Personal Site Overviews by Phone

I am now offering Personal Site Overviews by phone at a cost of $50 per 30 minute session. During the telephone session we will go over your site from a Search Engine Optimization point of view and I will make suggestions that should help you with your SEO efforts. In addition, prior to the call I will take a look at your site and provide you with a report of basic things that can be done to help your site rank better.

To schedule an appointment, simply e-mail me and we’ll set you up with a time and I’ll send you an e-mail invoice. Payment for the service is by PayPal or check and appointments won’t honored until payment has been completed.

The call can be made through Skype or telephone, whichever works best for you.

Website SEO Review

Included in the site review:

• Study of your site for issues that could be keeping your rankings and traffic low.
• A PDF report of your site’s status and recommendations for improvement.
• E-mail mentoring with Richard V. Burckhardt, The Web Optimist of Palm Springs, for any questions arising from the report.

Charge: $500

Frequently minor tweaks and changes can result in improved search engine rankings and traffic!

Please allow two weeks for the review. Naturally, I will try to get it completed and sent sooner.

In-House SEO Workshop

As previously announced on the Palm Springs SEO Workshops page, this two-hour workshop is held in your local office for groups of three or more (up to 20). Internet access is required at the location.

• On page optimization (Meta tags, navigation, etc.)
• Off page optimization (Links, competition)
• Site clinic (I critique YOUR site)
• Image Optimization
• Social media, universal and personalized search overview.

Charge: $100 per person, minimum group of three and a maximum charge of $500 (no additional charges after attendee #5).

SEO Consultation

I will come to your office and make optimization recommendations and online marketing suggestions for your web design team’s projects, including on-page SEO, links, site structure, content, keywords and so forth.

Charge: $75 per hour.

To schedule appointments for any of these, simply contact me and we’ll set you up with a time, date, etc.

Griffin 9696 AirCurve Acoustic Amplifier for iPhone (Clear) is only $14.99 with free shipping as I write this. A deal in my opinion!

See all of my Amazon.com reviews and videos online.

Ask just about any SEO what their least favorite part of search engine optimization and a lot of them will give link building as the answer. Begging for links from authority sites is no one’s idea of fun. Rejection feels so, well, rejected!

Building organic links to your site is something that we’d all like to put on auto pilot as much as possible. There are ways to do this, but they can be different depending on whether your site is brand spanking new or a seasoned veteran.

So, we’ll divide these tips and suggestions into two parts: New Sites and Established Sites.

New Sites

1. Comment on blogs and forums that allow either a link in the text or (more likely) a signature link. Use your real name, too.
2. Offer plugins or gadgets that link back to you. Popular plugins and gadgets can be a gold mine for back links. For example, check out Twitter Doodle and RSS Doodle, WordPress plugins which create mash-up posts for your blog from Twitter chatter and RSS feeds, respectively.  At the bottom of each page of mashups, you’ll find a link back to the creator of the plugins (Check out this sample page). In addition, folks love cool, free stuff, so you’ll also be getting goodwill, authority and branding.
3. Create great content and give it away. Guest post on related blogs, offer articles with links back to you to quality article services or even online news publications.
4. Spin your great content three ways to article sites after it has been published on your own blog or site.  Once you see your first version cached, submit the spinned versions to other sites. This creates additional unique versions of the article that are linked back to you from off site.
5. If your site isn’t a blog, add one! They’re great for on-the-fly content and announcements and terrific for community building. Your content (with links back to you, so use absolute links) will be distributed by RSS for possible reposting elsewhere across the web.

Established Sites

1. Rather than check out links to you competitors and try to get links from those sites, build your own unique link community. Linking to competitor backlinks just strengthens them. Don’t reinforce your competition.
2. Focus on relevant links, not quantity.
3. Link out liberally. I know this makes some SEOs cringe, but when a search engine sees you link out to authority sites, some of that authority can rub off on you.
4. Forum marketing should not be overt. Respect the Terms of Service, make useful posts and create a positive reputation. Focus on your niche. Make sure you understand the forum policy on links and signatures.
5. Control the conversation. Make your site, forum or blog the informational authority for you niche. The links will come.
6. Use Twitter (You really didn’t think we’d get through this without Twitter, did you?). Twitter conversations can bring links to you and it’s a terrific resource for finding related sites to partner with.
7. Watch for press releases for ideas. See what others are doing and be ready to respond to breaking news with blog posts, articles and your own press releases (which are still good for back links). Post your response quickly to be one of the first. Go back and edit later to monetize or adjust the title for ongoing rather than breaking news searches.

