SEO Chiangmai is an SEO/SEM/Internet Marketing/Ecommerce consulting company. We've taught marketing, innovation and entrepreneurship, public relations, and organizational communication at the university level for 7 years. We've done IT consulting for 10 years and Internet marketing consulting for 5 years. The point is that this experience and expertise is brought to bear specifically in Internet Marketing where we do SEM (paid search/advertising) and SEO (site optimization).

Seven-Part Strategy

We have found a seven-part strategy works best:

• Keyword research, including competitor research, market, brand and offering focusing
• Modern, open-source content management system and search engine integration (Wordpress + SEO plugins)
• Content, content, content - regularly updated, relevant, on-page SEO-ed content
• Social media integration, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, as well as occasional friend/follow campaigns (we are in the process of designing a Twitter Follow Tool to help systematically grow effective readership using Twitter)
• Linkbuilding
• Advertising (paid search and banner ads)
• Analytics

Case Study - 140 Hours / 4 Months / $5,000 USD

Our most recent success story we engaged with a client for 140 hours over 4 months and achieved a 300% increase in traffic and keyword ranking. One thing that is an advantage is our cost structure, being located in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Our price for this work was $5,000 USD (at $35/hour). This client also conducted an ongoing Google Adwords campaign of approximately 1,000 USD/mo. This campaign is one crucial element of the overall SEO/SEM efforts.

SEO Scalability

As far as our scalability, we are a small shop but could take on new select clients. We are a little picky because it is important that the client believe in and adopt appropriate content creation activities, and be willing to conduct an ongoing Google Adwords campaign.

Copy Writing and Content Strategy Requirement

We can do copywriting if the client so desires, but the point is that someone has to create regular content. The effectiveness of our strategy requires regular (if only weekly) content creation according to specific SEO guidelines. We have had clients who simply do not take this step and therefore see only small, incremental improvement in their rankings, organic and paid traffic. This as you can imagine is quite frustrating, and so we generally "out-counsel" them.

White Label

If SEO/SEM firms have clients who are willing to engage with us on all seven elements of our strategy, then we are interested in discussing further. We can do all work white label.

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How much should we pay for content? There is quite a range out there. How much should writers get paid? In-house, outsource or partnerships? These are strategic as well as tactical questions.

For those of us who want or need to buy content, it is paid for up front, either under exclusive or non-exclusive agreements. It is also possible to find articles to purchase which are ready to go, or propose new articles and wait for writers to bid or submit writing which is then paid for.

Going Rates

The excellent Freelance Writing Gigs blog is a good resource on paid writing (from the freelance writer side) and has a recently updated (2010-01) overview of the market demand and pricing for Freelance writing. See also the Paid2Write blog which provides brief reviews of freelance writing sites.

Associated Content

Associated Content is the freelance writing opportunity most people start with. They along with Demand Studios are two of the largest freelance writing companies

Freelance Writing at Associated Content

Associated content has a few options for writers in terms of pay. One can retain the copyright and earn less, but have flexibility in republishing. Or one can assign full rights to AC and get some up-front pay as well.

One great thing about AC is that people are paid to write articles about AC. A quick search using the terms "Associate Content Paid" on AC reveals quite a few articles of interest.

Content Buying at Associated Content

AC provides a form to fill out and an email came back within 2 days with prices averaging $65 for original articles, as well as a long-term agreement with some level of volume. Simply too expensive, though apparently they do have some editorial quality control, and a large stable of freelance writers as well as the option of buying existing content.

Constant Content

Constant Content offers a writing opportunities directly and through buyer requests.

Freelance Writing at Constant Content

Writers can submit to Constant Content. In addition they have image, video, and illustrations. However, perusing some of the items is a bit disappointing as there are inflated prices and low quality.

Content Buying at Constant Content

Prices for content depend upon rights (use, unique or full rights), and article requests can have price ranges in them (along with length and content requirements).

One nice feature is the ability to see the author profiles, writing and sales volume and contact them directly. Also one can make offers to bid on content which authors have enabled for bidding as opposed to fixed prices.

