However having links on every page of your site to every other page of your site dilutes page rank and takes emphasize away from your “money page” or the  page that “pays the rent”.

One solution is that will both allow your overhead pages to be indexed, but still control page rank flow through the site is to add a “no-follow” attribute to the links to overhead pages on the subpages of your site.  But how do you do this with wordpress?

While I haven’t tested this yet, I’m sure others have thought of it. In the php code for your header, sidebar or footer, it’s possible to do a check to see what page you are currently on. If you are not on the “home” page, simply employ one set of code that includes the “rel=’nofollow’” attribute.

I’ll have to check and see if the “SEO Optimized” Wordpress templates I’ve seen and been using employ this strategy.

If you are intesreted in more insights like this, sign up for my newsletter up top and to the right. If you want to get this type of information directly from the source, check out Stompernet’s Stomping the Search Engines 2.0…it’s free if you simply sign up for their list.

Regarding control of page rank flow…each p age needs a minimum amount of page rank just to get indexed. Too many outgoing links will dilute the page rank of each page and risk enough outflow so that the page itself may not get indexed.

Controlling the flow of Pagerank means putting more flow of PR into the important pages of the site…the ones that will make you money.  With regard to Wordpress, one of the popular widgets available is “archives”.  Depending on whether you have your archives listed monthly, weekly or yearly, t his list can get quite long.

Thank about it from a user point of view. Does having a monthly list of archives help them find old posts when there is almost always a “search” feature on the site?  Is it helpful to have each month of archives listed on the front page?  Probably not.  It would be just as sufficient to have a single link to the “Archives” from the front page, and have that link be “no-follow” as well.

Perhaps this simple strategy can help control the  page flow so that it does not leak to less important pages, and instead you can send it where it needs to go…to the pages that “pay the rent”.

UPDATE:  Looks like this solution has already been solved with a quick piece of header.php code fix. You can either do it yourself, or use the Duplicate cure plugin. Here are some references:

Addicott Web

Fix your page header – You should insert the following code into your theme’s header file to make sure that certain pages (such as the homepage, posts, pages and category pages) are indexed by search engines spiders, while certain others (feeds, archives, etc.) are excluded

If you want to learn more search engine tips like this, you can sign up for my mailing list over thre ot the right, or just go sign up for Stomping the Search engines 2.0 right now (it’s free!)

To find it, go here: http://www.newaffiliatediscoveries.com/recommends/stomper999 Click on Day 3 and scroll down to this  headline The RIGHT Keywords + HIGH Search Rankings = TARGETED Traffic = MONEY.

So why the big fuss? Well the first time this was released it was a $497 course. The next time was released, it was a $1 course with a trial to a $40/month continuity product. Now it’s just plain free.

Why should you care about it?

Traffic = Money
Traffic to your blog equals money in the bank. Getting free traffic is all the better. Stomping the Search Engines two was the first course to teach every important aspect of SEO that you need to know in order to send page rank deep into your site, outstrip your competition of top google rankings and get all the traffic to your site…for free without paying for search engine PPC ads.

Well, if you want to learn SEO, this is basically the only course you need. So check it out now!

Well I’ve just learned that on 9/9/9, StomperNet is not only opening doors to new members, but will be lowering their price to an insane price of $199/month!

I can’t believe it! It’s truly the best internet marketing education there is online.

Here’s my link, use this to check it out. If you end up joining through my link, I promise you a great SEO bonus and link getting mindmaps.

Stomper Net Lowers it’s Price for the First Time!

AS far as what to write about, when you are starting you just need to learn the mechanics of writing. Waiting until you get all your research and perfect affilatie programs are lined up can be frustrating as you feel that you must do step A, then step B, then later learn that step C needs to come before Step A.

Here’ is what I would do.

1) Pick a topic you enjoy. your hobby, your sport, etc.
2) Think of a skill or task realted to that hobby…

• -How to knit one, pearl two
• -How to do a basketball layup
• -How to set a volleyball

3) Enter the phase into google with quotes around it like this “How to knit one, pearl two” and note thenumber of search results for that phrase

• “How to knit one, pearl two” = 6 pages!
• “How to do a basketball Layup” = 4 pages
• “how to set a volleyball” – 69 pages

*Note that at this stage you don’t need to focus on teh perfect keywords nor worry on how often this phrase is searched for. The idea here is to learn to write an article, post it on a web 2.0 property and rank for your kewyords.

