The Search Engine Optimization for Beginning guide

The Internet is the biggest place that you can go to buy or sell anything. There are always people looking to make a purchase so it makes sense that if you have a business you should strategize to market to them. There is an almost constant supply of people who are ready to buy what you have to offer. The trick is getting them to notice you.

Search engine optimization is a great way that you can generate additional customers to your online business. When people do an online search they use a search engine. There are literally thousands of websites for people to choose from when they get the results. You need to ensure that your website comes up in the top of the search engine results.

There is interesting studies done that prove that most visitors to websites don’t make a purchase on their first time vesting your site. You need to get as many people to your website as possible. You can do this by increasing your site on the search engine results by using search engine optimization. One key strategy to use to keep people returning to your site is to provide visitors with lots of free information that they can use.

One way to help drive your website up higher in the searching lists is by using search engine optimization. Search engines use special software that reaches out and locates the keywords and Meta tags from websites all around the Internet. They take this information and based on the keywords will rank the sites. These rankings are how the results will be given to people who enter those words during a search.

Meta tags are important because they indicate what your site is about while providing the terms that are used for searches. You’ll sometimes see Meta tag phrases appear on the search results as well as on the top of the site pages. Meta tags are made up of a couple of sentences or groups of words (keywords) that describe your site. Meta tags are typically less than 25 words and are used by the search engines to rate your site.

The keywords are important because this is how you will be ranked. Most people never look beyond the first couple of pages of returned results of an online search. This means that you must get your site in the top three ranking pages in order to be successful at search engine optimization and drive business to your site. The most important page of your site is your home page also sometimes called your “landing page”.

It is of utmost importance to properly choose your keywords. These words, if chosen properly, can actually help to drive business to your site. Do not take search engine optimization lightly. Keywords need to be specific. They can also be phrases rather than one single word. Try to narrow down your keywords so that you’ll get the best results from search engine optimization. For example a travel site may consider using keywords like “travel” or “vacation” yet the resutlst for these broad terms will be enormous. Instead, narrow your keywords down making them as specific as possible. In this case you could use “Bahama cruise” or other much more specific search terms.

There are literally hundreds of keywords that could probably be used to describe your site and products. However it is important to reduce your list by choosing the ones that are most important and using them as both keywords on the copy of your website and in Meta tags of the pages. When you can get the hang of search engine optimization you’ll be able to greatly increase the visitors to your site and therefore create more sales. If you are unsure about using search engine optimization on your website hire a good SEO company to take care of your online marketing needs.

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Search Engine Optimization 10 Mistakes you shoud know

Here are the Top Ten Mistakes in Search Engine Optimization:

1. Wrong Keywords are targeted – this is the most common mistake in Search Engine Optimization, even most experienced Search Engine Optimization experts make it. Most of the keywords chosen by the people for their websites are descriptive for their website, but they are too far from average users mind. For example for a relationship website the keyword ‘relationship guide’ won’t work even tough it contains the keyword ‘relationship.’ On the other hand ‘dating advice’ will work easily.

2. Using Java Script Menus – search engine do not read JavaScript, so build your website accordingly. You should go for sitemap i.e. putting your links in a noscript tag. Once doing so all your links will be crawable.

3. Flash website without html as alternate – one thing you should remember is that flash websites are attractive but not to search engines. If you want your Flash based website to be loved by the search engines then provide an html versions. The reason why search engine don’t like Flash sites is because spider can’t read Flash content and therefore can’t index it.

4. Title Tags are ignored – very often people leave <> tag empty. Instead leaving it empty this is one of the best place to have a keyword, because it not only help you out in optimization but also the text in the <> tag shows in the search results as your page title.

5. Meta-tags are past – it is a common myth that Search Engine Optimization is all about getting your Meta keywords and description correct. Meta tags are long gone now they are past and don’t except your website will be ranked well because of adding Meta keywords and description.

6. Ignoring URLs – URL plays an important role in your websites promotion. It is possible to have high rank even without keywords in the URL. But if you have keywords in the URL, (file name, domain name as part of the URL) gives you an additional advantage. For MSN and Yahoo keywords in URL are more important. Even for Google weight of URLs with keywords is more than that of the URLs without keywords.

