. It's been such an interesting year, running my own business (with Chris of course) and learning how to manage all of the facets of not only the SEO world but the business world as well. I think we both agree that SEO is about more than just links and title tags... it's about running a business, working together as a team, learning, loving and growing... Which leads me to my point:

Mrs. MBA, would you be so kind as to write my SEO followers a little somethin somethin?

Thanks Hon, can't wait to read it.

Love,

Me

Definition of the Day

2010-12-06T22:47:00.000-07:00

Digital Nomads

Definition: The ever-expanding group of workers using wireless technology to eliminate the need for an office.

Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/217688

Interesting biz lingo... think I might be a "Digital Nomad" in fact, I'm laying in bed right now, who needs an office?

How to Determine a Marketing Budget for a Small Business – A Groundhog View Out of Thin Air

2010-11-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, so my good friend and colleague Jim Peake of SpeechRep Media, Inc is always talking to me about marketing and how he advises his clients on how to determine their marketing budgets. Our conversations are always full of golden nuggets and really should be published half of the time (good times Jim!) so this time I finally said, "You know what Jim, that's great advice, you should really write a piece About it..." and just like magic, look what popped into my e-mail account this morning:

How to Determine a Marketing Budget for a Small Business – A Groundhog View Out of Thin Air

First I must tell you I usually need a calculator to add 2 + 2, or if I use my fingers that works too. OK now that I have your attention let’s talk about marketing and figuring out what a marketing budget should be. I can go and find any financial genius and they can give us all kinds of strategies for coming with the perfect number probably down to the exact penny.

The owner of the business, the CEO usually has the last say in what gets approved and nixed. So let’s say we have a services business, a hair salon, a consulting firm, an accounting firm, law offices or a graphic designer or you name it, pick the SIC code we want to figure out what it will take to market our business and do so profitability so we can continue to stay ahead of the curve.

Marketing is the Engine that Pulls the Train

Let’s face it, marketing is the engine that pulls the train and sales is the conductor. Without profits we are screwed unless you are Rudi Dekkers. (Google him up if you don’t know who he is). So in my world our revenues must exceed our expenses. If that is not the case we are bleeding red ink and if we bleed red ink we probably don’t have a license to print money or make new dollar digits. So as a benchmark I have come up with a minimum starting percentage.

Side note on sales, these sales guys get really expensive really fast and only about 5% will generate about 80% of your profits another number I pulled out of thin air, maybe you can confirm it. They drive expensive cars, eat at expensive restaurants and love racking their expense accounts to the max because they deserve it and are entitled, or at least some think so. My point here is marketing should be giving these guys high quality leads ALL the time so we can boost the 5% to a more acceptable number, however in my experience accounting is always trying to “cut expenses in sales” via marketing and they wind up sucking wind in the long run. I know this first hand because I lived it.

This percentage is based on my experience and NOTHING else. So I am pulling this number out of thin air, however it seems to work well for a starting point. We need to spend at least 20% of our monthly revenue on marketing if we are going to get any real measurable results in the first 3-4 months. This includes marketing assistants, VP’s, 800’s, web designers, ad agencies, market research, social media, SEO, link building PPC, article writing you name it.

If after spending 20% you are getting too much business start to spend less. On the other hand if you are not making a profit with a 20% marketing budget it is time to do two things, either spend more so you do get enough business to make a decent profit or stop what you are doing and change fast, for example hire a website consultant or a competent internet marketing consultant and start to test other methods of getting revenue going where your expenses do not exceed your revenue.

This is where the rubber meets the road

OK, so some dude who wrote this on the internet says 20% is the good starting number what the hell does he know? He knows very little, but has 30 years experience in business. However what he does know is if you spend for instance $10,000 per week on marketing and you can generate $40,000 per week in revenue that is called a 4:1 MER or media efficiency ratio. So what happens when we increase that weekly spend to $100,000? It should generate $400,000 in weekly revenue. Depending on your profit margin this is either a good ratio or a bad ratio. Hopefully you have enough margin it is a “good ratio.”

If you are spending 5% of your monthly revenue on marketing and not getting your results, but the marketing you are doing is working why not spend more? Oh, the CFO says we have to “cut back.” Well let’s cut back and we can cut ourselves out of a job too. I will also tell that CFO he is not in business to make money and this thing he calls “work” is something of just a “pet hobby” and not a business and he is sucking others into his “pet hobby.” If we operate out of fear of failure chances are we will get there, it’s happened to this search marketing consultant, I speak of experience.

On the other hand, if we boost the 5% monthly marketing budget to 20% and start to get the results and the profits then let’s do more of it and refine the marketing efforts even more. Test different offers, different calls to action, different media….testing……testing…..testing…..success…..roll out baby! I know this is an over simplification rant of sorts but if we are “going to play it safe” let’s do that in shuffle board and curling, if want to play it safe let’s play it safe when we retire.

When it goes wrong – Change Thinking

When we are spending as much as we can let’s say 40% of our monthly revenue and we can’t keep our customers and we can’t make a profit it is time to reevaluate the whole business situation. Ask why? How can we do it better? Are we going after the right customer? As Einstein said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." So do something, pick up the phone and call a website consultant or a internet marketing consultant, or do nothing and “play it safe.”

About the Author:

Jim Peake is a website consultant, internet marketing and management consultant with special focus on healthcare marketing in the behavioral health and addiction treatment industry. He helps businesses improve their identities, branding, web presence, traffic generation, lead generation, SEO, PPC, online as well as offline, video production, video optimization and syndication. He uses advanced direct response advertising techniques; Jim also helps sellers meet buyers of businesses and is active in social media marketing.

Google Logo Honors the X-Ray

2010-11-08T10:45:00.000-07:00

Google Logo Honors the X-Ray

Working from Home

2010-08-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, so about a year ago I left corporate hell and started working for myself. Naturally I don't have an office (yet) and immediately turned my dining room into an office I now spend all day and night in... It's kinda become a joke that I went from wearing make-up and heels everyday to slummin it in my PJ's virtually 24/7... so, when I ran across this today I laughed my ass off!!!

Why working at home is both awesome and horrible

Enjoy!

Update: Jenny's SEO Slang

2010-07-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

Soooo, I updated my page called: Jenny's SEO Slang

I think there are probably 1,000 more to add... send me an e-mail or comment here with terms that you think I should add so together we can create the largest list of "SEO Slang" anywhere :-)

Thanks!

My Top 10 Best Practices for Landing Page Conversion Optimization

2010-07-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

What is a “Landing Page”?

Although often times a landing page is referred to as the page a user lands on after clicking on a Pay Per Click (PPC) ad, landing pages are really any page, HomePage (HP) or SubPage (SP), within a particular website that a potential client will land on after clicking on an add, an organic result in the search engines, e-mail marketing campaign or even an article or Press Release.

Best Practices for Website Landing Pages – AKA – Conversion Rate Optimization:

Below is a list of the top ten best practices for landing pages. The list encourages companies to make smart marketing choices, which will not only engage the user but be able to show higher return on investment(ROI).

1. Unify the Intent – Landing pages perform best when the content is promotion-based. With this type of landing page, the content is concise and focused on one appealing message. Even the most brand-focused company ("we're not promotional, we're all about brand") engages in some sort of promotional activity.

2. Visually Engage the User – Tell a story or sell a product using impactful imagery rather than simply explaining the purpose with lengthy copy. (Think short attention pans, we are on the internet after all).

3. Focus the User Experience – Feature clean navigation and succinct calls to action. Landing pages should be used as a teaser to easily point the customer to the desired action. (Call now!)

4. Use a Direct Headline – Making a good first impression is just as important online as it is in the real world. A clear and direct headline should be the first thing the user notices upon viewing the page. Make sure the headline is a direct and simple statement of what the page visitor is trying to accomplish.

5. Leave Plenty of Whitespace — Visitors don’t read, they scan the text to determine if the page is relevant to their goal or not. Clean use of space allows visitors to scan and understand key messages.

6. Deliver a Clear Value Proposition – Answer any potential “whys?” with value propositions. Keep them limited to three or four bullet points and don’t mince words. This is no time to get cute – if visitors can’t quickly and easily understand the benefits of your product or service, they will leave.

7. Amplify Buttons – Attracting attention is what the main action buttons are all about. Make users notice where the button is upon landing. Odd button shapes work well. Also, don’t skimp on button size. *I personally think there should always be a big “Contact” button or a quick form on each page. You don`t need people to read your site once they get there, you just want them to take an action.

8. Convey Trust and Security - Branding, trust/security icons and assurances, as well as testimonials provide credibility and give confidence to the visitor that can have a positive impact on conversion. *I suggest trust icons such as the BBB, Mcafee, etc. and always place them above the fold. You might put “Our Returns Policy,” “Member of the Better Business Bureau,” “As Seen in Architectural Record,” “Company Information” and more to remove fear and build confidence.

9. Provide a Compelling Message — Every good salesperson says something to persuade prospects who are on the fence. Think of your landing page as your online salesperson. Make sure you have one compelling message directly above the call to action. “Bandwagon messages,” such as “Join thousands of people that use…” can also improve visitor confidence and increase conversion.

10. Soften the Call to Action – Direct words like “Buy,” “Add to Cart” or “Subscribe” indicate a commitment that the visitor may not be ready to make and can lower conversion rates. A softer call to action like "Try it Now" can drive users deeper into the funnel and result in higher conversions. The best calls to action are written in plain English with no more than 7-12 words.

Advanced Geo Targeted PPC Advertising Methods

2010-07-02T16:38:00.000-07:00

My good friend John Pfeiffer wrote this piece.... thought I'd share:

Advanced Geo Targeted PPC Advertising Methods

Geographically focusing your paid search engine advertising to specific locations within your Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft’s adCenter (Bing) campaigns is one of the simplest and most important direct marketing tools to effectively drive qualified traffic to your small business website. But on more than one occasion, small business owners create ads with their city mentioned in the headline and then display these ads nationally! (i.e. I live in “Colorado” but I’ve seen ads for “Boston Chiropractors” while searching from my local office). This is a good example of very bad geo targeted PPC advertising and complete waste of marketing dollars in geographies where your customers do not live.

Instead, I suggest that PPC advertisers take the following steps to ensure your geo targeted PPC advertising is done properly and seen by the most “relevant” number of potential customers as possible.