Demand Media and Demand Studios

Demand Media is the parent company of Demand Studios, which is the writer-facing part of the organization.

Freelance Writing at Demand Studios

Through Demand Studios, writers can apply for and secure writing assignments and get paid directly and/or over time for content. They pay twice a week and they appear to be hiring writers, copy editors and filmmakers. Demand owns the copyright on the material paid for.

Content Buying at Demand Studios

Sadly, the only information on buying content is an online email address which we have yet to hear a reply from. We sent an email a few weeks ago.

Elance

Elance is not a content provider per se, but does have a large number of freelance writers. $10 USD / hr is a popular minimum rate and they have individuals and teams for hire.

Helium

Helium unfortunately was down at the time of publication, but they'll likely be back soon. I have some old links so those will go in the description below.

Freelance Writing at Helium

Helium has some advantages and disadvantages when compared with Associated Content. There may be more freedom with Helium in terms of editorial review.

Content Buying at Helium

Helium has a marketplace that makes it easy to post writing opportunities. However, it did look a little sparse in the market, though prices were not bad (for the content buyer) in terms of writing offers.

HubPages and Bright Hub

HubPages and Bright Hub have many similarities beyond the "Hub" component in their names. Both provide tools to create pages and groups of pages, add images, social bookmarks, etc.

Freelance Writing at HubPages and Bright Hub

HubPages allows for affiliate access to Amazon, Adsense, etc. and gets a percentage of views for their own Amazon, Adsense links, etc.

Bright Hub also pays directly for content, as well as supporting own-content creation under a community or as an individual.

• Bright Hub writing opportunities
• Hub Pages freelance writing overview

Content Buying at HubPages and Bright Hub

There does not appear to be any content buying opportunities at HubPages or Bright Hub at the present time. They are both destination sites, but it is possible they would put content up for sale or give access to writers in the future.

Travelfish Travel Writing

TravelFish is an up-and-coming Southeast Asia independent travel guide which focuses on ebooks and now has an iPhone application.

Freelance Writing at Travelfish

Travelfish Jobs actually pay well for writing, but the research time and costs can be considerable. As with most things, success lies in organization.

Content Buying at Travelfish

There does not appear to be any content buying opportunities at TravelFish at the present time.

Virtual Travel Guides

Virtual Travel Guides is one part of the 1stopthailand.com and related travel site empire (or vice versa).

Freelance Writing at Virtual Travel Guides

Virtual Travel Guides is usually hiring writers and copy editors. They are based in Thailand and want writers who will be in Thailand for at least 6 months or so. They don't actually require travel for their travel writing, but do require that the authors have traveled and also prefer experienced travel writers. They do more than travel writing, however.

Content Buying at Virtual Travel Guides

Virtual Travel Guides provide a few different prices and the exchange rate seem a bit aged so it would be good to contact them directly. They do have volume discounts as well. Likely the least expensive option, and that is likely because of the cost basis of operating out of Thailand.

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Markdown is a fantastic tool for providing document markup that is then transformed into HTML. Storage space is reduced from storing HTML, therefore queries to retrieve are reduced, and most importantly readability is increased.

The Markdown Wordpress plugin (v.1.2.2 in any case) works great though in our current template we have trouble with it executing from within certain blocks such as inside of tables, widgets and in shortcode-supported footers.

As stated, Markdown does require learning (and remembering), that is recognition vs. recall. However, once learned the use of Markdown in offline documents (such as email) can be an even better markup than either something made up, or the requirement to use a rich text editor. WordPerfect 5.1 still beats MS Word, in our humble, old-school opinion.

Flickr Gallery Wordpress Plugin

The use of shortcodes in general, such as those produced by Flickr Gallery require some initial configuration and there is a learning curve, however they dramatically simplify text editing.

Lightbox 2 Wordpress Plugin

Flickr Gallery supports various lightbox plugins. Currently we prefer the excellent Lightbox2.

Smart YouTube Wordpress Plugin

Smart YouTube by Vladimir Prevolac is another goodie which has some great advantages over copying-and-pasting embed code.

SlideShare Wordpress Plugin

Yoast's Slideshare plugin (one of the few of his that works on a symlinked /plugins/ installation) allows for setting an override width and use the wordpress.com SlideShare shortcode. Worthwhile to use.

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The nofollow attribute in HTML hyperlinks, along with the illustrious Google PageRank are two of the more obvious and important factors for the SEO professional. I think that for individual website owners, knowing about this is much less important.

Better is hiring (on occasion) a good SEO/SEM consultant who has your best interests at heart. Note: the PageRank algorithm worth revisiting on a regular basis to keep in mind how the bots see websites, especially if you want to get into the arcane art of PageRank sculpting.

Discovery of Dofollow

There is of course no such thing as Dofollow, but rather an absence of Nofollow combined with an ability to create links on a given site. One algorithm is something like the number of external links in relation to the number of nofollows and the number of times the word "thanks" is found on the page.

Discovery of PageRank

The use of Google to look up PageRank is not difficult, the only thing that is needed is a tool which goes through a given site (seeded by a set of sites with high SERP ranking for given keywords) and checks PageRank for Dofollow pages. This is something that the linkbuilding wizards at SEO Chiangmai have gotten wired up with local developers. Sweet.

Wordpress Plugin for Dofollow (removes Wordpress Nofollow)

Wordpress by definition adds the "Rel=Nofollow" tag to comments. Booo. But as for most undesirable "features" or lack thereof in Wordpress, there are plugins to modify or extend the default behavior.

• Semiologic's Dofollow Wordpress Plugin

SEO Chiangmai is Dofollow using this plugin. We'll see how long that lasts.

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SEO and SEM - Both are Marketing

Both SEO and SEM deal of course with marketing, which is "the creation of a customer" in the words of the guru Peter Drucker. If your SEO guy or gal doesn't understand marketing (or thinks it is just promotion or advertising) you might have a problem.

As I liked to say in my marketing lectures at the University of Hawaii, advertising is about ads, branding is about brands and marketing is about markets. Markets are collections of customers, either our own, our competitors or the industry's potential customers. Too often marketing is defined as the front of the funnel, the initial pitch or contact (or repeated, unwelcome contact) by a brand to it's non-customers. However SEO has to do also with getting good visitors to the site, not just visitors, and converting them when they get to the site. This requires insight into what the customer wants and expects, not just targeting high-traffic keywords or pitching the anonymous, undifferentiated masses.

The M in SEM, Marketing Strategy

Conversion is the real metric of interest, conversion rates and conversion costs. The cost of inventory and the scalability of it is the other side. But we have to see a converted customer as more than a single person and a single purchase. It might be true that each visitor might make one and only one purchase, however the appropriate word-of-mouth leverage from that customer can mean many more customers in the future. This is a "duh" statement, but easily gets forgotten in the calculation of customer profitability and advertising costs.

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Internet Marketing can be a bit confusing as there are many moving parts. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) themselves overlap when it comes to keyword and competitor research, though there are different optimizations and activities to perform as well.

Internet Marketing Overview

For a general overview of the topic of Internet Marketing, first take a look at the Internet Marketing article on Wikipedia and work your way through the articles listed on the right hand side.

Internet Marketing Activities at SEO Chiangmai

The main Internet Marketing activities at SEO Chiangmai, Thailand include the following:

Site Instrumentation and Benchmarking

• Site analytics
• PageRank
• SERP logs and sitemap submission

Keyword and Market Research

• Backlink analysis
• Competitor analysis
• Keyword research

On-page Optimization

• Brand articulation
• Site structure
• Usability
• Metadata
  • Title
  • Description
  • H1/H2/H3
  • Anchor text
  • Anchor title
  • URL

Off-page Optimization

• Link building
• Social media content and campaigns
• Press release optimization
• Email list campaigns

Pay-per-click (PPC)

• Google AdWords and banner ads
• Banner advertising and sponsorships

Ecommerce

• Affiliates
• Markets
• Carts and catalogs
• Transaction providers

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Popular Links

PageRank 8

• Magneto - Open Source Ecommerce software

PageRank 7

• Commission Junction - for SEM and affiliate marketing
• Matt Cutts - Google and SEO
• OpenX open source ad server
• Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Vertical Response - Email, postcards and survey campaigns

PageRank 6

• Paid Content - The economics of content
• SEOmoz Blog

PageRank 5

• bg Theory, LLC - Internet marketing
• Google Ranking Factors - Vaughn's 1-pagers
• Pizza SEO - The blog has lower pagerank so we link to the main site
• Search Engine Land
• Stone Temple Consulting - SEO Services blog
• Yoast - Dutch SEO Consultant - good tools and discussion

PageRank 4

• Bluehat SEO - definitely blackhat, but gives good whitehat tactics as well
• LinkSpiel - link strategy
• Onreact SEO 2.0 Blog - SEO
• SEO Gadget - excellent SEO analysis
• SEO Roundtable - Sometimes worthwhile discussion

PageRank 3

• SEOptimize Blog
• Search Engine Journal
• Bruce Clay Internet Marketing

Linking strategies and tactics - SEO Link Analysis Tools

Doing competitor backlink analysis is key.

• Yoast Link Analysis tool description and Link Analysis Tool Firefox plugin

Linking strategies and tactics - DoFollow Link Sites

First, get Yoast's Nofollow display Greasemonkey script, so you can see how the pagerank is being blocked. This leads to the following list of sites which do not use "no-follow" on links, either in main directory submissions for directory sites, or on comments for blogs and forums.

A good backlink analysis tool can make this process more automated, but it is equally important to browse the web with "nofollow" googles on.

David Naylor's Playground tool is pretty awesome for one-off site-checking.

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Ah, the humble Web Browser. Without it our customers cannot visit our site, yet there is a proliferation of browsers and we need an SEO-wise strategy to deal with them for development and regression testing.

Design for Firefox

No need to be other than didactic here, simply design for Firefox. It's got around 25% market share. That's the best argument. That's the only argument needed. We are Internet Marketers here and we go where the market share is (unless there is a strategic reason, and there certainly can be).

Test with Chrome

Webkit

• Chrome (uses Webkit, same html engine as Safari). However there is a different javascript engine, so there may be differences.
• ~ 10% market share (with Safari) of browsers

Test with IE6, IE7, IE8

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer is still sadly the leader in terms of market share, sadly because of the pain and time needed to adequately refactor CSS and JS to work adequately in the various browser versions.

Must test with each of these versions, because of market size.

• 6.00.2900 ~ 20% market share
• 7.00.5730 ~ 15% market share
• 8.00.6001 ~ 20% market share

Note: these can be installed as stand-alone applications in the same Windows machine using the Internet Explorer Collection.

Other Browsers - Opera, Seamonkey, Flock

Can ignore, but not a bad idea to have them around

• Opera, can be good (faster) for some sites.
• Seamonkey, note Seamonkey 2 just got released! Plugin support will no doubt lag, but it should be faster, more stable. Another Mozilla project.
• Flock, not my favorite, but some users out there, integrates with social media sites. Another Mozilla project.

Browser Usage Data

See Browser usage data

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Technorati is now completely irrelevant for SEO. It took a whole two months since our post on Technorati as part of the 30 Links in 30 Days Linkbuilding Campaign (Day 8, to be exact).

PageRank Stripped from Pages

How did that happen? Since October 30, 2009 it appears that PageRank has been stripped from blog pages as well as from account pages](http://technorati.com/people/jeffmcneill).

Blog Claim Process Now Broken

Two months is not a long time to be out of date, but of course in the SEO world, two months is an eternity, with unhappy customers and potentially business-destroying revenue crashes. For this reason one shouldn't count on the quaintly out-of-date About.com network.

It turns out based on the comments that the blog claim process has been broken since around August, or perhaps earlier. We at SEO Chiangmai began testing this in early December and it is indeed broken. Blog claims simply don't happen.

Summary - No PageRank, No Way to Create Links

In sum, PageRank (the raison d'etre of linkbuilding, beyond a trickle of traffic flow) is now gone, and unless one wants to create account upon account (account creation is still possible, but blog claims are not), then there is no way to create actual links to sites (under a single account).

Boo!

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