7. Less keyword in content – put keywords wherever it makes sense and focuses more on keywords. It will be better to highlight them or make them bold.

8. Choose backlinks wisely – one of the most common fallacies is that more backlinks are always better. Because of this many web masters go for links with forum, newsgroup, link farm etc. ultimately leading the site to be banned. What you really need is quality backlinks.

9. Images for Headlines – an image in the headline can make your website look unique, but not in terms Search Engine Optimization. For search engines images in menus and headline are big mistakes because menu links and h2, h2 tags are important for SEO. If you are not sure how your h1, h2 tag will look like or you are afraid of that it will look horrible, try improving or modifying them in stylesheet instead of going for an image.

10. Consistency and maintenance – in the last but not least, most important to get rank in search engine is daily updates. To be successful optimize your site permanently and keep an eye on competition.

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The SEO Trends for 2009 you should Read and Know

Following the pace of change relating to search engine optimization — or SEO as it’s often called — can be dizzying.

Sure, there are landmark changes every once in a while that almost everyone hears about; Google’s introduction of “universal search”, in May 2007, is one example.

But Google says they made more than 400 changes to the ranking algorithm last year. Who can keep up with that?!

Luckily, you don’t have to keep up with every detail. But there are some important SEO trends you should know about as we go further into 2009. I’ll break the list down into two sections — Strategy and Tactics and Industry/Big Picture Trends - and then turn it over to you at the end.

Industry/Big Picture Trends

1. Increased SEO Awareness

SEO used to be something akin to voodoo; the only people who understood it were the ones doing it. But now it seems everyone knows about SEO. (Heck, even Wal-Mart offers SEO services!) As more small business owners become aware of what SEO is and why you should be doing it, competition should increase and put a premium on smart decision-making when it comes to doing SEO in-house or hiring a consultant.

2. Moving SEO In-house

On that note, in-house SEO has never been more popular than it is now, and that trend should continue into 2009. The upcoming SMX West search marketing conference even has an entire day devoted to in-house SEO. Companies big and small are recognizing the need for and value of having dedicated staff to recommend and implement SEO strategies.

3. SEO Consultants and Firms Booked Up

Many of us who don’t work in-house have never been busier than we are now. Because of trend No. 1 above, small business owners are hunting far and wide for SEO help. Purely anecdotal evidence, but something that many fellow SEO friends are experiencing: I usually get 2-3 emails a month from small business owners looking to hire an SEO. Last week alone I received five. There’s big demand and a lot of SEOs will be booked up.

4. It’s Google’s World

Google has dominated the SEO landscape for years, and their lead over Yahoo and Live Search is only getting bigger. There are several companies that try to track market share, and their numbers differ. But they all agree that between 60-70% of searches happen at Google. That doesn’t mean you should put all your SEO eggs in Google’s basket, but it does mean if you’re not being found on Google, you’re not being found.

5. SEO Tools & Automation

Hoping to take advantage of the growing interest in SEO, and the difficulty in finding the right consultant, more companies and individuals are creating online tools that automate portions of an SEO analysis. While some of these tools offer helpful data at a basic level, what matters most is how you use the data they provide.

6. SEO Scams

The downside of increased interest in SEO is that many small business owners will continue to spend money making unethical scam artists rich. $99/month for 500 directory links? $200 for search engine submission services? Don’t do it. Read what several search industry leaders had to say about SEO scams, and make sure this is one trend you avoid in 2009.

Strategy & Tactical Trends

7. Content = Authority (Still)

Links are the currency of SEO, and content is what attracts the links you need to rank well. When you rank well, you have authority. If you run a service-based business, you must be giving away your knowledge and expertise in the form of articles, blog posts, or other unique content that will attract links. If you run a retail web site, this still applies. Follow Amazon’s lead; I think they’re the SEO-smartest retailer online.

8. Content Variety …

I mentioned Google’s universal search at the start of this article, and other search engines have also been providing blended results for some time. What this means is that the Google search results page is no longer a list of 10 web page links; it now includes videos, news articles, blog posts, images, and more. In turn, this means that SEO isn’t just about tweaking your web site; it’s about creating and optimizing whatever forms of content make sense for your business and industry.

9. … Especially Video

The numbers are astonishing. YouTube gets more searches than Yahoo. About 100 million people watched videos on YouTube in October, and the average viewer watched 92 videos that month. eMarketer just reported that video is the number one tactic that US marketers will be focusing on in 2009. If you’re not doing it, chances are your competition will be.

10. Personalized Search Results

Personalization of search results has been simmering for a couple years now, but has started going mainstream recently. Google is leading the way with things like SearchWiki and Preferred Sites. Plus, things like your location, your recent searches, and which datacenter your search gets sent to can also impact the 10 search results you see at any given moment. It will continue to become more unusual to see the same 10 results when you and a friend in another state do the same search.

This renders ranking reports borderline useless. In other words, it’s no longer about whether your business is ranking for a certain search term at, say #2 in Google. Traffic and conversions are what you should be tracking, not what number you rank at for a specified term.

11. Local Search and Mobile Search

Mobile search has been on the way for years, but it never arrived. Until now. Mobile search used to be as fun as root canal, but the growth of smartphones - fueled by the iPhone - means mobile search is more enjoyable, more productive, and more popular than ever before. If your business appeals to people who might be searching on the go, local SEO should be a high priority for you in 2009.

12. Value of Your Audience and Community

Social media (sites such as Facebook and Twitter) isn’t going anywhere. And more of your potential customers are using it to make connections. You should be, too. By being active in online communities, you can develop an audience (look at the 38,000 followers Zappos has on Twitter!). When you do it right, that audience will help you push out your content (see No. 7 above), link to your content on occasion, tell their friends about you, and become your de facto marketing department.

Few small businesses will suddenly find themselves with 38,000 Twitter followers, but don’t underestimate the value of connecting with even 25, 50, or 100 people in the right online community.

What Others Say

Speaking of community: While writing this article, I asked my audience of Twitter followers to share their thoughts on SEO Trends for 2009. Here’s what they said.

@jfaris

@midnighttango

@MikeTek (read this one from the bottom up!)

@SimonHeseltine

@FrankReed

@lucasng

@Matt_Siltala

@karriflatla

They’ve had their say. I’ve had mine. Your turn: What SEO trends do you expect to see in 2009?

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How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs?

I’ve been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to make money from blogging.

I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.

The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to make money through blogs.

Income Streams for Bloggers - How to Make Money Blogging

Advertising Programs - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google - Adsense. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks, Text Link Ads.

Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick and Value Click (to name just some of the options) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (YPN is only available to US publishers).

Lastly there’s BlogAds - one of the first blog specific ad networks.

RSS Advertising - The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.

Sponsorship - In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month - one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies - either in one off or a regular fashion - and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing so.

Affiliate Programs - There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.

Digital Assets - Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.

Blog Network Opportunities - with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks - bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.

Business Blog Writing Opportunities - as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.

Non Blogging Writing Opportunities - Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors - this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!

Donations - Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fund raising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.

Flipping Blogs - Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ - or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).

Merchandising - My recent attempt to sell ProBlogger.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress. While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising - quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details - but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.

Consulting and Speaking - While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work - his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago - but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.

As time rolls on there are more and more ways that bloggers make money from their blogs opening up. Feel free to suggest your own ideas and experiences in comments below.

Also check out these resources on how to set up a profitable blog:

• ProBlogger the Book - where I and Chris Garrett sum up all of the basic tips about starting up a blog in the one volume.
• Blog Mastermind Blog Mentoring Program - one of the best coaching and training course going around on blogging.
• Become a Blogger Videos - a free series of videos that talks new bloggers through how to set up a blog. Easy to understand and best of all, free.
• Blog Profits Blueprint - a free report on how to build profitable blogs.

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How Using Website Analytics To Measure your SEO Success

I’ve previously discussed why rankings are a poor measure of success, but only touched upon how to instead use web analytics to measure SEO success. My hope is that once you have a good grasp of what to review and how to use that info, you’ll be more inclined to wean yourself (and your clients) off rankings reports once and for all!

For purposes of this article, let’s assume that you’ve already optimized your website for a number of keyword phrases across a variety of pages within your website. Let’s also assume that you’ve kept a list of those phrases handy, as you’ll need to refer back to them. In addition, let’s assume you’re using Google Analytics since more companies appear to be moving in that direction.

While heavy-duty analytics programs can be quite daunting at first because there’s so much data provided, for SEO purposes you can concentrate on just a few key areas when starting out. The place to start is the “traffic sources” section—more specifically, the “search engines” and the “keywords” sub-sections.

Clicking on the search engines sub-section will show you all the search engines that brought visitors to your website. If you’re running AdWords campaigns, be sure to click the “non-paid” link so that you can differentiate your organic traffic from your paid (you will have had to previously linked your Adwords account with your Analytics account in order for this to work). If you’ve done a decent job with your SEO, you’ll likely see most of the search engine traffic comes from Google, then Yahoo, then MSN with a bunch of smaller search engines trailing behind.

You can see how you’re doing with your keywords in all the search engines as a whole by then clicking the “dimension” dropdown box, and setting it for “keywords.”

This will show you all the keyword phrases that drove traffic to your website. As above, if you’re also doing paid search campaigns, be sure to click the tab that says “non-paid” so that you’re only looking at organic traffic. Depending on how many keywords are showing up, you may want to change your settings to show you 100 rows at a time (or more) so that you can have a good snapshot. By default, you’ll see the keyword phrases that have brought the most traffic at the top.

Are you seeing the keyword phrases (or some variation) for which you originally optimized? If they are not readily apparent, scroll down to the bottom and put an exact phrase or a word from one of your optimized phrases into the “find keyword: containing” box. Searchers use a variety of phrases at the search engines so you’re likely to see numerous related phrases that go beyond the exact ones for which you optimized. This is a good thing, and something that you don’t get from ranking reports.

For example, when reviewing the keyword phrases driving traffic to one of our clients’ websites, I found over 100 variations of one phrase for which we optimized, and they were all highly relevant to what the client offers.

Next, you’ll want to see which pages of your site are bringing keyword traffic and whether they are the specific ones for which you optimized. To view this, click on the “content overview” section and then on the right hand side of the page, under “landing page optimization” click on “entrance keywords.” This allows you to view specific stats for each page of your site.

The first screen is the entrance keywords for the page that receives the most pageviews (typically your home page), but you can click to other pages via the drop down box that says “content.”

If you don’t immediately see a page for which you are interested in viewing entrance keywords, you can type a word that you know is in the URL of that page in the search box that’s contained in the content dropdown. So if you’re looking for a page that has a file name of /green-widgets.php you can type just “green” or “widgets” into the search box and you’ll see all pages that have that word in the file name.

Now you should be able to see all the entrance keywords for that page. Are they ones (or variations of) those for which you optimized? If so, then your SEO is taking hold! If not, you’ll want to determine why. Perhaps it’s just too soon after your SEO work was completed. Perhaps they’re highly competitive phrases which will need more anchor text links pointing in.

Rankings don’t always equal traffic, and vice-versa

Something interesting that I’ve noticed a lot lately is that while my optimized pages are getting good search engine traffic for their optimized keywords, they may not show up in Google when I do a spot check of rankings. This is especially true of newly optimized pages. It seems that this could very well be personalized search in action. While I might not see the pages ranking in Google, others obviously are as the web analytics don’t lie. Had I been relying on rankings reports to measure our success, I would be thinking that not much was happening yet.

Of course, the best indicator of SEO success is conversions. Those can be measured via your analytics as well, so you’ll want to be sure to have all your forms’ thank you pages set up as conversion goals. That way, when you’re viewing the “traffic sources -> keyword” data, you can also click the “goal conversion” tab and learn very easily which phrases convert for you.

For those keyword phases that you find convert very well, you can work on additional optimization efforts to gain even more traffic. For phrases that don’t convert well, you may want to think about why they’re not converting. It’s possible that they’re simply too general, and thus you’re pulling in people who are just in the research phase, or it might be that they don’t accurately describe what you offer on your website.

Don’t forget about old-fashioned conversions!

In addition to using your web analytics, don’t forget to take note of any increases in emails and phone calls. That’s the best way to know if your SEO campaign is going as planned. Our clients typically call us up very happy within the first month or two to let us know that their phone has been unusually busy all of a sudden. This usually makes them happier than any ranking reports we used to send!

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