A Market Need – affordable SEO for the SMB’s

Having spent years in the early 1990′s doing SEO consulting full time I know firsthand that there are many business owners that simply can’t or won’t spend the money to hire a professional SEO that could cost them $500 per month to many thousands per month.  These same websites generally have the most low hanging fruit from a SEO perspective because they have not had their website professionally optimized previously.  Having been in the SEO space for many years I received countless requests from friends and family looking for help on their small business website.  I found myself giving very similar steps and tips to these small business websites.  After getting together with Andy Hagans we decided the right tools were on the marketplace to develop a simple SEO technology designed specifically for the small business website owner needing SEO.  

Why Is DIYSEO Good For SEO’s?

The target market for DIYSEO are small businesses who do not have the budget or do not want to spend what most professional SEO’s charge.  Our price point is $49/month making it affordable for the small business owner.  We have just launched our affiliate program which pays out a full $50 for any client you refer and a full $250 for any client you send over that signs up for our $499 annual service.  We think this is a great way for you to make money on clients you previously had to turn away.

SEO is NOT One Size Fits All

If you are looking for a high end SEO, DIYSEO is not for you, try: USA based: Greg Boser, Michael Gray, Eric Enge, and John Andrews.  UK based: Shaun Anderson and Patrick Altoft.

If you want an expert forum to learn advanced tactics and advanced SEO tools, DIYSEO is not for you, try: Aaron Wall’s SEOBOOK or Rand Fishkin’s SEOMOZ

If you are an agency looking to manage SEO for your agency, DIYSEO is not for you, try: RavenTools

If you are looking for a written guide to SEO, try: Hobo SEO’s DIY SEO guide or Matt McGee’s SEO ebook ($25)

If you are a small business or have a business that reaches small businesses then give DIYSEO a try!  Also if you have any business development ideas please shoot me an email at pg at patrickgavin.com

Update: DIYSEO in the news: Shoemoney’s DIYSEO Review, Techcrunch’s DIYSEO coverage.

Goal is to 301 redirect www.abc.com to www.123.com

1. Register both www.abc.com and www.123.com with Google webmaster tools.  Note that you will have to insert a snippet of code or upload a file to both of your sites to verify you do own or control both websites.

2. Make sure www.123.com takes on the exact design, look and feel, etc of the original www.abc.com site.  This is important as Google doesn’t like too much change going on at once.  Keep the design the same during a 301 so you don’t throw too much change at Google at once.

3. Make sure you keep the url structure the same, ie www.patrickgavin.com/2009/04/19/april-sandbox-update/ should be moved to www.searchengineoptimization.net/2009/04/19/april-sandbox-update/

4. Follow Google’s steps technical guidelines on completing a 301 

5. Double check your redirects.  Use a 301 redirect checker to make sure your redirects are seo friendly (http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/).  Also, test a handful of urls from your old domain to make sure they are getting redirected properly.  You can easily do this by googling your old domain name and clicking through your sites indexed pages.  Be very sure that every single page of your old domain is getting redirected to another active page at your new domain.  You definitely don’t want to be left with a bunch of 404 not founds.  Additionally, it is recommended that you chose to redirect everything to either the www or non-www version of your new domain.

6. Let Google Webmaster Tools know about the 301 by submitting a "Change of Address" request. 

7. After the 301, it is highly recommended you build some strong links and add some content to the blog to show the site is still active & growing.  If you want to go further, have some of your old incoming links update their link to point to the new site (this is not required, but it shows that the sites that linked to you before still want to link to you now indicating it’s the same site as before).  Remember Google logs redirects just like they log your backlink data so don’t rely on 301′s as your sole link strategy.

8. Wait patiently and have some faith!  Your original site can disappear for a period of time from Google’s index leaving you with NOTHING for a period of time.  This could be days or weeks.  What should happen is the new site you 301′d to should appear taking on similar rankings that you had for your original site give or take a few spots up or down.

Now we will wait and see what happens with my 301 and I will keep you updated.  The PatrickGavin.com domain is currently ranking #6 for the coveted "search engine optimization" query so this is a bit of a gamble and it will be fun to see if it pays off!

UPDATE! +3 days after the 301.  My PatrickGavin.com site has lost all Google keyword rankings!  I have lost all rankings including #1 for "patrick gavin" #6 for "search engine optimization", etc.  Here is the good news: this is what happens when you do a 301.  Fingers crossed but the SearchEngineOptimization.net domain should* reappear in the coming days/weeks…

Update #2 – I should have updated this a while ago but the 301 attempt did not take!  I waited about 30 days and the 301 went no where.  Basically lost rankings for both sites.  Because of this I removed the 301 and the good news is about a week later all my rankings returned to my PatrickGavin.com site.  I have done a number of 301′s with these same steps and it worked flawlessly so I don’t think the steps are flawed.  The good news is I removed the 301 and I am right back where I started so nothing lost there and I may* try the 301 again in the future and see if it sticks.  

