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Are you still chasing Google in your seo business

Posted on: 02-01-2011
(2)

Category : SEO

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If you’re still chasing Google around trying to beat out their algorithm let me give you a little a little tip going into 2011, STOP!

Instead here is a suggestion from Matt Cutts that he gave during his keynote address at Pubcon this year “Don’t look at us where we are today, but look at the direction we are moving and what we are focusing on, the big five are the Mobile Web, Local Search, Social, Blended results in the SERPS and HTML5″

The Mobile Web:

The mobile web refers to mobile applications or browser based access to the Internet from a handheld device, such as an iPad or a smartphone.

Morgan Stanley analysts have charted the most important online trends and they forecast that by 2015 the mobile web will be bigger than desktop Internet.

Local Search:

Today there are over 10 billion unique searches done each month within the USA and over 40 percent of these searches have local intent!

We have also witnessed how much emphasis is placed on local search by Google on October 27th of this year when they changed the entire landscape of the search results.

1. More Emphasis on AdWords -Today Google showcases their Google map on the top right of their column, pushing down their paid ads a couple hundred pixels. In return we have also seen that Google is showing MORE paid advertising in the middle column above the local listings.
2. More Competition for Local Advertising -In Google’s new listings they are also showing reviews from their Google Places but also other third party websites like Yelp and Insider. As discussed by David Mihm during his recent presentation “How Do You Rank a Phone Book” Prominence is one of the three major factors in Google’s new Local algorithm.
3. Claim and Optimize your Google Places Page! – I cannot emphasis this enough, to be successful in the local landscape you MUST create trust with Google by first claiming your Google Places page(s) and then optimize them focusing on these two things; a) Relevance b) Prominence
4. Two Types of SEO – Some will argue that there are no longer two distinct algorithms for local search and traditional SEO, I disagree 100%! In my opinion today there are two distinct types of SEO that local businesses need to focus on in today’s new search to be successful; a) Google Places SEO; the optimization of your Google Places and website which focuses on Relevance, Prominence and Distance. b) Traditional SEO; that still focuses on website architecture, content, backlinks and social media

Social Search:

I can easily sum up Social Search in one word; FACEBOOK!

With more than 500 million users Facebook has emerged as the dominate player in social media and as business owners and online marketers we need to understand on how our potential customers are interacting with Facebook to identify the most efficient ways to communicate with them to build trust.

In case you missed last week’s article on Facebook SEO, we reviewed how you can strategize and implement your own Facebook Social media campaign.

Traditional Search Engines like Bing, Yahoo and even Google are now including social search into their algorithms and one new search engine called Blekko has harnessed the social landscape by screening out spammy websites by using their user base and integrating social mentions by trusted users in the social network.

Blended Results:

Users want to have results that are relevant to them when they search for information, a product and/or service and that is what Blended Results or Universal Search is all about.

David Bailey, one of the investors in Google’s patent on Universal search gave us a behind the scenes view when he related on Google’s blog “If only we could smartly place such results elsewhere on the page when they don’t quite deserve the top, we could share the benefits of these great Google features with people much more often”

So what is this Universal Search anyway?

Well here is a quick run through;

1. Someone conducts a search. Google first looks up the query in its database and then filters this through the filters based upon the searchers search history profile.
2. Additional results will then be included based upon the history of the user such as if the searcher has watched videos, has the searcher read news articles, has the searcher used social media sites, has anyone in the searchers social circle searched for these types of products/services before and what they have recommend.
3. The scoring history is then recalculated and the result is then given to the user.

So you maybe asking yourself right now, how can I be successful in this new blended results landscape.

Well here is a very simple SEO tip, dont put all your eggs into one basket, diversify your online marketing efforts by implementing social media, video and the publishing of news releases.

HTML5:

HTML5 is the next major revision of the HTML standard that is currently under development adding many new syntax features such as , elements and SVG content that is developed to improve the inclusion and handling on multimedia and graphic content without the need for external plugins and/or APIs. In other words, if Apple didn’t knock Flash off its perch when Steve Job’s announced that they wouldn’t support the platform in their mobile devices, it will be certainly be dead when HTML5 comes around, so try not to use it in your future web development.

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Affiliate Marketing – How I Get Free Traffic To My Websites

Posted on: 02-01-2011
(1)

Category : Affiliate Marketing, Niche Marketing, SEO

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Getting free traffic is crucial in the early days of affiliate marketing. After years of experimenting, read on to find out my ways of building free traffic without spending a penny.

Affiliate marketing can be so much more profitable if you don’t have to pay for traffic. In the early days, it really was critical for me not to spend any money at all with my marketing. These days, I still enjoy the pleasures of free traffic, even though I can now certainly afford paid for marketing campaigns. Here I’m going to share with you my top methods for bringing traffic to my websites for free.

Use SEO -

In the early days, I didn’t know much about SEO. Now I spend time selecting relevant keywords and using them in all of my content. Surprisingly, even when I don’t use keywords, my content can often perform well in the search engines on terms that I haven’t spent time carefully selecting.

Monitor The Analytics -

I spend time analysing where my traffic is coming from. Once I find a method that is working for me, I will scale it up and reuse it for my other websites. When you build your websites, be sure to add Google Analytics to your site so that you too can monitor and measure your results.

Article Marketing -

As part of my marketing plan, article marketing really does pay off. Just by adding two new articles per week that offer relevant and educational content, I enjoy many visits to my sites from targeted traffic. Articles often get redistributed around the web, and with my link and information going with it, it can bring through many new customers that otherwise I could not have reached.

Blogging -

This is another way that I can get free traffic. Not only do I spend time researching and writing useful blog posts that are relevant to my readers, I spend time building relationships in the blogging community. By reading and commenting the blog posts of others, the owners and readers of other blogs will click through to my site to see what I have to say. My blog posts can often show up in the search engine results too, which will bring another stream of traffic.

Social Media -

Tools such as Twitterfeed and Hootsuite play a part for me here. I can schedule my status updates to include my blog posts in Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn is another social networking favourite where it is possible to target my markets easily and many customers have been brought through to my site through the groups available on LinkedIn.

Forums -

More targeted market networking can be performed in forums. The questions, issues and discussions contained in forums provide me with information on what the consumers are concerned about and I can also build relationships by helping out with information and I sometimes can post links to relevant blog posts that I have created or even to my products. All these links come through my site and build my traffic stats.

The most effective way to market for free traffic in affiliate marketing, is to build a marketing plan that you commit to. For example, each week I know that I need to write 2 articles, 5 blog posts and that I need to distribute the blog posts across the net. In my plan, I write down where I will distribute them so that my tasks are specific and measurable. Free traffic is essential in affiliate marketing, and once you have got it, your profits really will begin to look how you hoped they would when you started out.

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Search Engine Algorithms : It’s Evolution

Posted on: 27-12-2010
(1)

Category : Niche Marketing

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Heavy Reliance on On-Page Factors – Webmaster Supplied Information

At the outset of the various search engine algorithms, there was heavy reliance on webmaster supplied information in determining search engine rankings. Webmasters submitted their site url’s to the search engines who sent their crawlers to extract a snapshot of the website for inclusion in the data base on its server. This then formed the basis of extraction of relevant information, primarily

- Keyword meta tags which listed webmaster supplied targeted keywords incorporated in the html(source codes) of his website.

- Also, the keywords density on the website was another major consideration.

The idea of webmasters optimizing for the search engines in order to improve search engine rankings first arose about mid-1990′s when webmasters started seeing the necessity for ranking high in the search engines as a funnel for traffic to their websites with an ultimate view of making sales. It thus did not take long before all the initial basis for search engine algorithms was abused by unscrupulous webmasters who made many actual searches become irrelevant for their search terms by using various black hat techniques such as keywords stuffing, inserting meta tags irrelevant to actual web page content, cloaking etc. Leaving search results highly irrelevant for searches would spell the doom of the search engines as search users would find alternative search sources. The search engines therefore had no choice than to deduce other complex and more effective factors as a basis for their search engine algorithms.

Reliance on On-Page and Off-Page Factors

In response to the demands of the time, Larry Page and Sergey Brin who were graduate students of Stanford University and later promoters of Google, developed a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. They reasoned that the prominence of a web page was based on the quantity and quality of links on other sites leading to that website. They considered it more likely that random web surfers browsing the net would likely reach a higher-PageRanked web page via its various backlinks on other sites, than a lower-PageRanked web page.

With Google formation in 1998, this formed the basis of the new search engine algorithms and together with other off-page factors such as hyperlink analysis and on-page factors such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, internal links and site structure, formed major components of the now more complex search engine algorithms, to ensure Google and other search engines avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines when they only considered on-page factors for their rankings.

Webmasters, ever alert to ways of gaming the system, soon set up websites in thousands with a view to exchanging, buying and selling links and transferring PageRank. All sort of link spamming techniques evolved.

Increased number of on-page and off-page search engine algorithms components.

By 2005, Google had increased the number and complexity of the various components in its search engine algorithms calculations. The number is said to exceed 200. It introduced the nofollow tag and announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank.

Introduction of Google Instant And Other Measures

By 2009, Google began using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results. Real-time-search was introduced in late 2009 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs, the leading search engines made changes to their search engine algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results. This new approach to search places importance on current, fresh and unique content.

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What Can Feedburner Do For You?

Posted on: 26-12-2010
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Category : Niche Marketing, SEO

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Why should you use Feedburner? Well because you can pimp your blog and podcast feeds. That’s why. Feedburner gives you all kinds of tools to make your feed pretty, push it out to your social networks and make it easier than taking candy from a baby to subscribe to your feed. Feedburner breaks down their tools into 5 categories, Analyze, Optimize, Publicize, Monetize and Troubleshootize. Let’s do a quick run through of what is in each of these categories.

Analyze:

Find out how many subscribers you have, where they came from and what feed reader they use. Why do you want to know? Well it will help you get to know your readers better and keep track of how many more you get every day.

Optimize:

The short of it is, you can push your feed to search engines, blog aggregators and your podcasts to itunes as soon as you’ve published a new post. Activate features to automatically shorten URL’s and splice your blog feed with your photo feed.

Publicize:

Get the word out! Use the socialize features to publish updates to your social networks about your new posts. Let your subscribers get your feed by email, Creative Commons your feed, create a graphic for your feed and much more to really make your blog feed pop and dazzle anyone who may stumble across it.

Monetize:

Yup, you can use Google Adsense in your blog feed. Who knew? Troubleshootize: Having problems? Questions? Not enough info? Find all of your answers and more in this section and if you still don’t know how to fix your problem…Just Google It!

Okay so on a last, side note…If you decide one day that you don’t want to blog anymore and keeping your feed is just too much trouble. Or perhaps you burned your feed one too many times…just delete it. And if you just want to transfer your wonderful feed to another Feedburner owner simple enter their email address to transfer it and make sure they authorize this transfer.

That pretty much covers it. If you are a web developer or really interested in making your blog feed shine (which you should be) log in to your Feedburner account to discover all of the wonderful things you can do. Start activating some of these awesome features today to get the most out of your blogging.

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5 Not-So-Silly Newbie Questions About Submitting Articles To Publishers

Posted on: 26-12-2010
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Category : Niche Marketing

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One of my most enjoyable activities is answering questions from people who are:

a) thinking about article marketing but aren’t sure exactly what it is

b) wanting to start submitting articles to publishers, but not sure where to begin

c) just getting started, and wondering what to expect

If you are a beginner or even a pre-beginner, then it’s likely that you have a lot of excellent questions around these topics. Sometimes newbies feel awkward about making their questions known–I just want to assure you, there are no silly questions!

I’d like to address some of the most common questions that I receive from beginners. Amid all of these wonderful questions you will see all the benefits that article marketing brings and learn why so many regular everyday people are submitting articles to publishers with great enthusiasm and success.

1 – Do I need a website to do article marketing?

It will help to know the purpose of submitting articles to online publishers:

People do article marketing to bring attention to their websites. That is the “marketing” part–the thing that is being marketed is a website.

Mainly, people who do article marketing are looking for a higher ranking for their website in Google and the other search engines. Article marketing also brings attention to a website via the articles themselves, when people read an article and then click the link in the resource box that leads back to the author’s website (more on resource boxes below).

So, yes, in order to fulfill the purpose of article marketing, you would need a website.

2 – Why would someone want to publish my article on his website and give a backlink to my website for free?

Article marketing is a win-win situation for publishers and authors.

=> Along with every article that you submit, you will include a resource box. The resource box is a brief author bio that should include your name, some information about yourself that would lend credibility to the advise you gave in the article, a reason why the reader should visit your website, and finally a link to your website.

This “link” connects your article to your website. When the reader clicks on this link it takes him from your article to your website. The more of these links that you build, the better. Having more links creates more avenues for people from your target market to find your website. The number of links that your website has also plays a role in where your website is listed in Google’s rankings.

=> The publisher wins because he gets to have excellent content on his website for free. This content adds value to his website–he can attract readers to his website by having useful content on it. In exchange for the free article, the publisher must publish your resource box with the clickable link.

3 – How long does it take to see results from article marketing?

It will usually take anywhere from 3-6 months of consistently submitting articles to see the first fruits of your labors in Google. It is not uncommon to see results in other areas sooner (you can have a burst of traffic to your website if one of your articles is published in a major ezine, for example), but changes in Google usually take 3-6 months.

4 – Once I submit an article to a publisher and he publishes it, do I ever need to resubmit it?

No, you should submit your articles only one time to each publisher.

5 – Can I submit articles that are published on my own website?

Yes you can, but it is best if you reword the article so that the content on your website is unique. If the articles on your website are not to be found anywhere else, then it increases your website’s value in Google’s eyes.

Submitting articles to publishers is a process that is very user friendly. That’s why so many everyday business owners use article marketing as their web marketing tool of choice. Remember, there are no silly questions. If there is something about article marketing that you are wondering about, just ask! Don’t let your questions hold you back.

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