This barely scratches the surface of beginning SEO and is intended to get you started in the right direction. I go into more detail in my SEO 101 workshop, offered to web site owners and small businesses. Check my blog at http://www.weboptimist.com for more information or contact me to set up a custom workshop for your business group in the Palm Springs area of Southern California. Travel is possible for large groups.

Who would have thought? I have to admit that when Twitter was first launched, I was one of those folks who thought it was downright silly. Who cares that you’re sitting in a coffee shop texting a 140 character status report? Sheesh. Bound to disappear in a few months…

Wow, was I ever wrong. Twitter has taken the world by storm, providing communications for everything from patriots in repressed regimes to emergency information services. And, yes, you’ve still got those nerds tweeting about sipping a latte at Starbucks, too. Oh, well…

Twitter has been a natural magnet for SEOs and Internet marketing tweeple, er, people.  Twitter allows an unprecidented way for an individual or company to get immediate insight from around the world, allow you to break out of your social group (follow friends of friends, industry leaders), grow your channel of distribution and build your brand.

Here’s a list of twips, er, uh, tips to make your tweeting twouble fwee, ah, er, uh, trouble free!

• Don’t follow every conversation. It will drive you nuts. Be selective, but participate. Jump in and out of conversations.
• Incorporate “Tweet This” functionality on your landing pages to encourage, well, tweets! For WordPress blogs, check out the plugin appropriately named Tweet This.
• Ask questions. There’s no better way to get started, make friends and become known.
• Answer questions. Let others know that you are an authority. This is particularly great for companies.
• Bring attention to others, not just yourself. Keep self promotion to a minimum.
• Answer all of your direct messages (DM) and replies (@).
• Tweet brief information that is not worthy of a full blog post, but valuable information nonetheless.
• Tweet regularly, but not too often. Think value, not volume, just like with links in SEO.
• Drop links to valuable sites and information.
• Reweet good stuff. This can be really powerful and can become viral.
• When someone retweets you, thank them.
• Seek out and engage people who retweet in your industry.
• Keep your tweets to about 120 characters to allow room for retweets.
• Tweet with care. Remember, once you tweet something, it’s out there and can’t be deleted.
• Follow folks who you might want to direct message (DM). You can only DM with folks you follow back.
• Follow @spam. This is where you can report spammers by DM. @spam will follow you back.
• Be personable. Even if you are using Twitter for a company profile, make it appear there is a person there, not an autoresponder.

And, chances are you will find yourself monitoring multiple Twitter accounts. Check out the Twhirl client, my current favorite. Not only does it handle several accounts, you can set it up to auto update Ping.fm and Jaiku with your tweets.  Seesmic offers the Seesmic Desktop client, too, which now interfaces with Facebook. And, a lot of folks swear by TweetDeck. Check them out. They’re fwee, uh, FREE!

Read more SEO 101 articles in the SEO Training category of this blog.

Here are 106 quick tips for search engine optimization that even your mother could use to get cooking. Well, not my mother, but you get my point. Most novices with some web design and beginner SEO knowledge should be able to take these to the bank without any problem.

(Note: This list of tips is an update to the original post 55 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love. I am republishing this expanded version for the attendees of local Palm Springs SEO training classes that I am doing. It is also available as a downloadable e-book.)

1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.

5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.

8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.

9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new graphics-based site after it is built won’t cut it.

10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.

11. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.

12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html. Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.

14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.

15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.

16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.

17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.

18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.

19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.

20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.

21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.

22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.

23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.

25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.

26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.

27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.

28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newsletters and zines.

29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.

30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines, but NOT necessarily more than .com domains. However, they certainly can’t hurt and are frequently authority sites that would carry good link juice. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.

31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.

32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.

33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.

34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.

35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.

36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!

37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.

38. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.

39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.

40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.

41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:

(1) Log out of Google

(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar

42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.

43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.

44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary  forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.

45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.

46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.

47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.

48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.

49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.

50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.

51. Add viral components to your web site or blog – reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.

52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.

53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.

54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.

55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.

56. Use Google Alerts to be alerted about back links – http://www.google.com/alerts.  Add link:www.yourdomain.com to the Search Terms box to get notified by e-mail when someone links to you.

This is part two of my series on Optimization for Social Media Integration, this time covering social media news.

The top two social media news sites today are Digg and StumbleUpon, so I’ll concentrate on these. However, Propeller.com, Reddit.com, Mixx.com (do-follow links) and Buzz.Yahoo.com are all worth a look.