First, look at your customer database, web logs and/or billing addresses to determine where most of your customers live. This will give you the first sphere of geographical focus for which to display your advertising
If you are seeking to expand your geographical reach in search of new potential customers, consider “like” areas throughout the state, region, country or world for your next target focus. For example, if you are selling “golf clubs”, look for cities, states or areas where golf courses exist (i.e. Alaska may not be a best place to start, but Florida is probably a good bet).
Advertise in areas of the smallest increments. For example, if you are currently set your geo targeted PPC advertising for the entire U.S., consider lowering the target areas to all states or even metro areas. This trick will give you another line of copy on your Google advertisements and can separate your ad from the competition.
When targeting small areas within a state or region, I recommend to use both the custom geo-targeting map AND the city/state selections. By including both the names of the cites/states along with a circle radius or polygon around your business location, you will be able to show your ads more frequently to more potential customers while still gaining the advantage of the 5^th line of copy underneath your ads (i.e. your business name, address and phone).
Select negative geo targeted PPC advertising locations where appropriate to avoid unwanted clicks from strange countries, states or areas where you are prohibited to advertise or not licensed to do business in that particular area (e.g. lawyers, real estate agents, and mortgage brokers). This may be especially true if you live near a state, county or country line.
Remember that some internet service provides (ISPs) reside in areas that may not be located in your target market region. Since the search engines usually segment the geo-targeting by the physical location of the ISP address, you may need to add these regions to capture your entire target market audience.

By using some of these advanced geo targeted PPC advertising techniques for your next pay-per-click campaign, you should be able to raise your click-through rates (CTRs), increase your Quality Scores (which lends itself to lower bids for less expensive clicks), and ultimately, acquire more customers within your desired market area.

About the Author: John Pfeiffer helps small business owners succeed online against big budget advertisers with affordable pay per click advertising management services. He is also the author of numerous articles and white papers on affordable PPC advertising and search engine marketing. John can be reached at http://www.PPCforSmallBiz.com © 2010

Follow Up Post: Dear Spammers

2010-06-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

So, chances are the majority of the Chinese spam comments I'm getting are from some automated script OR maybe even just mindless blog spammers who can't even read English. Either way, no one has stepped up yet and submitted a legitimate blog post, even after I agreed to FREELY link out if they did so (See my original blog: Dear Spammers). *sigh*

Don't worry, I'm aware that probably no one is reading this in the first place, so I'm not completely oblivious to the fact that the real reason no one has submitted a legitimate post is more likely because NO ONE is reading my blog.... but still.... I had an idea.

Today I created a new blog called: Comment Love

So, dear Spammers, if you are reading this, please feel free to Blog Spam away.... Just click here:
Bring on the Comment Spam!

As for the rest of you, you might find this little experiment interesting. Why not help me out by leaving a totally mindless comment (on my Comment Love blog) with a link back to yourself.... you might even get a good link out of it! :-)

SEO Definition of the Day: URL Canonicalization

2010-06-03T14:50:00.001-07:00

Question: What is URL canonicalization or a canonical URL?

Answer: Canonicalization is the strange word Google uses to describe the process of picking the best URL when they see more than one choice (example below). According to Matt Cutts it usually refers to the URL choices of the home page. For example, although a lot of people would consider these the same URL`s:

www.example.com
example.com/
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/home.asp

…they are all technically different URL`s (intended to all point to the HP). Because they are unique, a web server can return different content, images, etc for all the URL`s above. When Google "canonicalizes" a URL, they go through the process of picking one URL, generally the one that makes the most sense for the site.

To help Google pick the one you want, decide on the best suited URL for internal linking and use that format consistently throughout the site. Beyond consistency in the internal linking structure, you should also do a permanent 301 redirect from any other formats to the desired URL. Doing this helps Google better understand which URL you prefer to be canonical.

Dear Spammers

2010-06-01T17:39:00.000-07:00

I understand you are spamming my blog for the link juice... I would LOVE to publish your comments, but they are spammy as all hell and I just can`t bring myself to do it. So, I have an idea:

If any of you have something REAL to say on the subjects of:

Online Marketing
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
Social Media
Link Building
Blogging
PPC (Pay Per Click)
LPO (Landing Page Optimization)
Web Design
Google

or anything else you think would be useful to readers of this blog.... send it to: dayofjen@hotmail.com

Let me know that you would like me to publish your comments as a guest blogger and what KW`s you`d like me to link out to and where. If what you send is worth publishing, I`d be happy to link to you!

P.S. This goes for anyone reading this - not just the spammers :-)

Come on writers, show me what ya got ;-)

Article Marketing for Drug Addiction Treatment:

2010-04-28T16:18:00.001-07:00

This piece was written by a good friend and Internet Marketing and Management Consultant, Jim Peake. Jim and I work in a similar space (treatment centers) and agree on the article marketing strategies outlined below.

Happy reading!

Article Marketing for Drug Addiction Treatment:

As with any internet marketing for drug addiction treatment centers, therapists and behavioral health counselors or any other industry, it is all incremental. There is no one silver bullet, except maybe Oprah, and that only lasts a day unless you can find another way to get some more mileage out of it. So, in the absence of a silver bullet, let's look at several methods in getting qualified traffic to your site.

Article marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to drive traffic. It allows you to get essentially "free" targeted traffic to your website by writing articles and uploading them to article directories, which serve a couple of functions:

Distribution/Syndication: Many article directories rank well and since they have search engine visibility, it is very possible your article will get the same visibility and therefore end up ranking naturally in Google's organic results.

A word about anchor text links* — Article directories allow you to place one to four hyperlinks within your article. The value of these links is what you get in exchange for the article directory receiving your free content.

Sites Seeking Relevant Content: Other webmasters look to article directories for relevant articles to use as content on their own websites. While they are supposed to give you credit for your article and a link back, oftentimes this is not the case. But if they do link back, it can be very helpful from an SEO standpoint as you will get "free" links.

A closer look at SEO

In order to understand why article marketing is so effective, we need to understand a little bit about SEO. What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Using both on and off-page SEO, you can increase your organic placement and therefore traffic volumes from the search engine result pages.

Ideally with more traffic coming into your site, the greater the odds for a more significant increase in conversions. The first order of business is becoming more familiar with some of the "on page" items that the search engines care about.

Title tag usage — code that shows up in the Google search results

Body text — text of the article itself

H1 tags — headline on the Web page

Domain names — AmericaInRehab.com is a domain name

Meta usage — title, description, keyword, alt, image tags etc.

These code changes contribute to better ranking and are taken into account by the search engines on page.

Since on-page and content are almost exactly the same, what deciding factor do search engines use to rank one listing over another? What drives organic website rank in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)? Google is looking at what sites are the most referenced, and who has the most incoming links, particularly via relevant content. Writing great articles and content can attract more people who in turn may naturally link to you. Once a site achieves more inbound links, it will naturally get pushed up the Google search ranks. And the site who has the most links and the highest quality links wins.

Let's take a look at this in more detail. SEO has to be structured around keywords, i.e. keyword specific links. But just having links is not enough. Google also looks at the following attributes in a site's link portfolio:

Link popularity — the popularity of the hosting site

Link age — older is better as it shows more trust

Link topic — such as Article Marketing Drug Addiction Treatment (Relevancy has a lot of weight)

Link authority — whether or not the hosting site ranks, the number of links, etc

Link reputation — whether or not the hosting site is trusted in Google

Link growth rates — you want a natural trend for quicker trust

Linking with a community on niche — this is absolutely critical

Link anchor text – keyword specific (see below for the code example and an actual clickable link)

An example of a clickable anchor text/link text is: Drug Rehab

Google looks at these links and how the hosting sites are looking at you. The site with the most anchor text keywords and the absolute best incoming links stands the best chance of ranking for specific keywords. For instance, if you want to rank for "Pet Friendly Women Only Drug Addiction Treatment in Florida" you will have a much easier time of it than if you are trying to rank for "Drug Rehab in Florida".

What topics should I write about in drug Addiction treatment?

One way to deliver customer that answers they're looking for is to record your admissions phone calls. You will begin to see a pattern of similar questions being asked by clients before they even consider entering a treatment center. Chose a popular question as the topic of an article. Make sure you really are as thorough as possible in answering ALL of the questions surrounding this one particular topic when writing your piece. For example, if you chose, "What is your aftercare program like after I leave the treatment center?" start by rewriting that question into a generic topic for an article such as, "What are the best drug addiction treatment center aftercare programs like?" Remember you are NOT advertising your treatment center. With article marketing, you are only providing information and a reference source.

Look closely at the leaders in your niche, visit their websites and Twitter profiles. Find out what people are asking them. You will begin to see patterns. Make sure that you are covering some of those same topics and do it more thoroughly. The you more you write, the more likely you will be viewed as an authority — so give it all away! Yes, give the readers your absolute best information. You can't give away a lifetime of professional work in one article or 100 articles. Instead, if you do give the user your best information you might be perceived as the industry expert since many others are just giving away superfluous and redundant generic information.

Syndicate drug addiction treatment articles

Not only is using article marketing directories a great place to distribute your information, you also can connect with aggregators like FriendFeed.com and Ping.fm to simultaneously distribute your content to many of the social media sites. This saves a lot of time in manual distribution. You can also use article syndication tools like iSnare.com.

Google doesn't actually tell us, but many authority SEOs think Google`s algorithm determines organic placement — 20-30 percent on-page factors (metas, content, etc) and 70-80 percent off-page factors (links). In other words, LINKS MATTER MORE! Your links will determine how successful your rankings are.

In order to get your articles distributed, article marketing directories are the best place to start. A site like Ezine Articles gets some 15 Million readers per month. Just make sure that if you are using article directories (especially if you are manually submitting the content) that they are passing page rank. Don't know how to check? Just use the list below and add at least one article to four or five of the article directories every week, if possible.

Start writing for other websites and Blogs

Writing for the article directories is one way to connect with your target audience. However, there are many other ways to get your messages out there. I would focus on the drug treatment industry publishers in order to get relevant, powerful back links from trusted websites. For instance, take this article on Behavioral Health Central. By writing for BHC, this article not only winds up in the Google news, it also gets picked up by other websites and repurposed. You can also write for other drug addiction treatment topics on sites like Treatment-Centers.net, RecoveryView.com and many others. Just contact the publisher to learn about their guidelines and see if your expertise is required.

Show me the money! Or where's the beef?!

The "beef" is in the links of the articles. So what is the best way to go about getting these inbound links to your site? Just building content is not enough; it is a failed strategy. Reciprocal links are not good enough and actually don't hold much weight unless they are in your own niche. So if you have a drug addiction treatment center and you have incoming reciprocal links with a rental car company, for example, Google does not care too much about that link(s). Here are a few ways to get incoming links:

Make sales calls to get links

Write for other publishers

Distribute press releases

Purchase links and advertisements

Start blog commenting "with follow links"

Write blogs

Use authority directory submissions listings

Treatment-centers.net (industry relevancy first)
Business.com
Yahoo.com
samhsa.gov
Best of the web

Use Q&A sites, like Yahoo Answers

Use social media sites, like LinkedIn, Twitter etc.

Drug addiction treatment article components

To help your article generate maximum value, consider these components of article marketing articles:

Title should include your key phrase

Body should be 400-600 words max

Reading should be easy and allow the user to skip, skim and scan

Keyword should have focus and density

Author box should have links coming back to your site (many times you can prepare multiple author profiles)

Hand submit to the article directories and remember, more is not always better. You want sites that are both SEO friendly (for the search engine value) and that also achieve high traffic volumes (for potential direct clicks). Your site has a set link build rate according to Google. They know if you got two links per week for the last year. To make your efforts appear natural, you want to vary your anchor text and your destination pages. You don't want to always link to the home page. This looks unnatural. Do not over optimize one keyword or one page. Products like SEO Elite will help you with back link anchor text.

As far as we know in the SEO space, duplicate content filters do not exist for articles. Competition is what separates the wheat from the chafe. While several sites might republish the same article, Google will analyze which is the best optimized page and which is the best hosting site. Google will then remove the article on lower valued site(s) from their index.

A short list of benefits with article marketing

Keep a daily look out in your Google Analytics of where your referral sites are coming in from. You should begin to see some patterns. You can even have these reports automated to you and sent in an e-mail (Google Alerts). With very little effort, you can get some serious benefits from article marketing.

Article marketing gets your name and business "syndication".

Article marketing runs in the background and work for you while you are sleeping.

Article marketing does not require ongoing administration.

Article marketing is scalable.

Article marketing is trackable.

Article marketing is not advertising, it is information distribution.

*Article marketing lets you embed up to four links per article for links back to your website(s).

In summary, if you aren't doing article marketing right now, you need to start. It should be a key component of your off-page SEO strategy to help generate organic traffic to your website. You can either do it yourself by following some of the guidelines above, or hire an Internet Marketing Consultant to do it for you. You might want to consider drug addiction treatment article marketing as 10-25 percent of your SEO strategy…because it works!

Jim Peake is an internet marketing and management consultant with special focus on addiction treatment in the behavioral health industry. He helps treatment centers improve their web presence and lead generation, online as well as offline. He uses advanced SEO and PPC direct response advertising for addiction treatment search engine marketing. Jim also helps sellers meet buyers of treatment centers, and is active in social media marketing.

A Big Thank You to my Voters!

2010-04-14T17:56:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys,

I know it was a simple task, but 14 of you chose to help me out and take my poll. Gee, thanks guys!

Now I`m going to collect my data and I`ll update you once my conclusions have been made.

Thanks!

Jenny Stradling

Please Take My Poll

2010-04-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

Hi World...! Or should I say the few of you kind people who may stumble across this post.... Can you do me a favor and take my poll... right over there:

I`m doing an experiment. Thanks!

SEO Definition of the Day: KEI

2010-03-29T16:25:00.000-07:00

Since someone asked me "What is a KEI?" today, I thought I`d share the answer with all of you:

Depending on who you ask, KEI stands for Keyword Effectiveness Indicator or Keyword Efficiency Index

According to a popular tool used for keyword research - Trellion:

"KEI is designed to measure the effectiveness, or the value of a given search term. KEI is a value between 0 and 10.

The value of each keyword is calculated by correlating a number of factors including the popularity of the keyword and the number of pages on which it occurs. The most effective keywords will be those with a high KEI value. Such terms are typically searched for often, but appear on a small number of pages, and are therefore less competitive."

My 2 cents:

Although I use several tools to determine target keyword terms, whether you are referencing KEI, allintitle/allinanchor, difficulty or the competitiveness of any particular key phrase - less is always more! The higher the level of difficulty/KEI, generally speaking, the harder it will be to rank for that specific keyword term. However, don`t ever rely on one number to give you the data you need when selecting your key phrases - especially if you are actually investing into a link building campaign! Remember, it`s not just how MUCH competition you have but WHAT the competition is doing. KEI should help you narrow down a large list of possibilities, but the ultimate decision should be based off of taking a look at who is already ranking for the desired keyword. When looking at the competition, ask yourself if the efforts you are about to put forth can realistically outdo these guys.

If the KEI is low, but the "other guys" have a large amount of indexed backlinks and pages, it may be best to look for similar term that the competition hasn`t already worked so hard on - unless, of course, you have a large amount of money to invest and a lot of patience.

Anyone else have a question?

Conan O'Brien - The New Face of Social Media?

2010-02-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

So, I just ran across this article: Social Media and Conan O'Brien on sitepronews.com... Since I`m a huge fan of Conan and have closely followed the controversy around the whole Late Night fiasco between Conan, Jay Leno and of course NBC, the title caught my eye and I couldn`t help but read the whole piece...

So, what does Conan have to do with Social Media and viral marketing? The article says:

"I sincerely believe that Conan knew exactly what was going to happen, and used the internet to his advantage. Many of his writers and publicity team are very young, having grown up on the internet. They knew that if they needed good publicity they would only have to turn to the internet in order to get the point across.

They used social media to secretly create "I'm with CoCo" groups while at the same time constantly making sure there was new "buzz" to pass around on twitter. From posts on Craigslist of Conan selling himself to the highest bidder for favors to late night tweets from the writing staff to their fan base, they knew that they could always win the war with an audience - that frankly is a lot more internet savvy than the Leno fan base.

Anyone engaged in social media marketing, needs to look closely at how Conan did this, how he made it seem to be organic and natural and then allowed it to seemingly take its own course. He knew how to create buzz, but more importantly content for internet buzz fodder. He knew that the one-liners that could be posted on Twitter were a thousand times more powerful than any ten minute monologue that could be spoken by ...urhmm... that other guy."

This definitely got me thinking... When it comes to viral marketing and link bait, let us all take a note from CoCo....

Controversy creates buzz... buzz generates traffic, increased followers and even free links... I`m not saying you should get yourself into a mess for some free links, but if your subject is, shall we say, not that exciting, you might want to think about putting a unique spin on it. Funny, controversial, risky, taboo, outlandish and over the top videos, articles, blog posts and websites get a lot more traffic and free links than "the other stuff".

Just look at the Conan bandwagon results:

Type "I`m with CoCo" in your Google search bar, 27,400,000 results! (That`s almost double the results you`ll return if you just search his name, "Conan O'Brien")

Check out his new Twitter account: http://twitter.com/conanobrien created just 2 days ago, and only 2 tweets later, 374,482 followers!

I can`t login to Twitter, Facebook, Tublr and now even the popular SEM sites without seeing something about Coco.

Maybe you should think twice about going viral and what social media really means to your brand....

Nutshell: If you aren`t participating in social media and using humor, controversy or unique concepts in your marketing efforts, you`re missing out on a bigger audience!

P.S. Go team Coco!

How to Check Indexed Backlinks

2010-02-16T10:32:00.000-07:00

So, earlier today I ran across a blog where the blogger told his readers he was unsure how to check indexed backlinks. He said he "Googled it" and found http://backlinkwatch.com. I used to use that tool as well, but now they spammed it out (I HATE pop up ads) and they don`t give you the option of exporting the results! What`s up with that?

So, for you newbie’s who need a few shortcuts, here they are:

If you haven`t downloaded the Google Toolbar, go do it! Be sure to check the box that displays PageRank (PR). Once you have this installed, click on the PageRank button, it should give you options:

Google Links
Google Cache

By selecting "Google Links" you are giving Google a command to display all indexed link to that page ONLY. So, if you are on the homepage (HP) then you are only going to see the indexed link to the HP, not the entire site!

This same command can be manually done by simply going to Google.com and typing in the following:

links:_____________________(Domain URL here)

No spaces.

Let`s try it together using Nike.com:

Ask Google:
links:http://www.nike.com

I get: Results 1 - 10 of about 3,830,000 for links:http://www.nike.com

That tells me 3,830,000 links are indexed to the HP - http://www.nike.com

WOW! That is a lot! But how do you know how many the entire site has? Good question. By installing and using the Google webmaster tools, for your own site, you can see quite a bit more.... but for the public, short of literally doing that link command on each page of the site, there is no way to ask Google for a list of all indexed backlinks.

So, now what? Why not try Yahoo! They allow the same commands, but it`s easier to follow these instructions:

Go to Yahoo.com
Type in site:_____________________(Domain URL here)
Again, no spaces.

You have now asked Yahoo to explore that domain. Google allows a site command as well, so if you are curious how many pages are indexed in a site URL with Google, simply use the site: command in Google instead of Yahoo (this works for Bing too)... but, the Yahoo site explorer functionality is going to make this task a LOT easier...

So, let`s do it together again:

Ask Yahoo:
site:http://www.nike.com

You should land on the default page that shows you a number of indexed pages:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nike.com&bwm=p&bwms=p&fr=fptb-&fr2=seo-rd-se

I see 22,114 indexed pages. Next to the pages button you should see InLinks, click on it. I see 698,853 indexed links.... but wait! These numbers include ALL links, which means I`m getting the internal links, and, if you look to the right, we are only looking at THIS URL. So, again, we haven`t asked Yahoo to give us the indexed links to the entire site, but only to this specific page. However, Yahoo, unlike Google, gives us the option to select all pages! YAY! Be careful though, if you are looking for unique links only, you should also select "except from this domain" in the next drop down, otherwise you will be getting all of the internal links as well.

So, let`s try this again. We are already on http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nike.com&bwm=p&bwms=p&fr=fptb-&fr2=seo-rd-se

No, to the right of the InLinks button, you`ll see two drop down options, for the first one:

Show Inlinks: select "except from this domain"

For the second one:

to: select "entire site"

Now what do you see? I see:

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nike.com&bwm=i&bwmo=&bwmf=s

1,409,131 other pages are linking to Nike.com according to Yahoo! WOW!

If you want to know if a particular link is indexed in Google, find out what page it points to and give Google a link command to that specific page. Concerned you don`t see your link? Worried this means your links aren`t "working".... well, before you get too worked up, a couple of things to know:

Google NEVER displays 100% of any sites indexed backlinks (they can`t give away all their secrets!)

It takes Google 3-6 months and often times much, much longer to fully index a link, so check for the frequency of the cache instead (cache:_____________________(Domain URL here)). If the page is caching, your link is getting seen!

