Submitedge - Search Engine Optimization Blog

One Man Band – Doing Your Own SEO

SubmitEdge — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:41:46 +0000

Remember Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins? The one man band looks pretty cool, and you have to give credit to anyone who can pull it off. When you run your own SEO, sometimes it seems exactly like you are trying to play all the instruments yourself – simultaneously.

As in an-house SEO, you ahve to juggle all the facets of your company’s search engine marketing. This means producing positive results without specialist support – you literally have to do it all.

Search strategy and tactical execution will probably both be assigned to you; this means that effective management of your time will be critical to your success.

Delegate

Get others to help you when possible; for example, IT personnel can usually be convinced they are the only ones who can do redirects, etc, so slough off some of the busy work in the coding field to them.

Copywriters can be engaged to help with content and generation of tags and descriptions, to save more time. It could take mere hours to train someone to do this task, and save you days of tedium.

Outsource

Sometimes specialty jobs need to be done in support of SEO and you may be able to outsource some of these if you can convince your company it is cheaper and more efficient than, say, paying you overtime.

You can often hire out such one-off tasks as landing page design, custom script development or CMS modifications. may be most expeditiously accomplished by contracting out the work. Paid search is the most obvious candidate for outsourcing, unless that is your primary job.

Automate

Some portions of SEO can be automated by programmatically pushing database fields. For reporting, configure analytic reports to eliminate any need for manual data extraction. This takes up front time, but saves you in the long run.

Manage

Educate your company about your job! There is no better way to get the respect you deserve than to give along presentation that manages to keep their interest and ends with a reporting of how much you have increased profits.

Learn

Don’t let opportunities to learn more about your trade be sacrificed (or delegated to off-work hours) . Insist that you are in a field with rapid changes, and that investing in your ongoing education increases your value to the company.

Do it

Every day, ask yourself the question, “what SEO did I do today?” You should always have a specific answer.

Each day, no matter how swamped you are, find an hour or two to actually do SEO, even if it is as simple or lowly as redirecting a URL adding metatags or posting a blog. That keeps you from feeling that a day of meetings and report summaries was not worthless.

Keep on doing your best buy following these tips, and being a one man band will beceom something you love to do!

SEO Step-By-Step Guide– 222. Understanding Paid Inclusions

fara — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:44:06 +0000

Most of us today rely solely on Google and this does not call for paid inclusions. For those who are in the bottom line of the competition, being indexed in Google and getting listed in Google’s search results is considered a mountainous achievement. However not everyone is in this stage. Some of the businesses are on the other end of the competition scale. These are companies that already have reached top rankings. Though they have reached top rankings, they cannot stop. They need to run the race continuously. If they stop that is the road to their perdition.
If websites that are in the bottom line have their own set of competitors, people who are on top will have their own set of competitors. They start looking towards other forms of increasing their popularity. One of the ways that is commonly used is to make use of paid inclusions in search engines in which they do not have any rankings. Not only those who have achieved great results go for paid inclusions, even those website owners who have recently launched their websites go for paid inclusions. In fact, it is only such websites need paid inclusions.
Search engines like Yahoo has paid inclusion program. By paying for inclusions, you make sure that your website is included in the search results. However, it does not get you top rankings in the search engines. Paid inclusions as the name suggests, gets only a place in the listings and it is not necessarily the top listing. Relevancy of your website is still important for websites to be listed in the search engines even if the website is indexed on paid inclusion.
Paid inclusion is one of the fastest ways of getting your website indexed in the respective search engines. If you cannot wait for the search engines to index you through regular indexing, you can go for paid indexing. This is best suited for brand new websites that would like to create a mark on the web quickly.
Google does not have any paid inclusion program. Google indexes all the websites on the web free of charge. The only form of paid listings they have is their famous AdWords scheme.
You are paying the search engines a fee to give priority to your website in their indexing process which otherwise may take a long time to be indexed. Many people misunderstand paid inclusions. They think that paid inclusions will get them top rankings in the search results of the respective search engines. However, that is not the case; search engines do not allow such a ranking system because it will affect the quality of search results. So content relevancy is always the top criterion for getting search engine listings.

Local Domains – Why You Need Them

SubmitEdge — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:31:31 +0000

Why have a local domain? Let’s look at the advantages:

Assurance of your location

If you want a local or ‘ country code domain’ (ccTLD ), you must actually go buy them and then register with a local authority. Local domain generally are considered the best controlled and strictest geographical identifier (with the exception of some such as .tv which originally a local name for Toluva (a small island) became a huge revenue remunerating domain name.

Local domains registered in the correct country can be indexed within hours of a search engine crawl.

Better site architecture

The ongoing cost of SEO done to compensate for not having the relevant local domain can include additional local hosting costs and substantial link building. Going ahead and moving even large domains is cheaper in the long run. Try to incorporate the shift at a time when other major work on the site is being done.

Buy American

This doesn’t apply just to the US – most people prefer to buy from their home country, state or city – especially when it something large, such as a car. Even smaller purchases may be considered less of a risk to buy on line if the seller is ‘local’. Same if you supply services.

Link Love

Other sites in the same country are more willing to link to a local domain. Best bet for many high quality links is local directories – -which will often only accept local domain names anyway.

Links between international versions using local domains are great – they can help you increase the link love each of them control as long as quality content and offering a good user experience are a priority.

Stability

It’s not set in stone, but local domain sites do appear more stable in results than dot coms.

Getting a local domain just makes sense.

Social Media and You

SubmitEdge — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:36:31 +0000

If you haven’t joined the social media revolution yet, it’s time. Why you ask? Let’s take a look.

Social Media can lend you authenticity and personality. Use it for PR, and putting a face on your brand.

Social Media can snowball. The more you do, the bigger it gets, until it hits critical mass,. Popular people and brands just keep getting more popular – all it takes is the first big break.

Social Media means organic growth. You get five people to like you, they recommend you to five more each, those 25 tell their own friends – and before you know it you are amazingly in demand.

Social Media lets people say ‘yes’ to you. You can ask if they want to connect and get a ‘yes’ – and everything follows on the first yes.
Long-term storytelling – build a permission asset. You can share messages, develop a rapport, and eventually get the to subscribe to newsletters or email series.

Social Media gives you leverage. You can use digital PR to boost your profile, do damage control when the situation warrants it, and provide a positive spin on nearly any event.
externalities can be a persuasive force.

Social Media is good SEO. The more out there about you and the more you can interlink and connect, the strong your SEO is. Your keywords should be utilized across the board and you should always be looking for backlink opportunities.

Social Media is controllable, what better way to have a positive face in the media than to BE that media? Use all your power to substantially control perception and reputation.

Social media is the wave of the future – for both you and your company. Having the ability to embrace and utilize it can make a huge difference in your success.

Don’t miss out, catch the wave and ride it to the top!

Google Blog: In the Health Niche

SubmitEdge — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:06:55 +0000

From the Google Blog:

(Google recently took part in a FDA hearing particularly concerning the pharma industry, The way SEO affects information about pharmaceuticals on the web was being detrimental, with much misinformation being spread, so Google had a plan to help.)

“We share their (the FDA’s) goal of better understanding how to promote medical products online in a non-misleading and balanced manner. That’s why at today’s FDA hearing, we proposed a new Google ad design for FDA-related approved products that highlights an extra line of text clearly stating important risks, with a link to even more information for consumers. We think this new format will help set a clear standard for advertisers and give users important information.

The Internet, and how people use it, has changed a lot since the FDA last examined access to online health information in 1996. On Google alone, we’ve seen health condition searches increase several times over. What this tells us is that people find health related searches – and the ads they return – useful. We think this new ad proposal for FDA-approved products will make those searches even more helpful.”

Now the proposed standard for poduct claim sponsored links in the results will require:

Headline will link to designated landing page such as the home page
A ‘Warning’ phrase will be fixed, and cannot be modified
The remaining 62 visible characters may be modified
‘more info’ will lead directly to ‘risk information’.

Webmasters would do well to carefully follow this lead when creating snippets for pharma product material. The FDA is nothing to mess with.

SEO Step-By-Step Guide– 221. Can Affiliate Marketing Replace SEO

fara — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:00:19 +0000

Many companies even today think that they can increase their sales levels just by creating an affiliate program. There is nothing wrong in creating an affiliate program to increase your sales levels but, it is certainly not the right approach to replace SEO with your affiliate program.
The first criticism against this approach is how are you going to get affiliates to signup for your affiliate program. Don’t you think that you will have to do something to gain visibility for your affiliate program? Affiliate programs without affiliates is no good. If you are contemplating of using paid methods like PPC, then you are planning for a way of spending more money on your website promotion. Your PPC ad spending will only continue to increase which will reduce your profit margins considerably. So you will need SEO anyway and your affiliate program cannot replace SEO. In fact, you need SEO to promote even your affiliate program.
Secondly, affiliate programs work on profit sharing. You will be sharing a certain percentage of your profits with your affiliate marketers. In order to ensure a decent profit, you will be forced to keep your prices high. This will make you lose the competitive edge in the market. You cannot expect to increase your sales while your prices are above the average market price. You must be prepared to live with low profit margins. You are actually looking for a higher priced marketing strategy when you replace SEO with affiliate programs.
Thirdly, your success and profit will depend on the performance of your affiliates. If you are lucky, you will attract aggressive affiliates but you cannot expect all the affiliates to be equally aggressive. If you happen to end up with poor performers, then your online performance and your profit levels too will be poor. There is no way of filtering or selecting only the best performing affiliates.
Creating and maintaining an affiliate program cannot happen without expenses. You need affiliate system that can manage your affiliate marketers. At times, you will end up spending more money on affiliate management than the profit that you get through them. Therefore, you must carefully review your options and use SEO as your main stream traffic generation approach. Affiliate programs can be used to supplement the results but not replace SEO completely.
When you combine both SEO and affiliate programs, then you will be able to maximize your profit levels dramatically. Start working towards a more reliable marketing strategy so that you can keep your costs under control and at the same time enjoy great online success. With careful planning and consistent efforts, you will be able to see success with your SEO efforts as well as your affiliate program.

What’s so Dangerous About Paid Links?

SubmitEdge — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:52:29 +0000

Paid links are a source of great controversy. Google says buying links is bad, but some savvy webmasters can work around the confines while still staying white hat regarding these tricky shades of gray.

WHY are paid links considered taboo? It all has to do with trust. An inbound link is a thumbs up that our site is valuable. We all want to gain a spot on the first page of the SERPs. If other sites give us back-links because we have impressed them, these are honest recommendations.

However, when black-hatters pay for links from other sources just to increase rankings Google starts to frown. Companies which sell large amounts of links and advertise that they will substantially increase your Page Rank need to be looked at closely – the sites linked to you through such programs are usually totally irrelevant and can raise red flags.

Your site probably doesn’t want links from casinos and insurance sites; these send up a warning to the search engines to spiders that you are trying to increase your PageRank by getting incoming links, but not in the spirit of righteous linking.

You CAN trade links, but reciprocal links are often also not considered natural links … although, keep in mind – if you are building links mainly for traffic to your site, then reciprocal links, links bought from websites relevant to your own and text links can be extremely beneficial.

You must make sure to no-follow these types of links so Google doesn’t think you are gaming the system. They can penalize heavily if they think you are trying to cheat!

Now, you can pay someone to create links for you from forums and blogs, just make sure they do so with respect. You don’t want to get in trouble for spamming!

Watch yourself and tread lightly. When in doubt, no-follow. That’s teh best way to avoid teh dangers of paid links!

Ten Tips for Fast Link Building

SubmitEdge — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:50:59 +0000

Slow and steady wins the race, but sometimes you need links fast! Here’s how to boost your link power.

Start a blog, and ask other blogs in your field to give you relevant backlinks. You can interconnect and link to your blog from social networking sites.

Update your website regularly by adding new pages and seeking out links for them. Do the same for your blog, and have your blog ping the search engine to come crawl your site, and to Tweet your posts with a linkback to get more people to notice you on Twitter.

Submit articles to article directories – but be careful, and rewrite them to present at least 50% original content for each submission.

Use links in your signature, and participate in a helpful way on forums and in blog comments. soon you’ll have people begging to link to you.

Make videos and post them on the web – if you can make something go viral, your links will explode.

Use Press Releases to encourage interest in your site – they can get picked up by many different media sources and get you great linkbacks.

Do shout outs on your blog letting them know that when they link to you, they are increasing the value of your site. Sometimes all it takes is a few people starting a link chain for things to snowball.

Make a widget or gadget and embed a link in it. People will download your link along with the new toy or tool.

Offer content in exchange for links – maybe you can guest blog, or even sell articles with your name on them.

Last but not least, ask for links, ask everyone, They won’t all say no!

Attracting Customers in a Recession

SubmitEdge — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:46:31 +0000

Even when the economy is tight, you can still attract consumers if you convince them you have what they need.

You may be having difficulty maintaining your existing sales levels, not to mention increasing them. Here are some quick tips for getting your customers to reach into their pockets and spend more during a recession.

Give Away Stuff!

Everybody loves freebies . Sometimes a giveaway can at least get people through the door. If you do, then the chance that they will make a purchase or two goes way up!

You should also be offering customers free gift with a purchase of select products, or on purchases over a certain dollar amount. This will often result in extra sales, especially if you make the upper limit just past your average sale – say customers spend between $40 and $45, make the free gift kick in at $55. Have popular items at the checkout that will help kick the total just over the minimum required for the freebie.

Put Your Best Foot Forward.

Have your best offers (your products and services) arranged so that they are visible at the entrance of each section. You can also display your best offers in your main window if your store is small or you have lots of foot traffic and window shopping.

Online store owners should consider putting up a landing page highlighting the best offers, so visitors can view them and be tempted to enter into the website and make a purchase.

Customers will at least check out those offers, and may end up buying other items in that section.

Terms such as “Save” and “Limited Time Offer” let customers get the most for their money.

Survey your Customers.

Conduct a survey of your customers and discover what they really think. Figure out what they likes and dislike, and don’t forget to ask what attracted them to particular products or services.

You can use the data gathered to fine tune your marketing strategy, and improve your conversions and sales.

Make Your Stuff Easy to Return, and Warranty it.

You can boost warranties on your products, and offer easy return policies. By removing risk, you give consumers one more reason to deal with you, and added confidence.

SEO Step-By-Step Guide– 220. The Changing Face of Link Building

fara — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:12:33 +0000

The importance of back links is becoming only more and more important in the world of search engines. If there is a single area that has been part of the search engine algorithms from the beginning and getting reinforced with every algorithm update, then it must be link building. Though the importance of links has not changed, link building has been changing face constantly. Link building today is not same as what it was a decade ago or what it was five years ago. It continues to take on new faces constantly.
Today we hardly hear of reciprocal link building and sending emails to request for links. At onetime, reciprocal link building was offered as a standalone service by SEO companies. SEO experts spent their whole day sending link request mails to relevant websites. We have certainly moved a long way from there and reached viral marketing using compelling content to get links. While viral marketing is still one of the widely used link building concept, there are other latest methods. Today, the entire SEO link building industry is looking towards social media marketing as one of the most reliable ways of building links.
Link building as usual is a highly time consuming process whether it is acquiring links through reciprocal linking and by sending link popularity mails or getting links through viral marketing or through social media marketing. The difference however, here in the latest methods is that you can get permanent one way links which are highly important for your website.
Today, by far acquiring links through black hat strategies has reduced considerably. Getting links from link farms are no more useful because search engines have become more sophisticated and they access the links very carefully before any value is attributed to the link. So black hat SEO’s have learnt that it is just a waste of time to get links through spammy approaches.
One of the recent challenges faced by SEO’s in link building is the usage of ‘nofollow’ attribute. Social media websites allow the users to post their links in the content they post but they make use of ‘nofollow’ attribute so that search engines will not follow those links. However, you will be able to get traffic through these links. You must carefully choose your websites where you post your links. This was not the case few years ago. If you post a live link in a website, it was always counted by the search engines as a vote for your website.
You need to plan your link building efforts these days to ensure that you get the best results. Random link building efforts will only waste your time without any tangible results.