Any of these will be easy to get your article to rank for your phrase very quickly!

Now set up an account at any one of these web 2.0 authority sites or take your pick among hundreds of others…these are just starter ideas
Squidoo
Wetpaint
Wordpress.org
Google Knol
Ezine Articles
Hubpages

Now write an articel on your topic at one of these sites. Use your kewyord phrase in your headline, at least once in the first sentance of your article, and 1-3 times every hundred words or so. Some people will say more often than that. Use your keyword phrase bolded or as a subheadline in your article as well.

Once your article is written, copy teh URL into your clipboard, and go to one of these bookmarking sites and make an account if you havn’t already

• -Digg
• -Propeller
• -Reddit
• -Stumble

Submit it to one or more of these bookmarking sites then let it simmer for awhile.

Tomorrow (or in a few hours), check google for your search phrase and look for your apge to show up!

This should give you confidence in how the process works. Try it with a few phrases in your hobby area. Even if you decide not to go inot your hobby area as your niche, you will have a nice small collection of articles that will be useful to the itnernet community.

The next step in this type of process is to put some anchor links in your web 2.0 pages pointing back to your “money” page, which could also be a web2.0 page like squidoo or blogger. Now youare building a network of information so that when people search for

• -how to do a layup
• -how to dunk a basketball
• -how to play point guard
• -how to shoot a three pointer

the likelyhood of them ending up on your niche site for basketball goes up exponentially with each new article you post.

hope those ideas help. Just get out there and try it and see what happens.

One commenter asked what it was that I did…sorry if I didn’t mention it before.   I made two major changes to my site which should be the first step anyone takes in doing on-page SEO.

1)  Title Tag – I updated my sitewide default title tag to use my 3 word keyword phrase (targets both location and niche) rather than using my business name as the title tag.

For example, let’s say I lived in Austin and my business was Neon Signs. I’m hip, so I named my business, Austin City Lights.  Before my update, My title tag would have read, “Austin City Lights – Home”.  Boring, but pretty common.

After my update, the title tag would say, “Austin Neon Signs – Custom Signs for your Business”

2)  Description

Description is a META tag.  Meta tags are descriptive information about your webpage.  Using plugins for wordpress or the advanced paramaters in Joomla, you can specify unique descriptions for each individual page on your website. This “meta” description is the default exerpt displayed by search engines in their search results.  By customizing this meta description, and again using my keyword phrase first, I ‘ve highlighted my business in the eyes of my potential customers who are typing “Austin Neon Signs” into their search engine bar.

So that’s pretty basic SEO 101…update your TITLE and META DESCRIPTION tags to reflect the keywords you are targeting for your site and for that page on your site.

It may then take a few days to get your site spidered, but you can speed this up by pinging one of your posts or submitting it to a social bookmarking site or RSS feed.

After implementing one small change to my website, 5 days later I now rank #2 for both of those search terms!

Way cool. I continue to make improvements to my site’s structure and anticipate a solid landing at #1 in no time, as well as improvement on many of the other search terms.

However, I’m thinking of going into SEO consulting for local small businesses, and decided to use my own business site as a test.  It’s been indexed by Google for a long time ( over 200 pages), last on March 6th, so fairly fresh.

I dug into the site tonight and discovered that my meta tags sucked!  Much like doing PPC, you want to stay away from an SEO tag that is too general, like “endurance” and “coach”.  No one looking for a triathlon coach in my hometown is going to go to google and type in “endurance”.  Amazing how much you learn in a year.

So I corrected the metatags and keywords.  I’m taking screenshots of before and after and I can then use this information in my presentations to local businesses.

My current goal is to rank #1 for two local search phrases, and if possible, show up in the Google Local Business Listings.

After fixing the meta tags, I dugg one of my articles to get the google bot back around sooner.  I am upgrading the underlying site structure (Joomla) in order ot further maximize the SEO of the site.   I’ll keep you updated.