If you really want to get a particular link seen, link to the page that is linking to you! This ensures the spider will crawl the page and boosts the authority of the site hosting your link as well!

The Nutshell:

If you want to know something, ask the engine! Just remember these commands:

site:_____________________(Domain URL here)
links:_____________________(Domain URL here)
cache:_____________________(Domain URL here)

Questions? Need help? Ask me!

Spammers

2010-01-19T06:12:00.000-07:00

So some terrible Chinese spammers left a comment on my blog - all in Chinese. So, Google placed Chinese Ads in my GoogleAds on my HP, here.... I guess they think the Chinese that my spam commenter garbled into at lest 20 different hyperlinks, was more relevant to my users than the subjects in my actual blog content! Haha.... Oh Google, you don`t know me or my user at all! Who is trying to make money here?

Would you pay someone to place comment links on blogs for you, knowing that they are probably 95% not relevant and so spammy looking that they would likely get deleted?

Would the owner of the site the paid Google ads are linking to (in Chinese) really want their "paid clicks" to end up on a page where the only person who would even click on them is probably just a Chinese link spammer?

I mean, really! Who is managing this stuff?

Or is the web just going to hell?

SEO 101:

2010-01-02T00:32:00.000-07:00

Pick your keywords (if you don`t know how to do this, hire a pro - trust me, it`s worth it).
Make your top keyword your first Title Tag, Meta tags, Content and even your URL where possible.
Make your site ALL ABOUT your keywords - this is all Google knows about you.
Content is KING! Write, write, write!
Don`t over stuff.... that is so 1990... now only spammers do that!
Update your site frequently. If your site becomes stagnate, what reason do you give Google - or your readers/customers - to keep coming back? GIVE THEM A REASON AND THEY WILL!
Focus on what sets you part from your competition! Why should I buy from you instead of the other 1 billion results Google, Yahoo and Bing returned?
Consider descriptions your 2 sec. opportunity to catch your next client... Quick, you have 2 sec. what makes you so special? (Price, timely deliver, 100% money back guarantee, custom solutions, specialized counseling, insider info, legitimacy - think BBB, certifications, etc.)

Now, take a look at your site. Make sure your site set up to please your client first, the search engine second!

Now, go get some links! You need lots of links, from different places. You need relevant links, quality, volume, variety.. but you need links! If you have a site and it`s not ranking, it`s because your competition has more links than you! It`s really is simple as that!

Nutshell: GOOGLE want 2 things: Content and (you guessed it) LINKS!

P.S. If you have no idea what I`m talking about - hire a professional! Be good at your business, let us be good at ours :-)

Google PR Update Time..... AGAIN!

2009-12-31T13:38:00.000-07:00

Since my last post was about a Google PR Toolbar update, I`ll keep this short and sweet... (well, as sweet as I can, this is Google after all)...

This update came as a bit of a surprise to me as we just had one around the end of Oct./early Nov. so I wasn`t expecting another until the end of Jan. however, as I`ve mentioned previously, Google seems to be less consistent than they used to be, they like to keep us SEO`s and webmasters on our toes.

If you have not checked your PR yet, you might want too. Many of the sites I have been working on have increased in PR! Thanks for the New Years Eve gift Google.... I hope the rest of you experience an increased PR. If not, don`t worry, as I said in my last post, Toolbar PR is NOT a direct reflection of your organic placement in the SERP`s, so don`t get too worked up about it. Just keep getting quality links and adding fresh content and maybe you`ll increase your PR on the next update.

Happy New Years.... wishing you and your business a prosperous 2010!

Google PR Update Time!

2009-10-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

Hello SEO Friends!

It appears to be that time again! Google is updating their PR toolbar. Expect to see fluctuations (no freaking out if your PR goes down during this time) and inconsistencies for a few more days at least... sometimes it takes weeks or even months before the "dust" settles.

If you`ve been building a heavy amount of links, you might see an increase in PR.... but if your PR doesn`t change, I wouldn`t worry too much, Google toolbar PR and organic placement in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) are two different things. If your PR is average, but you have good organic placement for your target keywords, who cares what the PR is?

Now I realize if you are trying to sell links on your site, or you are an SEO company or other high profile business that needs to display higher PR for the site user, that`s one thing... but otherwise I wouldn`t worry too much about the toolbar PR and keep focusing on building quality links and adding more content to your site.

P.S. A site DOES NOT have to have Toolbar PR in order to pass value. If you want to know if a site pass value to you by linking to you, check the cache. If they seem to be caching and the site is clean (think not too many OB links, no "bad neighborhood" links or other spammy elements) then it still had the ability to pass value. Remember, Google likes to show us one thing and do another.... so if you think that the toolbar PR is a good way to value a site, think again...

SEO Tip of the Day

2009-09-30T17:21:00.001-07:00

Okay, okay.... I`m terrible about updating my poor, neglected SEO blog, I know.... several people are wondering why it`s been so long. To be honest, I changed jobs, I`m a single mom, working from home and I spend all my free time on Social Media sites :-)

I started writing a Twitter Tips blog, which I will publish soon, but until then, here`s a fun little Google tip:

When trying to determine the level of difficulty for a new keyword, there are a few fun tricks in Google.

In a Google search, type in:

allintitle:"your keyword here"

Notice the words "all" "in" and "title" include NO spaces
Always use a : at the end
Put your keyword in "quotes" for exact data
Never put a space between the : and the keyword

Your results will reflect the amount of sites competing for the same keyword in their title tag.

I think this is one of the most accurate ways to determine how many sites are actually competing for that term. Of course if you are looking up a large amount of keywords, it`s best to use a tool that will allow you to plug in multiple keywords at the same time, but if you`re looking for a quick number, this is a great trick.

You can also use the same technique for anchor text competition:

allinanchor:"your keyword here"

So, there you have it! Have fun Googlers :-)

SEO tip of the day: Using Secondary Keywords to support a Root Term

2009-07-29T19:18:00.000-07:00

My SEO tip of the day:

If you want to rank for tough keywords, use secondary supporting terms that include the root term.

Example:

Let’s say I want to rank for “Shoes”. Unless I have a huge budget for links (and even then it`s going to be tough to outrank branded, authority sites with age and 1,000`s of indexed links) it`s better I select similar secondary phrases. So, rather than targeting “Shoes”, I should target niche phrases that: 1 – would be good for conversions 2 – still have a decent search volume but 3 – have a much lower level of competing sites.

Let`s say I decide “discount shoes” would be a niche for my market. It`s still a high searched term, but not nearly as competitive as “shoes” alone. I should than support my choice by optimizing my “discount shoes” landing page with 5-10 supporting keywords that include “discount shoes”, such as:

womens discount shoes
converse discount shoes
mephisto discount shoes
born discount shoes
skechers discount shoes

And, when deploying a link building campaign to rank my “discount shoes” page, I will randomize my link text with one of the above selections or “discount shoes” specially. This not only ensures my link efforts appear more natural to the search engines, but helps my site rank for these secondary terms that also bring in a decent amount of search volume. It may take a while (depending on my budget, current trust with the search engines, what my competition is doing, etc) to rank for “discount shoes”, but by selecting less competitive, longer tail keyword phrases, I am increasing my visibility and rankings for niche terms that are likely to be better for conversions and help me see a quicker ROI.

In a nutshell: If you want to rank for a competitive term and you are just getting started, it`s best to target similar secondary phrases instead. You will be supporting your ultimate, long term goal, but will achieve much quicker results, for a lot less money and effort!

Follow Up: Google vs. Bing... vs. Yahoo?

2009-06-07T14:53:00.000-07:00

A few of my SEO Tweeps retweeped: Google vs. Bing: The Blind Taste Test ... A fairly good read, by the way. In a nutshell, bloggerBen Parr says:
"While there are a few tools out there that already compare the two search engines, none take the scientific approach quite like BlindSearch does. The experiment, formed by Michael Kordahi, provides search results from Google, Bing, and Yahoo and asks you to vote on which results are best. However, BlindSearch takes your biases out of the equation by stripping away the branding and logos."

So, I thought, why not and I tried the BlindSearch. I actually expected a clear winner between Google and Bing, but surprisingly got Yahoo 3 out of 3! Go figure!

Try it and you tell me who wins!

Look Out Google!

2009-06-07T12:24:00.001-07:00

One of Danny Sullivan's Tweets today said he was having fun playing around with Bing, so I thought I would check it out. For those of you who don`t know, Bing is Microsoft`s new search engine. The Times says:
"Bing replaces Microsoft’s Live Search product, which has failed to dent Google’s huge lead in search market share."

My response, let`s all give Google a run for their money! It`s so frustrating working in this industry, knowing what it takes to rank sites in the search engines, and yet not being able to do things because it`s "against Google`s webmaster guidelines"... I`m sick of being held hostage by Google. There are so many other search engines out there! If we all start using other tools not owed by Google, Google won`t have so much control!

Good luck Bing!

Cool Tool of the Day: Mass Google PR Checker

2009-05-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

I love free SEO tools... I`ve been using this one for a while now, and it`s very helpful. Funny story, I walked by someone in the office and overheard them mention it was such a pain, checking large amounts of PR (Google`s Page Rank) manually... needless to say they were thrilled when I sent them this tool:

Bulk PR Checker

The only thing I don`t like about it is they results aren`t exportable and don`t copy and paste very well. So, if anyone has a similar tool that also has an exprt feature, please do share!

I Joined the SEO Book Community

2009-04-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Readers!

A 5:00 AM this morning, an hour before my alarm, my brain was swarming with thoughts of Twitter, my SEO Blog and work... (kinda sad, I know)... I found myself sleepily stumbling towards the computer, the goal being to make at least a quick blog post, if anything. Opening Fire Fox and saying "yes" the prompt question, "would you like to restore your previous session?" opened up my Twitter Account ... of course, there are my fearless SEO Tweeps, already awake, sharing, sharing, sharing... First tweet that caught my eye:

SEOBook post: Brand Considerations When Choosing Domain Names http://bit.ly/rx79Q

So, I followed and it took me to one of my favorite SEO sites: SEO Book. It`s easy for me to be skeptical with SEO blogs in general as there is so much misconception out there it`s not even funny, but in this case, I generally not only agree 100% with the content of the posts, but actually consider these guys an authority in this space.

The post itself is on brand consideration when considering a domain name. I think it`s more that just a coincidence that I stumbled upon this post, only having just had a lengthy discussion just yesterday on a new domain purchase and if and how he should integrate his keyword into the domain decision.