• Professional SEOs, super affiliates, savvy webmasters, and in-house SEM managers can utilize Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and SEOmoz’s PRO membership.
• Marketing agencies and SEO service providers who need metric driven results can turn to solutions like SoloSEO and Raven Internet Marketing Tools.

But what about the small business that can budget only $500 and 25 hours per year towards online marketing?

The product is a couple of months away from a public launch but please leave your email address so you can be the first to preview the product and get other fun announcements along the way.  You can also follow DIYSEO on Twitter.  I haven’t been this excited about an SEO product since launching Text-Link-Ads.com back in 2003 and we look forward to bringing a product that will drive true SEO value to small businesses real soon! Visit DIYSEO.com to sign up for special announcements and product beta releases, etc.

You never "pop out" alone – it seems that Google has certain internally triggered events where a bundle of sites suffering from this issue all "emerge" to their expected rankings on the same day. You’ll sometimes see forum threads and chatter about these "sandbox releases."

I didn’t realize Google releases sites from their Sandbox in batches but then again I was previously only tracking one site at a time.  This time I was tracking a number of different sites that were in the Sandbox and saw them all released this weekend I can confirm Google releases in batches.  So for those of you who use to sit around like me and watch new results roll from dev databases to live Google results this phenomenon is back in the form of a Sandbox Update!  So what is the key to getting a site out of the Sandbox?  Quality links + Time.

• Build quality links. The obvious one, the more quality links you build the better shot you have at going out.  The caveat being, you may need to build these quality links to a number of pages including your homepage to free it.
• Time. After you build the links you may just need time for them "to bake".
• Move out of the US. Got to consider this right?  Less competition in the SERPS, no Sandbox.

What are you seeing and what tips would you add for folks looking to dig out?

• sold on a flat rate for a 30 day run.  Unlike typical ad networks that sell on a CPM basis blog owners find it easiest to manage ad sales on a flat rate for a given time period.
• typically the ad unit sold is a 125×125 ad unit.  This has become a staple on blogs as it fits nicely into most templates.  The biggest problem with the 125×125 ad that you purchase on a blog is that the visitors you are trying to reach rarely see them!  They are tucked into the right margin of most blogs and mixed in with 4, 6, or 8 other advertisers vying for your attention.
• no way to reach the rss readers.  Most ad campaigns don’t include a way to reach the rss readers of the blog as the website based banner ads do not show in rss readers.  Typically the rss readers are among the most passionate readers of the topic of the blog and it is a must for an advertiser to get in front of these enthusiasts.

The result of a standard blog advertising campaign is very little branding and even lower CRTs and visitors to your site. How to Fix Blog Advertising #1 – Blog owners need to think like advertisers! This is the overarching rule.  When it comes to ad placements and ad positions/formats you have to ask yourself: if I was paying to drive traffic to my blog what would that campaign look like? #2 – The 125×125 isn’t going away but you must supplement it with "interruption sized" banner sizes and placements. My suggestion is adding in a 468×60 at the top of the site and a 300×250 at the bottom of individual post pages.  Then once all three units are in place you need to ROADBLOCK the two larger ad units for the same.  So for each page impression one of the advertisers would get their ad on the top of the site (468×60), an ad in the left margin (125×125) and your ad at the bottom of the post (300×250).  All advertisers will get 100% exposure in the 125×125 section on the right margin. #3 – A monthly sponsor thank you post. The sponsor post serves two purposes: a. reach the rss readers who don’t see the website based and b. get the advertisers exposure in the content area of the page where readers won’t miss them.  Ideally the format allows the advertiser to add a logo and then a message that could be a description of their product/services along with a coupon code special for this site. #4 – Creative creatives! The ad has to draw the visitor’s attention and entice a click.  Adding a call to action like "click here" "get started", etc, can help.  It is important to try a number of different ads and test CTR to see what ads perform the best for you.  Even when you think you have one, it will go stale over time and ideally you are swapping out your creative monthly but this is hard to do.  Our most successful ad for TLA didn’t even mention our company name it was just this ad below run on TechCrunch: The Blog Owner Cheat Sheet To Attracting and Keeping Advertisers (feel free to copy for your own blog!) Advertising on XYX.com Rates: $X per 30 day run What you get: a 125×125 that gets 100% of pageviews in the right margin.  A 468×60 and 300×250 that will be shown together one out of every four page views.  Also* we will be doing a monthly sponsor post that will feature your products and services within the content area of our site and will reach our RSS subscribers! What we need from you: three creatives: 125×125, 300×250, 468×60 (shown in order below) Here is how to pay: Send any questions, creatives to: — Hope this helps you as a blogger to make more money by attracting and keeping advertisers longer and helps advertisers see a better roi on their ad buys!