So far I have only added 4 of the articles to my site.  For each article, i first submit it to my site to have unique content, and progress towards turning it into an authority site on the topic.  Then I slightly rewrite each article and submit it to ezinesarticles.com.

Today, I am taking those 4 articles and submitting them through iSnare, which is an automatic article distribution service.  I spent a long time comparing article marketer and iSnare before choosing iSnare. The reasons I went with iSnare are that it allows you to use multiple pen names on the same account, and you pay per article.  At the rate I am submitting (4 articles in 2 months?) I don’t want to waste $67/month, but would rather pay $1/article to have it distributed.

It took me only about 20 minutes to reconfigure each of the 4 and get it submitted to iSnare.  They state a 5-7 day approval process, faster with the paid service, so we’ll see what happens.

Now I am submitting 2 additional articles, first to my site, then to ezinearticles.com

Since starting the article submission, I have seen almost a doubling in my traffic to the site.  But it’s also a seasonal site, so my increased traffic may be simply due to the weather.   I’ll keep you posted…

Formula Five Videos

But if you are like me, I simply don’t have the patience for videos, I’d rather get the information in writing, sit down with it at the coffee shop and dig in.  The Stompernet guys must have been reading my mind, because here it is,

MBA in a Box

It’s a 96 page PDF download of the transcripts from the videos.  The PDF is free, and I’d download it quick while it’s still available.  Sometimes great stuff like this tends to dissapear quickly!

Did you download it yet?  No?  Get it now!

OK, so here’s what it covers, I’m not going to rewrite it all, but just wet your appetite

“Dead Simple” Video

• What not to waste your time on (has things like article marketing, blogging, social posting, etc) Huh?  this one shocked me!
• Introduction to who Paul Lemberg is
• Review of the 60 day test run of the Formula Five material from Stompernet Members
• The Five Essential Money Making operations of a successful business, known by these Stomperfied names:
  • Margin Magnifier
  • Sales Stacker
  • Conversion Control
  • Lead Landslide
  • Turbo Thruster

The next part gets into the meat of the the first Module, Margin Magnifier

• “Successful Business is NOT about how much you make, it’s about how much you keep.”
• The law of Compounding as applied to your business (either on or offline)…if you improved each of your five components by only 15 % you will double your profits as each component has a magnifying (Compounding) effect on the next.
• Review of 4 ways to magnify your Margins
  • A “brazen” price increase in your products of only 15% (leading to a 53% increase on profits you get to keep)
  • How only a 4% increase in price can result in a 15% increase in your profits
  • How to enhance the VALUE of your OFFER so that your customers are happy to pay more
• Conversion Control
  • “Total Offer Control” – all the elements of value that your customers will get when they purchase your product(s).  He goes over 22 components of your offer…the more you can cover the more value you can provide to your customer (and the more you can charge)
  • What to do about “weak points” – areas where your competition may be better than you, and how to find your relative benefit for your customer
• Superior Value Propositions – incorporating these into your sales process simply makes “Sales Happen”
  • Valuize -he covers several different industries here (direct sales, B2B) and several components of “vaulizing” your product or service
  • Free Focus Factor – showing your customer how quickly their purchase will be Free.  For example, cost savings on an energy efficient product int eh home will cover the cost of the purchase in x number of months.  The customer may know this on some level, but if you SHOW them, it will result in sales
  • Total Return Engine – Do the math for the customer, showing them the dollar value of your product features.

At this point, I was pretty well saturated with information and had to take a break from the first video.  But he goes on to discuss the Total offer matrix – how combining the “SVPs” above plus the 22 components of your Offer will help you write killer copy for your sales letters, web pages, etc.

This is just a peek at one part of the FIRST of the Five modules that make up the Formula Five, or F5 system by Stompernet.

And the MBA in a box report covers yet a second video avaiable on the site.  It’s just a lot to try and review!

So…go check it out for yourself, you will definately pick up some things that will take you only minutes to a few hours to implement.  if you are willing to give it a shot and implement some of these things, consider entering the Stompernet Contest too.

Go here to download the MBA in a Box before they take it down!