Having been a fan of the site for years and never actually joining their community, I thought I was past due and signed up: My SEOBook user profile.. I think it`s great to be part of the community, but I also felt prompted to comment, here`s what I said:

"Great post! I was just speaking about this yesterday with a new client who was still considering his domain name. The big question was, should the domain contain the root target keyword? After much deliberation, we decided mutually that a shorter domain that was much catchier would be the better choice. It`s true that direct traffic comes a lot easier when you can drop your name causally in conversation, hand out a business card with it or do some form of advertising not internet based and have people remember it and ultimate search for your name directly.

The problem my company is facing with our domain name: textlinkbrokers.com is the name became the brand and therefore the common misconception is that all we offer are links. At the point in the game we are now offering PPC management, Landing Page Optimization, full SEO and even graphic design work and much more... but the name itself suggests all we do are links. We could consider a "re-branding" but that takes away from years of work to build our name...

My suggestion? If you are even considering an expansion down the road with your business offerings, don`t pigeon hole yourself with a name (Domain or Brand) that limits what the public will think of you. Keeping it broad at least leaves room for unlimited growth within your brand association."

Sitewides: Are They Really "bad"?

2009-01-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

Since sitewides continue to be a controversial topic, and a client recently asked "Are sitewides really bad"? I thought I`d deviate from the Blog Topic List (see my previous post: SEO 101) and write up something quick on sitewide links.

When taking a look at the website user, sitewides can be good and even important links, as users are much more likely to click them. Additionally, they make the overall site template look more consistent, which encourages the users to feel more secure. When looking at sitewides from the SEO standpoint, there are obvious reasons why you would want to be careful when purchasing sitewides, but when done correctly, absolutely still add value.

For example, take a look at Blogs. Google recognizes template based elements, and as most bloggers use a template, the links will appear on every page simply because of the design. Is this to say Google would actually penalize or even devalue links simply due to design, or template based elements? We know this isn`t true, or 1,000`s of clients who have purchased blog reviews and other sitewide links would be penalized by now. Instead, many factors (multiple “bad neighborhood” sites linking in, a whole network of sites linking in, etc) come into play when Google becomes suspicious and/or chooses to penalize.

In a nutshell, if your backlink profile includes a few solid sitewide links along with other link types, you should not only avoid any penalty, but experience increased trust with diversity in your link profile as a whole. Just stay on topic, avoid purchasing links on bad neighborhoods and, of course, don`t rely predominantly on sidewide links. In fact, you really shouldn`t rely on one link type ever, as the makeup of a well established link portfolio includes many different link types. It`s the diversity that makes the links appear more natural, and therefore encourages Google to trust your link portfolio in its entirety.

The Simple Make Up of a Ranking Site

2009-01-04T15:55:00.000-07:00

Of course no one knows the exact science of the Google`s algorithm. Although many SEO`s will claim they have some insight, and experienced developers can take a guess, Google has kept the algo private, so no one truly holds the secret.

That said, I don`t claim to have all the answers, but years of link building experience with 1,000`s of different sites has solidified many assumptions and I can at least give a few tips.

So, let`s get right to it.

To simplify things, allow me to reference a little "SEO Slang" (more found in my previous post):

Algo = Google Algorithm:
A mathematical equation that uses certain information from websites in order to define their rankings.

Ranking = Google Ranking AKA = Search Engine Index:
The search engines (Google`s) results for the keyword searched. #1 is the desired indexed number for your site. In other words, you`d like to be "ranking #1" in the search engine indexing in order to get traffic to your site.

KW = Keyword AKA = Keyphrase (Anchor Text, Link Text) - Keywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries. Anchor text refers to the text that is used in your links.

G = Google

Spam/Spammy - Manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Spam could be grounds for banning.

SP = Sub Page - This refers to a interior page of a website with multiple pages.

CTR = Click Through Ratio - The percentage of visitors who click through on a link to visit the listed web site.

SERPs = SERP/Serps - Search Engine Results Page/Positioning. This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings, PPC) search results for a given query.

Ultimately 90% of website owners have one goal, to drive more traffic to their site! In an effort to help my clients achieve that goal, I have to come up with a way to increase their Google (and the other major search engines, i.e. Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, etc.) search engine rankings, for a particular (most of the time multiple) keyword phrases. Google wants to provide it`s users with the best search results possible. In order to instantly provide the user with the best websites possible, related to their search, they designed an algorithm. This algo has since become increasingly sophisticated and therefore impossible to crack. However, there are a few basic (okay, and not so basic) things every webmaster should know. Some may seem like a no brainer, while others may surprise you.

Here`s my list of some of the basic on-page and off-page factors that help your website rank:

So, you want to rank for a keyword? (More on how to pick a keyword(s) to come)
Start with the on-page factors, including:

Keyword Usage Factors:

• KW in desired page title tag (If you don`t know what this is, you shouldn`t be a webmaster)
• KW in header tags
• KW in on-page content (You want to provide relevant content on the keyword you want to rank for)
• KW usage in internal links pointing to the page (referencing your own content)
• KW in domain and/or URL (buying a domain with the keyword in it is optimal, especially in Yahoo, if it`s too late, make sure your SP`s use the main keyword)
*Note: Remember, less is more, you don`t want to overdo it, that`s called keyword stuffing

Domain Strength:

• Domain age (The older the better)
• Registration history (Who`s had it and for how long)
• Strength of links pointing to the domain (With each link acting like a vote for your website, you want the most votes, but also higher quality votes)
• Topical neighborhood of domain based on inbound links and outbound links (Don`t link out to, nor purchase links from bad or completely unrelated sites)
• Historical use and links pattern to domain (Creating a link trend that G can trust)
*Note - Age = trust, trust comes with time. Google wants to rank a site that`s been around for a while

Inbound Link Score:

• Age of links (Again, trust comes with time, Google wants longevity)
• Quality of domains sending links (think age and authority)
• Quality of pages sending links (Avoid link farms and spammy pages, think content rich and relevancy)
• Anchor text of links (Using the term you want to rank for)
• Link quantity/weight metric (Pagerank or a variation)
• Relevancy (related subject content) of linking site/page (Relevancy is important, but it`s about site audience relevancy, not direct competition – in other words, a site doing/selling the same thing wouldn`t naturally link to you, the competitor, however, a site with a simpliar audience would)

*Note – it`s all about the links, getting the right links, using the right anchor text and diversifying your link portfolio for a natural looking campaign

Search User Data:

• Historical Click Through Ratio (CTR) to page in SERPs (If you rank, but no one is clicking, you better rethink your title and description)
• Time users spend on page (If they click, but bounce off, you probably need to rethink your content, think compelling)
• Search requests for URL/domain (This is where branding comes in)
• Historical visits/use of URL/domain by users G can monitor (think G toolbar, wifi, analytics, etc.)

Content Quality Score – The Human Touch:

• This is potentially given by hand for popular queries/pages (Someone has to be working over there)
• Provided by Google raters (I`ve actually seen ad`s for hire on this)
• And, human monitored for QA, but obviously machine algo`s for rating text quality/readability/etc. (It`s not really unique content if no one can read it, in this case it`s just spam)

So, I hope you picked up a few useful tips. When it comes to the inbound links, help is on the way! Just call me at work 480-668-6139 ex 218 (Jenny Stradling) or, e-mail me at Jenny@textlinkbrokers.com
I`ll help you with the details.

Oh, and, don`t forget to HAVE FUN!

SEO 101

2008-12-22T21:30:00.000-07:00

Since a lot of my daily interactions with Customers and Employees involve what I would call "SEO 101", I thought, why not recognize the basics for the beginner on my blog. I think there is so much conflicting information out there when it comes to basic SEO, specifically links, that it becomes overwhelming and frustrating even for the "newbie". A lot of customers come in "tip toeing" and even defensive at times, because they have either been, A. burned before or B. are confused and therefore reserved when it comes to budget projection. After years of seemingly endless amounts of reading, meetings, e-mails and of course client phone calls, I feel like I`ve literally "heard it all" when it comes to on-line marketing.
That said, I decided to make this blog all about YOU, the reader. I wish I had a blog like this to read when I was getting started! Not all that obviously biased, and sometimes even arrogant "insider knowledge". Instead, I`d like to share some simple, but effective link building and on-page advice.

So, here is my plan for the next few posts:

The Simple Make Up of a Ranking Site

Unique Content

Sometimes Less is More

Trust: The Search Engines have Feelings

Link Building, 101

Working with Google, the Careful but Effective Approach

If I Were a Search Engine

Conversions, a Consumers Perspective

Relevancy, Knowing your Target Audience

Common Misconceptions, Who Do You Believe

Encouraging the Spider

Monetizing Your Site, Real Options

More to come.....
What topic interests you the most? I`ll write on request.

Google Lays off 10,000 ???

2008-11-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

I try to not get too caught up in the news, gossip and media frenzy when it comes to the economy, war and anything else that contributes the the downfall of society, economy and/or our country in general. I find it`s easy to get so worked up that I carry the news with me, and it can have a really negative impact on my generally enthusiastic and positive attitude. So, typically I prefer to just "stay out of it" as much as possible. HOWEVER, I just found this too noteworthy not to share.
Just do a quick search for "Google lay`s off 10,000" and you`ll see 1,000`s of results... Google`s own SERP is showing webGuild: http://www.webguild.org/2008/11/google-layoffs-10000-workers-affected.php as the top story.

In a nutshell:

"Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be on the chopping block according to sources. Since August, hundreds of employees have been laid off and there are reports that about 500 of them were recruiters for Google."

My conclusion:

In a nation wide economic downturn, it`s no surprise Google, or anyone else, is making a dramatic change, especially like cutbacks for what seems to be mostly recruiters (if you`re cutting back, what do you need recruiters for?). What I find appalling are the other allegations:

Google reports to the SEC that it has 20,123 employees but in reality it has 30,000. Why the discrepancy? Google classifies 10,000 of the employees as temporary operational expenses or “workers”. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, “There is no question that the number (of workers) is too high”

The classification affords Google several advantages such as:

1) Hire full time employees without full time benefits. The classification enables Google to pay them above minimum wage, provide no health benefits, no insurance coverage, no stock options, and no offer of permanent employment.

2) By under-reporting actual employee headcount, Google looks good to Wall Street. A low headcount gives the illusion that productivity per employee is more than it actually is, which in turn looks good in the eyes of Google shareholders which is ultimately good for Google’s stock in the short term.

Is it true? Is it not true? You decide.

Cool Tool of the Day

2008-11-18T16:13:00.000-07:00

I like cool SEO Tools, especially when they`re free!