• Great domain names.  Name of the product in the domain which helps for seo and adds trust to the overall experience.
• Building a community by being an authority.  This can’t be stressed enough.  These are great blogs with writers that are experts within each niche phone device.  Covering launch dates, rumors on new phones, everything.  This expertise causes other relates blogs to link to them which obviously builds up trust in the search engines which lead these sites to accumulate extremely high rankings.  Not only high rankings but a very long tail of keywords due to the volume of posts per day giving them a chance to rank for all kinds of related keyword searches.
• "Ads" that reinforce the brand!  This is my favorite thing these guys do.  If you look at these blogs you will have trouble even finding an Adsense ad.  All ads are calling visitors to their own branded ecommerce stores selling accessories for the very phones the blog covers!  Why send visitors off when you can own the whole cycle yourself?  Brilliant.  It worked on me today.  I had been to Crackberry.com many times over the last couple of months checking news on the new Bold.  Then today I go to search for "blackberry bold cases" on Google and a familiar site pops into the top 5, shop.crackberry.com  Now all these sites will have the same products but of course I go with the site I "trust" as they have branded themselves an authority in my brain because of their great blog content.

Does this blog based business model work?  Well the company did $584k in 2003 and $16M in 2006, so that is a resounding yes! So I can’t get the point above out of my head and here lies the challenge of building a great blog based business: How can you not only build a brand by creating an authority blog for your topic but not stop there… own the traffic that comes in by developing your own product or service that answers a need for that crowd and delivers that product or service yourself?

• Add unique content.
• Build inbound links.  Use the above strategy to rank organically in the top search engines and harvest the "free" traffic.
• Use a combination of Adsense, banner ads and lead generation techniques to monetize the website.

This strategy laid out above and explained in more detail below can add significant value to your premium domains AND surprisingly also adds a lot of value to many buyers in the domain market today.  Giving your domain a head start towards top search engine rankings is of value to buyers because it can take many months for links to "age" and a domain to earn trust in Google.  Also, when your domain starts rankings for sought after keywords it gets on buyer’s radars.  By following the steps below you are adding value to your domain today while helping the buyer close the window on getting a return on their investment. Step 1.  Remove the current "parked domain" service technology and replace with unique content. The current parked domain technology is not adding a lot of value.  To attract natural links (see Step 2) you need unique content.  Who wants to link to a ad driven landing page with no content?  It’s not going to happen very frequently.  Instead, build unique rich content on the topic of your domain name and give it a fighting chance!  I suggest 500+ words and the content should be well researched and reference (with links) other authoritative websites that are related.  If you are not up for writing your own content you could post the job you need done at a place like RentACoder.  RentaCoder is one spot where you can list the work you need done and have content writers (or programmers if you need one) bid on your work. You can start with content for the homepage.  The theme of that content is easy enough as the name of your premium domain will guide the content.  When you are ready to add additional pages of unique content you can use Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool to give you additional ideas on related top keywords you can target with sub pages. Step 2.  Get inbound links to your domain! Start the clock on top search engine rankings.  The challenge with this is it can take many months for a traditionally parked domain to rank in Google.  If today’s premium domain owner can add some unique content and start building links to their domain they in affect "start the clock"

• Easiest: link to the domain from another one of your relevant websites or your personal blog.  Get a business partner or friend to link to it from their website.  Note: need this to be from a site that is cached or can be found in Google.
• More work: build content on other websites that contain a link back to your website.  Sites like Squidoo.com, EzineArticles.com, Hubpages.com allow you to publish unique content that can contain a link back to your domain.
• More cost: Purchase a directory listing in such places as Yahoo Directory, Business.com, BOTW, and others.

Step 3.  Keep doing what you are doing (meaning making money!)  Your domain may be making some cash today even without any natural search engine rankings through a parking service that has placed ads on your site on your behalf.  Take the space back and place Adsense in strategic places on your pages.  Because you have already added quality content to your domain Adsense will take care of making sure your site is showing relevant ads that are paying a nice rate. So please use this guide to increase the value of your premium parked domain while raising the profile of your domain by making it found in top search engines! *Follow up note, my friend, Aaron Wall, has done a great job articulating the basic strategy I laid out above in a nice graphic which I included below.  It’s important to note that this strategy works for ALL websites,  it is just that premium parked domains happen to be one of the biggest opportunities for this game plan: