One way to increase traffic to your blog is obviously by trading links with other bloggers on your ‘blogroll’ or links sections in the sidebar. Honestly I have been lazy about trading links with people, partly because I don’t feel like bugging anyone, and partly because I am managing several blogs at once, and this seo tips blog at Webovater has been placed on the backburner for several months. To be honest, the purpose for this blog was to write down answers to questions that my clients were always asking me, about social media, seo, traffic building strategies, etc. The other purpose of this blog was to put a little change in the jar, help me to pay for diapers for the 3 boys. It’s helped a little, thanks to the fact that seo keywords are usually pretty competitive as far as adsense goes. But because I do not devote a great deal of time to writing on this blog, it’s nothing to get excited about.

Now, there might be a little more of a lull here, because I am going to be adding content to a new blog called Web revenge starting with an interesting account of my dealings with self-proclaimed seo expert John Cota. He had asked me in an email to contribute to one of his seo blogs, bouncing ideas back and forth, and just having some interesting seo / social traffic discussions. But after doing some research, I do not think this will be a good idea.  For more information, please see the Web Revenge Blog. This is where I will be documenting my experiences with some of the Internet’s more shady characters, from nonpaying clients and time stealers, to spammers and charlatans.

The other reason my articles here have grown less frequent is because instead of working on a blog, to deliver seo tips to my clients who have questions, I have been working on a seminar/workshop and creating the materials to go with that. If you have any questions that you would like answered about search engine optimization, feel free to email them to me, or actually, just use the contact form over at webovator.com (my other site) and your questions will go straight to my inbox. Then in answering you, I can also know better what to include in my workshop material for local small business owners who want to learn everything there is to know about seo.

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Beginner’s 5-Minute Guide to SEO:

seo is Search Engine Optimization.

You want to reach the number one spot on Google (and Yahoo and Live, but we’ll just say Google, because it’s easier). By using the correct keywords in all your alt tags, title tags, h tags, class names, image names, meta tags, etc. That is called on-site optimization.

Off-site seo

Off-site optimization consists of getting other quality sites to link to you. Each link must have relevant link text, and it helps if the site has a high PR (pagerank) and a small number of outbound links. Traditionally, people would hoard PR by getting tons of websites to link back to them, but by refusing to place links on their own site (they were afraid of what we call “pagerank bleed”. But anymore, I don’t believe pagerank bleed is something that anyone should concern themselves with. The use of “nofollow” on external links is becoming worthless, and after boiling everything down to its elements, the bottom line is to give out links to sites only if you think your human audience would find value on a given website.

You want to avoid buying backlinks.  The general consensus is, if you create quality content, you will get links naturally.  In the beginning of the Internet days, before Google, webmasters would put links of to pages that were of interest.  Then the search engines started using inbound links as popularity votes, and it became high school all over again.  Now we are out of college, and more mature, and the best way to go about things is to link to sites you personally like, because they are interesting and you have something in common, not because you are getting something out of it (in other words, don’t buy links, don’t join reciprocal link farms, and don’t sell links! Targeted advertising is one thing–but paying $100 to have your link displayed on 100,000 completely unrelated spammy sites will not do you any good!  Don’t do it!

What’s our mantra, class?

content is king.

Think of it this way. You build a site, and it starts with no PR. Then Google rolls out an update 3 months later and they saw that you have 15 quality sites linking to you, and your site has 50 really good articles, and a good mix of relevant inbound and outbound links. You might skip PR 0 and PR 1 and be blessed with a PR 2. Very few sites have a PR 10. Pagerank is not something to obsess over, more of a general guide to see how important Google thinks your site is. The theory is that a high PR page will get more traffic because it will be listed higher in the SERPs. (SEARCH ENGINE RESULT PAGES) but don’t waste energy worrying about PR when you could instead be writing an article or making a video!

White hat, Black hat…

That’s some Bad Hat, Harry!

There are tons of ways to increase your SERP position. But it is a very competitive field. That’s where black hat and white hat come in, they are terms that describe the ethics used by the seo experts. If you use tricks that are designed to fool the search engines, using spammy tactics, that is black hat. Quality honest seo consultants use white hat methods, like article submission, social bookmarking, and manual submission to quality directories like DMOZ.

I hope this hasn’t confused you too much. It just all kind of spilled out. If you are interested in the 30 Day Challenge, for your promoting your website, it’s a really awesome free course that covers all of this stuff and shows you how to make your first dollar online. My mom is doing it, which shows how accessible it is to beginners. Stop by our google group for Team Rockstar if ya want to join the discussion. My brother and I started it to help our friends and family who want to learn this stuff, and who are going to take part in this year’s 30 Day Challenge.

Oh it’s free too? Of course. Ed Dale’s cheesy slogan is “There’s no charge for awesomeness!”

Chris
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Step One: Create some great content on your site.   For an example of great content, keep reading my blogs.  Why?  Because I will be linking to OTHER great content.  Ha, and you thought I was patting myself on the back, dintcha?

Step Two: Bookmark, bookmark, bookmark. If you don’t already have accounts on Digg, Fark, Furl, del.icio.us, Propeller, Mixx, Yigg, Reddit, and every other bookmarking site in existence, get them.  It will be incredibly tedious setting them all up, but after that four or five hour trek is complete, and you autosave your passwords, and drag your bookmarklets to the browser toolbar, you will be on the fast lane to success. There are at least a couple hundred bookmarking sites to choose from these days; for a few of the popular ones, look to the bottom of this article.

A quick note about social bookmarking: it used to be a great tool for seo.  The importance of bookmarking in terms of backlink building has decreased a little bit over the past two years, but it is still a good practice to get into, because you will get traffic.  Even though you might not get tons of diggs, if you just get a few, and one person likes your stuff enough to link to it from HIS or HER site, then you will get a backlink indirectly from a living breathing human, who liked your content.  And when you have a chance to network with other living humans, it is a good thing.

Bookmark other people’s content, link to them, leave them comments and shouts, and they will remember you.

Step three: leave comments on blogs that relate to your content. Yes, you have heard this idea before, and it’s time consuming.  And you have heard that a lot of blogs insert the rel=”nofollow” into all links to keep from passing along any PR juice to your site.  But now, remember that you want to write content for humans. You want to network on social bookmarking sites with humans.  And you want to get traffic from humans.  So who cares if the link has “nofollow” attached to it?  Over the long haul you will find plenty of “dofollow” links.  Don’t discriminate, grab them all.

Still not convinced? Ok, well here is a trick to find other blogs that are HUNGRY for your comments, and DOFOLLOW.  Use the “Do Follow Diver” search box over at our friends’ site, and just type in your niche keywords.  It’s easy, it’s fun.  Why is it fun?  Because the blog owners you will find here actually respond, they are waiting for you, and they are happy to link back to your site.

Just be respectful and make sure your comments are relevant, not spammy.

If you bookmark one of YOUR blog articles and one of someone else’s each day, AND leave a comment with your link on ONE blog each day, your traffic will pick up.  Make it fun, and don’t do too much at once.  You will see results faster than you think.

Steps 4 and 5: Forums and Article Directories, coming in the next entry.

Time for me to make some pasta.  See you soon.

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Have you ever wondered just how Google got to be a PageRank 10 site?

Just kidding, it’s pretty obvious.

But seriously, how do I make the jump from a PR3 to a PR4?  I have been sitting at PR3, not moving up or down, for what seems like forever.  Really it’s only been a couple of months, but we Americans are SO impatient, aren’t we? If I was cool I would have said Yanks, not Americans, but let’s get to the point:

BACKLINKS ARE THE NEW BLACK!

So it’s not a new trend, but the importance of it is huge.  You can’t compete unless you make link building an active  part of your seo Dance Moves repertoire.

Inbound links and backlinks are the same thing, if you weren’t sure.  It’s okay to ask questions, this blog is not aimed at the experts.  The experts don’t need seo blogs.

So although the practice of getting backlinks to increase your PageRank is not new, the importance of it is SO GREAT that it still merits being called the new black.

I would venture to say that IF your domain is young, and IF you do not have the luxury of having your primary keyword phrase in your domain, the fastest and best way to build your authority is by getting other sites to link to you.

Think of it this way: all other factors being equal, if two web pages are equal in terms of keyword density and onsite optimization, then the best tiebreaker is in OFFSITE optimization.

So although it can be tedious, although it is probably going to be your least favorite aspect of seo, it is still one of the smartest things to focus on.

The next article will be a list of creative ways to get those inbound links from high PR sites, and we aren’t going to send out a single desparate email to any webmaster, begging for a repicrocal link exchange!

I will make link building fun, if it kills me!

Comments are welcome, it’s getting lonely in this elevator shaft.

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First of all, SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page.  The ideal spot is number one.  Google puts ten sites on each page, so in order to get listed on the first SERP for a given keyword, you must be in the top ten sites ranked for that keyword.  Here are, basically, the most important things to focus on:

1. Domain age. A 5 year old domain has an advantage over a domain name that you bought last week. It already carries some authority. But it’s not a HUGE deal. There are often sites in the top ten (coveted spot) that are new. They optimized well in other areas, obviously.
2. Keywords in domain name. This helps a great deal. For example, if my main keyword phrase is “pound dog rescue“, then the ideal domain name is pounddogrescue.com, with no hyphens.  Don’t waste your money on a .info domain.  Only buy the .org, .net, .us, .me names if 1) the .com version is not available, and 2) it makes sense for your site (as in, don’t get a .org if you are not an organization–it just doesn’t look good).
3. Keywords used in other strategic spots.  If you are using Firefox, go to your site and hit CTRL+U.  This will bring up your source code for the site.  You should notice <title> tags, <h1> and <h2> tags, <img> tags, <meta> tags, and each of these is a good spot to use your keyword phrase.  Don’t just use your primary keyword phrase, but switch things up every now and then, without being spammy.  For example, in the <img> tag, include some alt text, with the word “logo” or “graphic” at the end.  The reason for alt text is to tell someone who can’t see the picture, what it is a picture of!  This comes in handy for text-only browsers, as well as broken images (the text will appear if the image doesn’t load).  So use alt text to your advantage, but remember to create your site to be useful for people, don’t just stuff keywords everywhere tastelessly.
4. Inbound links.  Perhaps one of the most difficult parts of seo; link building campaigns can be costly and time consuming.  But the more inbound links you have (in other words, other websites who are linking TO your page), the better.  Again, this is not going to be the sole determining factor, as sometimes the number one site has less inbound links than the other top ten sites for your keyword, but it is still a HUGE help, when other sites link to yours.  It helps build your authority, in your chosen niche.
5. Relevant link TEXT. Just because you’ve got inbound links, doesn’t mean your work is done.  You need to make sure the anchor tags linking to you are also using your keywords.  Don’t use the same link text for every inbound link.  Use a variety, and again, don’t get spammy.  The fewer words, the more weight each word will carry.

Each of these points can be analyzed further.  This is meant as a rough starting point to open up questions and discussion.  For example, meta tags for description and keywords (SEE #3 above) have really become less important in Google’s eyes, but they are still used by many other search engines to determine how to rank your pages.  Or we could start an entire discussion on whether or not to waste your time with reciprocal linking.  My opinion: if you truly find a site to be valuable, then link to it.  If not, then don’t.   As long as your content is strong, you won’t have to beg people for links, they will link to you naturally.

What are YOUR thoughts?

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