This one sure saved us a lot of time today:

Mass Google PR Checker

What`s your favorite SEO tool? Feel free to share!

Matt Cutts Blog Is Down

2008-10-09T16:13:00.000-07:00

So, we think this is funny and thought you would too... go to:
http://mattcutts.com/blog/

It appears the Black Hat SEO community is not without a sense of humor!

It`s Time for Social Media!

2008-10-01T16:58:00.000-07:00

A lot of my clients want additional exposure, but don`t want to spend the extra money, or don`t have the budget at this time. A great way to increase your visibility for FREE is to create social media profiles that link back to you. You should have these anyways, as it`s always a great idea to saturate your brand any way you can on the web.

First, get yourself a blog (more on that later) and drop links to yourself here and there. Just don`t overdo it.

Next, make a profile that links back to your site on as many of these Social Media sites as you can (some are for niche industries or groups):

Social Bookmarking Sites

http://del.icio.us/
http://www.blinklist.com/
http://www.clipmarks.com/
http://www.fark.com
http://blogmarks.net
http://smarking.com/
http://www.furl.net/
http://www.mister-wong.de/
http://segnalo.com/
http://www.shadows.com/
http://www.mybookmarks.com/
http://www.linkswarm.com/
http://faves.com/
http://www.gifttagging.com/
http://www.simpy.com/
http://www.wists.com/
http://www.feedmarker.com/
http://lilisto.com/
http://ma.gnolia.com/
http://www.faved.net
http://www.spurl.net/
http://www.blummy.com/
http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/
http://buddymarks.com/
http://feedmelinks.com/portal
http://www.hyperlinkomatic.com/
http://www.linkagogo.com/
http://unalog.com/
http://tag.zurpy.com/
http://de.lirio.us/
http://www.furl.net/
http://www.linkroll.com/
http://blogmarks.net/
http://www.givealink.org/
http://www.looklater.com/
http://netvouz.com/
http://simpy.com/

Content Rating

http://www.digg.com/
http://www.propeller.com/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://www.reddit.com/
http://buzz.yahoo.com/
http://www.mixx.com/
http://www.dzone.com
http://www.slashdot.org
http://doggdot.us/
http://www.listible.com/
http://www.blogmemes.net/
http://www.blinkbits.com/
http://www.netscape.com/
http://www.spicypage.com/
http://www.shoutwire.com/
http://www.youhypeit.com/
http://www.rojo.com/

Social Networking Sites

http://www.facebook.com/
http://www.myspace.com
http://consumating.com/
http://www.blogcatalog.com
http://www.linkedin.com/
http://www.ning.com/
http://allconsuming.net
http://www.othersonline.com/
http://www.mybloglog.com
http://www.tickme.com/
http://www.orkut.com/
http://standpoint.com/
http://www.meetup.com/
http://www.43things.com/
http://www.43people.com
http://www.43places.com/
http://www.efamilyties.com/
http://www.9rules.com/

Video Networking Sites

http://youtube.com/
http://www.broadcaster.com/
http://www.dailymotion.com/us
http://www.metacafe.com/
http://vsocial.com
http://www.springdoo.com/

Miscellaneous Social Sites

http://alexadex.com/ad/
http://www.tailrank.com/
http://spotback.com/
http://ma.gnolia.com/
http://www.jot.com/
http://www.spinspy.com/
http://googlemark.org/
http://www.meebo.com/
http://www.slawsome.com
http://rollyo.com/
http://quimble.com/
http://www.twitter.com/
http://metawishlist.com/
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc
http://www.rawsugar.com/index.faces
http://www.squidoo.com/
http://wink.com/
http://kinja.com/
http://tailrank.com/

Wiki Sites

http://swicki.eurekster.com/
http://www.wetpaint.com/
http://pbwiki.com/

Job Sites

http://www.jobsinsearch.com/
http://cssbeauty.com/
http://www.pagebites.com/

Organization Sites

http://hipcal.com/
http://www.backflip.com/
http://www.connotea.org/
http://30boxes.com

Tagging Sites

http://www.citeulike.org/
http://www.tagtooga.com/db.tag
http://tagalag.com/

Photo Sites

http://flickr.com/
http://www.slide.com/

Music Sites

http://odeo.com/
http://www.mystrands.com/
http://www.last.fm/
http://upto11.net/

Political Sites

http://gabbr.com/
http://www.newsvine.com/
http://www.blogniscient.com/

Shopping Sites

http://www.judysbook.com/

Program Sites

http://www.campfirenow.com/
http://www.basecamphq.com/

Feeds Sites

http://technorati.com/
http://www.feedburner.com/
http://www.tagsy.com/
http://www.feedmeme.com/

Maps Sites

http://www.wayfaring.com/
http://www.frappr.com/

For a more extensive list, go to good ol Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

Expect direct clicks, increased brand awareness, natural links and a group of friends and followers!

If you aren`t on these sites, you`re already behind the times :-)

Hey, if you need help, give me a call, I`ll do it for you for a small fee:
480-668-6139 ex 218

More on the PR Update...

2008-09-30T13:23:00.000-07:00

Since a lot of my clients and partners are noticing a change in their PR, I thought I should do a quick follow up post.

If you are concerned about a change in Google PR as reflected on the toolbar. Here’s a few things to consider:

• Google Toolbar PR and actual PR and 2 different numbers, just because the Toolbar says something, that doesn`t mean it`s your sites true, actual PR.

• PR works on a logarithmic scale so as more websites get indexed the majority of sites lose PR relatively. Google is doing updates more frequently because there are so many new sites to index. Eventually it will nearly impossible to achieve a PR 7 or 8, most of us will be lucky to get PR at all, but this isn`t to say your site has lost any value.

• Your PR is diluted across your whole site, as you add new pages you must add deep links to each new page as well as increase links to the main page in a greater proportion to be sure of a PR increase which will not help SERPs. Furthermore if your non WWW version of your site is not redirected to your WWW version, it should be as to not split PR between the 2 URL`s.

• Trust rank is far more important than page rank. Who links to you, who you link to. Google knows very well many sites that sell links and in an effort to confuse sellers and buyers, they can take away PR as reflected on the toolbar. This isn`t to say you have lost any true PR.

If you are a partner or if you are selling links, there are special ways you should be hosting your links in order to ensure you don`t get flagged as a link seller and lose Toolbar PR. I suggest:

• Limit the number of OB links per page to 10-15 max, maybe even less on the HP

• Try to only links to sites that are relevant and can be seen as useful to the users of your site

• Do not host your links at the very top or very bottom of the page… within the body or even a sidebar is much more natural looking

• Do not state the links are paid or sponsored anywhere from within the site

• Embed the links within content, stand alone links look very suspicious - Instead, offer: Hosted Marketing Pages or Contextual Links

• Throw in at least one authoritative, relevant OB link on your HP that is obviously NOT paid (for example: NASA, a .gov, etc)

• For each new link make sure you add at least 200-500 words of fresh content to that page

• Continue to add fresh new links to your site each month, even if they are not higher PR, the trend makes your site appear as more of an authority

Bottom line:

Toolbar PR does NOT = True or Actual PR
If you sell links, be smart! Host them in a natural looking way!
Work on continuing to add value to your site... if you want to be successful on-line, you`re going to have to invest a lot of time and money, nothing comes easy, and if it does, it won`t last long.

Good luck! Now go write some content :-)

Google PR Toolbar Update

2008-09-29T11:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, that`s right. It`s that time again!!! If you`ve noticed your PR fluctuating or if some of the sites linking to you have changed in PR it`s because Google is doing a PR update right now. Matt Cutts said they are "1/365th of the way there!" so, expect to see up`s and down`s until the dust settles.

As you are probably already aware, Google periodically updates it`s PR Toolbar. In the past these updates generally took place once every 3-6 months. Over the last year or two we have noticed Google updating the PR Toolbar even more frequently and for longer periods of time. We recently experienced a Toolbar update, at the end of which we updated our rented products with new pricing in accordance with what we believed was the updated PR. Unfortunately, even though the update seemed to be over, we continued to see a lot of sites change dramatically in PR. One day a PR 8 would go to a 5, only to come back up the next day to a 7. It`s obvious now that the updates will be happening more sporadically and changes can fluctuate for long periods of time (weeks, sometimes months). I personally think Google is moving towards a more sophisticated system which will allow them to update sites on the fly. PR today, gone tomorrow...

Overall Google has devalued Toolbar PR anyways. It used to be that the higher the Toolbar PR, the more SEO value that site can pass. That is no longer the case. And, just becasue the Toolbar says something, that doesn`t mean it`s your sites true PR.

I`ve seen a variety of things happening, such as:

Google takes some or all PR away on certain sites they think might be selling links to confuse buyers, but the pages still cache and the links still index.

Google leaves PR as is, but stops the site from being able to pass any PR.

Google only gives higher PR to sites in certain industries, or to branded names (you know Adobe, HP and such are buying links!!).

Higher PR is getting increasingly difficult to achieve- like Google is grading on a curve and only so many sites can be a 9, a few more an 8, more 7`s, etc. So, even if you have high PR now and you feel nothing has changed on your site, you`re PR can go down simply due to the "Google curve". If your in a popular online industry, too bad. You may never be able to achieve the higher PR`s, unless you knock someone out of that spot. It`s called on-line saturation! How relevant can a scale from 1-10 be when there are billions of sites ranking #8? Not very. Sorry people, but if 1 million turns into 5 million over the next year in your industry, you`ll be lucky to be a PR 3.

With so many discrepancies it`s become apparent Toolbar PR is a thing of the past. Instead, there are many other variables that you can use when determining the value of a site, for example:

How many backlinks that site has – specifically .gov and .edu links
How old the site is – what is the age of the domain?
The Compete and Alexa ranking
How many other OB links that site or page has
How many pages are indexed, how much unique content does the site have?
How the site is hosting the links (top, bottom, sidebar? contextually or stand alone? boxed together, under a "sponsored heading", near other links that aren`t relevant...)

The list goes on and on....

If you do see a dramatic decrease and you think it`s because of something you did (on page changes, a bunch of new links, etc.), the worst thing you can do is freak out and make a bunch of changes. This is exactly what Google is looking for when trying to determine whether a new link building trend (or whatever caused them to "red flag" your site in the first place) is natural or “paid”. If they are messing with you and trying to confused you by temporarily changing the PR on the toolbar, it`s only with the hope you`ll screw things up for yourself by taking down your links or making other changes to your site.

Unless your site loses rankings in the SERPS, don`t freak out (and even then, don`t freak out... but that`s a whole new blog post for another day). Who cares what your Toolbar PR is if you still have good organic placement? Isn`t the goal to get traffic to your site?

Bottom line:

Google DOES play games with sites to confuse people
Toolbar PR DOES NOT = organic placement
A decrease in PR DOES NOT = a penalty
If you suspect Google is playing games, play games too :-) Buy links that are difficult to flag as paid and RANK ON!

E-mail me of you have questions: Jenny@textlinkbrokers.com
or, as always, comment away!

What`s Up with the Yahoo Site Explorer ??

2008-09-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

Around here we like to use Yahoo Site Explorer to check indexed pages and backlinks. For those of you who may not be familiar with the command, you simply go to Yahoo.com and type in:

link:http://www.yourwebsitehere.com

This will ask Yahoo to tell you how many links you have indexed with them. You can use the same command in Google, but in my experience, they tend to only show 10-15% of a sites backlinks (Google is sneaky) whereas Yahoo tends to show 80-90%. HOWEVER, today I just read a post here on SEO Roundtable: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018145.html
Which is always legit. They are saying that DigitalPoint Forums is reporting on a major update in Yahoo and that many websites are experiencing huge drops in link numbers. They aren`t sure if it`s a glitch, or if Yahoo has tweaked their algorithm and the huge drops in backlinks may be attributed to the algo change. Either way, this is not good for me. I often refer to Yahoo as being the better search engine for checking backlinks... if they don`t want to show us everything and Google doesn`t either, we`re going to be guessing a lot more. Oh well, as long as my clients still see good rankings, we`re all happy...

What do you think?

SEO Slang - AKA - SEO Definitions

2008-08-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

If you do SEO or SEM you know there is a special language that we speak.... I like to call it "SEO Slang"....

This is a compilation of various industry related terms I feel are important in the SEO/SEM/Links/PPC/SM world for my employees and anyone else who wants to talk the "SEO talk"...

Here it is:

JENNY'S SEO SLANG:

Affiliate - An individual or company that markets a merchant's products or services and it paid only a sales commission fee. An affiliate is a marketing partner who promotes your products or services for a commission.

Affiliate Site - A site created to host links to a merchant's Web site so the site owner can make a commission.

Age of Domain - The number of years a particular website has been on-line. This starts with the date the domain was registered.

Alexa Ranking - Alexa is a search engine that provides extra information such as traffic rankings. An Alexa ranking is an indicator used to gauge site performance, based on comparisons drawn against other sites.

Algorithm - A mathematical equation, created by the search engines themselves (Google has their own, Yahoo has their own, etc) that uses certain information from websites in order to define their rankings.

Anchor Text Optimization – The technique of purposely placing keywords in the anchor text of your incoming and/or internal links in order to rank better for those keywords.

Authority Site - A site that is deemed by a search engine to be authoritative in its chosen field of subject matter. .edu and .gov sites are seen as “authority sites” and therefore desirable places to have a link.

Backlinks (Inbound Links) - The term used to refer to links which point to your site. Also called "Inbound Links" or "In Links"

Bad Neighborhood - Google sometimes refers to spammy Web sites, which employ tricks to misdirect users, as "bad neighborhoods."

Banned - When a search engine determines a Web site has violated their quality standards, all Web pages are removed from the search engine's index.

Banner Ad - An advertising banner (most often graphic) displayed on sites to advertise a web site. If a user clicks on the banner it will take them to that site

Black Hat - Techniques considered unethical, or contrary to the Terms of Service of search engines. Some examples are hiding text (ie - white letters on a white background) and cloaking.

Block Level Analysis – Microsoft’s attempt to deal with the faults in PageRank (PR) and HITS

Blog - A blog (short for web log) is an online journal or diary of an individual or groups opinions and latest news that is updated regularly, in chronological order. Many blogs allow visitors to make comments, or “postings” in response to the blogger, or ask questions.

Blogger - The owner and/or author of a blog. You can also have a “Guest Blogger” which is someone who writes for another owners blog.

Bot - Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.

Brand/Branding - The emotional response associated with your company and/or products. A brand is built through controlling customer expectations and the social interactions between customers. Building a brand is what allows you to move away from commodity based pricing and move toward higher margin value based pricing.

Broken Link - A hyperlink which is not functioning. A link which does not lead to the desired location.

Cache - A cache is a temporary storage area where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access. (A “cached snapshot” is the search engines last view of the content of the webpage you’re currently viewing in your browser.)

Class C IP's - Class C networks make up an eighth of the total available IP addresses. The IP is unique, but if hosted on the same class C IP the search engine can detect and the links may not be as valuable then if hosted on completely unique Class C IP`s.

Cloaking - Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Code/Coding - Code can be added to web documents (HTML or other) through the usage of a program editor.

Content - The text, video, sound and graphics that makes up a web page. The text is what makes up the visual content.

Conversion - Site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as buying a product from the website, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other advertising campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors’ actions within a website. Many use analytics as well, such as Google Analytics.

CPC - Abbreviation for Cost Per Click. It is the base unit of cost for a PPC campaign.

CTA - Abbreviation for Content Targeted Ad(vertising). It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.

CTR - Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.

Del.icio.us - Popular social bookmarking website… said to have “no follow tags” but Google still indexes the links.

Digg – A social news site where users vote on which stories get the most exposure and become the most popular.

Direct Clicks - When a user of a website directly clicks on the link(s) to get to the site the link points to. (Banners are good for direct clicks, our links are intended for SEO value).

Directory Link - A link on or within a Directory site, generally placed in a relevant category making it easy for a site user to find your listing or a search engine spider to find your link.

Directory Submissions - A website submission service where your website is added to the proper category in a searchable online directory which enhances your site’s visibility and creates relevant inbound links to your website. (Creating Directory Links)

DMOZ - The Open Directory Project is the largest human edited directory of websites. DMOZ is owned by AOL, and is primarily ran by volunteer editors.

Doorway Page/Gateway Page - A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific key phrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Duplicate Content - Content copied from other web pages to increase ranking with the help of more keywords is called “duplicate content”. Google has a filter that looks for duplicate text which may give a penalty to that page or even site.

Dynamic Content - Content which changes over time or uses a dynamic language such as PHP to help render the page.

EDU Links - A link hosted on a .edu site (an .edu site is a registered official educational institutions site)

Family Friendly - Pretty much every topic of relevancy other then adult, pharmaceutical and gambling. (Is it okay for a 5 year old to look at it?)

FFA - Abbreviation for Free For All. FFA sites post large lists of unrelated links to anyone and everyone. FFA sites and the links they provide are basically useless. Humans do not use them and search engines minimize their importance in ranking formulas.

Filter - Certain activities or signatures which make a page or site appear unnatural might make search engines inclined to filter / remove them out of the search results. For example, if a site publishes significant duplicate content it may get a reduced crawl priority and get filtered out of the search results. Some search engines also have filters based on link quality, link growth rate, and anchor text. Some pages are also penalized for spamming.

Footer - A websites text, images or links at the bottom of the page

Forum - An online discussion group, where participants with common interests can exchange open messages.

Fresh Content - Content which is dynamic in nature and gives people a reason to keep paying attention to your website.

FUD - Fear, uncertainty and doubt.

FUD Campaign - A “Fear, uncertainty, and doubt” campaign to frighten people into thinking something is bad by providing misleading information.

G - Google

General Category - A number of categories of relevancy represented in one place could be called a General Category site. (Blogs, new sites, etc.)

Google Dance - Up to June, 2003, Google has updated the index for their search engine on a roughly monthly basis. While the update is in progress, search results for each of Google's nine datacenters are different. The positions of a site appears to "dance" as it fluctuates minute to minute. "Google dance" is an unofficial term coined to refer to the period when Google is performing the update to its index. Google may be changing their index calculation method to allow for a continuous update (which will effectively end the roughly monthly dances).

Google Toolbar - Google’s specific toolbar options (such as PR)

GOV links - A link hosted on a .gov site (an .gov site is a registered official government site)

Grey hat - Optimization strategies that are in an unknown area of reputability/validity. Somewhere in-between Black and White Hat.

Header - The information at the beginning of an email, bulletin board message, article, etc.

Hit - One hit is one request for a file on a web server. A visitor opening a page with 5 images will in the process generate 6 hits (1 each for the images and one for the HTML page itself). The term is sometimes also used with reference to the number of results (hits) a search engine returns for a specific query.

HITS - Hyperlink Induced Topic Search

HP - Home Page

HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language - A programming (coding) language used to create documents for display on the World Wide Web.

HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol - HTTP is the most common transfer protocol used to facilitate communication between servers and browsers.

Hyperlink – A hyperlink, more commonly called a link, is an electronic connection between one web page to either (1) other web pages on the same web site, or (2) web pages located on another web site. More specifically, a hyperlink is a connection between one page of a hypertext document to another.

Hyperlink Induced Topic Search - Referring to a search where the search algorithm relies (partly) on hyperlinks to identify topic areas. Not to be confused with "hits" referring to file requests.

Image Link - A hyperlink which appears on an image.

Image Tags - A hyperlink which appears on an image that defines the image for the search engine spider.

Inbound Links - The term used to refer to links which point to your site. Also called "Backlinks" or "In links."

Index - Often used in reference to the search engine. Is the site/link indexed? When the search engine picks up the website/ link the website/ link is “indexed”, which means it`s getting the search engine visibility.

IP Address - All computers across the internet are assigned a unique identifier called an IP address. They are used like street addresses so other computers can find them. An IP address could look something like this: 87.242.211.23.

Keyword Stuffing - Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the 'benefit' of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page (it looks like spam). It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (ie. lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.

Keyword/Keyphrase (Anchor Text, Link Text) - Keywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries. Anchor text refers to the text that is used in your links.

Landing Page ("Doorway page") - A page used, which is generally relevant to anchor text, to help bring visitors to a website. A Landing Page can also be used for search engine optimization and PPC campaigns

Link (Text Link) - Similar to Image Links (Banner Links) these are hyperlinks which appear on text found within the site. A graphic, line of text, or both on a Web page that connects to another page on the same Web site or to one on a Web server located anywhere in the world. Links are "clicked on" to go to the Web page they specify.

Link Farm - A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR). Engaging in a link farm is a violation of the Terms of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Link Popularity - A broad term used to loosely associate how popular your site is by how many inbound links it has. Link popularity has changed over time, however, to now consider not only volume of incoming links but their "worth" to the site. Inbound links from relevant related sites are worth more to overall link popularity than non-related or non-relevant links.

Link Profile - What does the site tend to link to?

LP - Landing Page - Landing pages are any page, HomePage (HP) or SubPage (SP), within a particular website that a potential client will land on after clicking on an add, an organic result in the search engines, e-mail marketing campaign or even an article or Press Release.

LPO – Landing Page Optimization – A serious of on-page elements can be optimized for conversions. LPO is part of a broader Internet marketing process called Conversion Optimization, or Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), with the goal of improving the percentage of visitors to the website that become sales leads and customers.

Matt Cutts - (AKA “The Google Guy”) - Google's head of search quality. Runs his own Blog sponsored and endorsed by Google

Meta tag - A meta tag is an element of HTML that often describes the contents of a Web page, and is placed near the beginning of the page's source code. Search engines use information provided in a meta tags to index pages by subject.

Metadata - Data about data. Structured information that describes, explains, locates, and otherwise makes it easier to retrieve and use an information resource.

Mirror/Mirror Page - In SEO parlance, a mirror is a near identical duplicate website (or page). Mirrors are commonly used in an effort to target different keywords/key phrases. Using mirrors is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Natural (Natural Search Listings) - See Organic Listings

Newsgroup - A discussion forum where users can post messages and reply to other users.

Newspaper Site - An online news publication site. Any topic of “General Family Friendly” relevancy can be found here.

"No Follow", "No Robot" (Blocked pages) – Website code that allows web masters and site owners to restrict which links a search engine crawler follows. By adding a "no follow" tag to a hyperlink the site tells the search engine that the link isn't worth anything to the site being linked to. This is a common tag used to discourage spam link builders from bulk link building as well as tell engines if links are paid advertising links.

Non-relevant - Also determined by the search engines algorithm, if a site is hosting links that would not seem relevant to the users of the site, we would call them “non-relevant”.

OB Links - Out Bound Links - A link pointing from your website to an external website.

One Way Links - Getting a link from a site without linking back to that same website. (*We only do one way links).

Organic (Organic Listings) - Organic search engine listings appear after all of the paid advertising (PPC ads). The results are formulated from the search engine's index. Also known as Natural Search listings.

Penalization - When a search engine penalizes a site the site generally loses PR and/or organic listings.

Penalized - Search engines prevent some websites suspected of spamming from ranking highly in the results by banning or penalizing them. These penalties may be automated algorithmically or manually applied. If a site is penalized algorithmically the site may start ranking again after a certain period of time after the reason for being penalized is fixed. If a site is penalized manually the penalty may last an exceptionally long time or require contacting the search engine with a reinclusion request to remedy.

PFI - Pay For Inclusion - Many search engines offer a PFI program to assure frequent spidering / indexing of a site (or page). PFI does not guarantee that a site will be ranked highly (or at all) for a given search term. It just offers webmasters the opportunity to quickly incorporate changes to a site into a search engine's index. This can be useful for experimenting with tweaking a site and judging the resultant effects on the rankings.

PPC - Pay Per Click - An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic generated by their ads.

PR - Page Rank - Google's trademark for their proprietary measure of link

"Presell Page" - This is another term for content hosting or content advertising, also known as Hosted Marketing Pages (HMP’s) or In Content Pages.

Reciprocal Links - A reciprocal link is where website [A] links to website [B], Website [B] in turn links to website [A].

Reinclusion - If a site has been penalized for spamming they may fix the infraction and ask for reinclusion. Depending on the severity of the infraction and the brand strength of the site they may or may not be added to the search index.

Relevance/Relevancy (Search Engine Relevancy) - The measure of the accuracy of the search results - in other words it's a measure of how close the documents listed in the search results are to what the user was looking for.

Relevant (Site Relevancy) - Ultimately determined by the search engines algorithm, relevancy says how closely related a particular page is to the site it is hosting a link for.

Reseller - A customer who is authorized to resell another company’s products and/or services. They are responsible for properly relaying any TOS or contract, managing the client and ensuring the payment is on time.

Robots.txt - Robots.txt is a file which well behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit

ROI - Return on Investment - In the context of SEO, the term refers to sales generated as the direct result of a search engine marketing campaign.

RSS - Really Simple Syndication

RSS Feed - Rss is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds

Sandboxed - Also known as the Google Sandbox, this is a theory which holds that all news websites are placed into a "holding area" where they must earn their way out through reputation building and management. The quickest way out of the sandbox is to build links from relevant related sources which are considered authoritative in your industry.

Search Engine Index - The search engines results for the keyword searched. #1 is the desired indexed number for your site. In other words, you`d like to be ranking #1 in the search engine indexing in order to get traffic to your site.

SEM - Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and search engine paid advertising options (banners, PPC, etc.)

SEO - Search Engine Optimization - SEO covers the process of making web pages spider friendly (so search engines can read them) making web pages relevant to desired keyphrases

SEO Links - Links intended to help a site rank higher in the SERP`s.

SERP/Serps - Search Engine Results Page/Positioning - This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query.

Sitewide - A link that appears on each page (including the HP) of a site.

Social Bookmark - A link building method for internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.

SM - Social Media - Any website or web service that utilizes a 'social' or 'web 2.0' philosophy. This includes blogs, micro blogs (Twitter), social networks, social news, wikis, etc.

Source Code - Also known as source, source code is the original work created by a developer. It contains all the tags and instructions in a text file used to compose a Web page.

SP - Sub Page - This refers to a interior page of a website with multiple pages.

Spam/Spammy - Manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Spam could be grounds for banning.

Spider - The search engine “spider” crawls each site. Spiders are used to feed pages to search engines. Another term for these programs is “webcrawler”.

Splash Page - Splash pages are introduction pages to a web site that are heavy on graphics (or flash video) with no textual content. They are designed to either impress a visitor or complement some corporate branding.

Stop Word - Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as the.

Supplemental Index - Generally known as the Google index where certain pages of a website are stored, which have been given little to no trust or value from Google. This could be due to spammy elements, but primarily is due to the fact that these pages have no indexed backlinks.

Supplemental Results – Pages deemed to be of less importance by Google’s algorithm or are less trusted.

Title tag - HTML tag used to define the text in the top line of a Web browser, also used by many search engines as the title of search listings.

Toolbar - A row of icons at the top of your browser that activate functions when clicked.

TOS - Terms of Service or Terms of Sale, a legal document signed by the end user outlining the specific terms of the service/product they are purchasing.

URL - Uniform Resource Locator / Universal Resource Locator. A unique Internet address (for example http://www.textlinkbrokers.com) that every Internet resource must have in order to be located.

Webmaster Guidelines - The search engines guidelines for webmasters intended to help the search engine find, index, and rank your site. (Google has their own webmaster guidelines)

White hat - Techniques that fall within the terms of service of the search engines. Building useful online content, labeling pages correctly, gaining high quality in-bound links from relevant sites etc.

Feel free to send more ideas if you feel I`m missing anything. This is a work in progress!

Online “Laugh” Marketing through Link Bait

2008-03-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

Creating INFECTIOUS Results!

Question: How do you get good, relevant sites to WANT to link to you?

Have you ever received an e-mail with a funny movie clip, joke or picture? Remember that dancing baby that was sent around to millions? It was laughter that made that e-mail circulate around the web. The second you laugh out loud you begin thinking of someone to pass that e-mail along to: friends, family, co-workers…

Why not use this same technique when considering a link bait campaign?

What is Link Bait?

Link Bait is, more or less, anything you create anywhere on the Web that inspires other people to link to it. They can link to it via a Web page, a blog, social bookmarking, tagging, e-zine, newsletter, IM, e-mail or any other method that tells others about the bait.

Link Bait can be done in a variety ways:
News, contrary, attack, resource, fear and… humor!

Humor is universal. Using humor brings in readers from all over, and, when done properly, doesn`t risk offending your audience or alienating your site.

When it comes to your site, you can use humor to entice your audience, which, like many of us, have grown tired of the daily routine and are happy to stumble upon something humorous. Start posting something funny, you’ll then find your users coming back more often to see what innovative, funny or wacky things they`ll find.

Link Bait through outside sources, consider:
Articles, Press Releases, Pre-sell Pages

When preparing content that is intended to be syndicated, the focus should always be on compelling, newsworthy content. What is going to make the user not only enjoy reading the article, but love it so much they`d like to pick it up and put in on their own site?

Humor!

The most successful content based release is the one that connects with the reader. How better to connect then through humor?

Still, online marketing through humor can be tricky. It`s like watching a comedian that makes you laugh like crazy, but not being able to remember the jokes to tell to a friend the next day. You may have a great idea, but if you can`t effectively convey that message, it counts as a total loss.

Now what?

First, you need a professional writer, equipped to write a hook that will set the humorous tone you are going for. Second, you need a link bait expert who understands SEO and who can deliver on their promises.

That`s where we come in. With over 5 years of on-line marketing experience and thousands of happy clients, we feel confidant we can deliver content that will get the laughter flowing. Your humor based content will kick off the syndication. All you have to do is sit back and watch the traffic pour in!

TextLinkBrokers.com – Smarter Links for Higher Rankings

To contact me directly:

Jenny Hansen Stradling
Strategic Sales Director
360 Enterprises, Inc.
TextLinkBrokers.com
jenny@textlinkbrokers.com
Office: (480) 668-6139 ex 218

Video Sharing Site	Page Rank
Google Video	9
BrightCove	8
PhotoBucket	8
YouTube	8
DailyMotion	7
iFilm	7
Myspace	7
Vimeo	7
BuzzNet	6
Flixya	6
GoFish	6
Kwego	6
Lulu	6
MyHeavy	6
PutFile	6
StupidVideos	6
Vmix	6
ZippyVideos	6
CastPost	5
Dotv	5
Famster	5
MeraVideo	5
Porkolt	5
VideoWebTown	5
Vidmax	4

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SEO 101:

Google PR Update Time..... AGAIN!

Google PR Update Time!

SEO Tip of the Day

SEO tip of the day: Using Secondary Keywords to support a Root Term

Follow Up: Google vs. Bing... vs. Yahoo?

Look Out Google!

Cool Tool of the Day: Mass Google PR Checker

I Joined the SEO Book Community

Sitewides: Are They Really "bad"?

The Simple Make Up of a Ranking Site

SEO 101

Google Lays off 10,000 ???

Cool Tool of the Day

Matt Cutts Blog Is Down

It`s Time for Social Media!

More on the PR Update...

Google PR Toolbar Update

What`s Up with the Yahoo Site Explorer ??

SEO Slang - AKA - SEO Definitions

Online “Laugh” Marketing through Link Bait