The main thing to remember about social media sites is that the news on these sites is chosen by the users, making popular items even more so because bloggers look at this content for cool, link-worthy stuff and then re-post or write about them. The stories get great visibility and natural editorial links. In addition, the content is targeted, making it great for boosting your ranking and authority.

In brief: Digg utilizes outside voting, requires LOTS of votes for an item to go popular, generating less illegitimate content. StumbleUpon features toolbar voting, send page to a friend ability (which pretty much forces a view) and even includes the option to buy more views at a whopping 5 cents each.

Here are some general guidelines to make your social news more popular and to provide those nice surges of traffic to your blog or site. These spikes can be fantastic!

Content

• Give quality. Readers (voters) appreciate hard work, like learning, hate spam, SEO and marketing. They strictly want news, not fluff, so make sure that news, not self-promotion, is what you’re presenting.
• Be concise. Save time for everyone by not overdoing the amount of text. Social news readers like to skim without too many clicks. In other words, they are anxious to vote and want to get it done right away!

SEO

• Use titles in your blog posts that are positioned for back links with great SEO text. Page titles can have more keywords.
• Post regularly. Keep that great content coming.
• Don’t be tempted to 301 redirect old content to new posts. Let the content be.
• Garner trust because trusted domains are more likely to hit the front page of Digg.
• Stay on topic.
• Make your news linkable.
• Adhere to the Terms of Service for the news site.
• Optimize, rework and monetize your articles 30-60 days after they have gone viral.
• Utilize RSS feeds to help drive links from other sites.  RSS feed links are not nofollow.

One final thought. You can actually dominate longtail results with proper social news optimization even if your site isn’t optimized, a terrific byproduct. Links generated to your news article can push even pagess with no SEO to speak of higher.

As promised, though delayed a bit, here is the follow-up to SEO & Social Media Integration with some tips for optimizing your social media and integrating it into your overall SEO mix. Naturally, the more social links you have, the more you’ll be noticed (Hey, I’m here!) and linked to and crawled, natural SEO in any book.

• Complete your profiles and put your web site or blog URL in ALL of your profiles. Including your web site link should be a no brainer, but LOTS of folks forget this. Social content is definitely showing up in search results. For instance, a search for my name in Google comes up with several of my profiles (LinkedIn, WebPro News, Plaxo, etc.)  as I write this. Include jobs, use keywords, never turn down interview or podcast opportunities that can be included.
• Check industry trends through services like Google Alerts. Jump into breaking subjects with blog and social media posts.
• Promote blogs, social media and RSS feeds of those who link to you through your own RSS feeds. This has a viral effect that sends more links to you.
• Develop a series of “How to” videos and post them on video sites like YouTube (now 25% of Google searches). People LOVE these and will embed the videos or link to them. Post them on your own blog and in the social sites, too.
• Content is king on Twitter, just like in standard, run of the mill SEO, so use keywords and hashtags (like the #bsg tag for Battlestar Galactica fans).
• Utilize Facebook fan pages. These can have unlimited followers and can be optimized.
• Subscriptions are gold! Social Media Content = Subscriptions + Links!
• Transcribe your podcasts and post them on your blog.  Include keywords and links.
• Create widgets that will pull your RSS feeds from blogs, social media and news feeds. As a rule, links in RSS feeds are direct links without redirection or the dreaded “nofollow” tag!
• Re-optimize blog posts after their “shelf” life. Rework them and monetize them for breaking subjects. Any given blog post URL or page has history and links, so update them to keep current, ranking and posted in the social media.

OK, as always, these just scratch the surface, but you can see the optimizing for SEO and social media are pretty much one and the same these days. What you do with one totally effects the other.  Anyone who thinks they can be an SEO and ignore social media is, well, NOT an SEO.

Next up: Optimization for Social Media Integration: News

Take a look at the following and see what you think:

• Create great content, including articles
• On page optimization
• Links from authority sites
• Get content on industry sites, providing contextual links
• Get noticed in Social Media
• Get noticed in search
• Get into niche sites

Sounds like the basics of SEO, right? Well, these apply to Social Media, too. Any SEOs out there who are still avoiding the Social Media bandwagon are, well, stuck at the bus stop without a token.

Social Media and search engine optimization have become so integrated that you can’t really separate them anymore. Social sites like Twitter, which many of us laughed at when it first came out, are pushing a revolutionary shift in how information is found on the Internet because they add interaction and community to the equation. In addition to the basics above, they throw in features like:

• Participation
• Voting
• Comments
• Friends
• Trust

That last one, Trust, is a BIG one. Social sites are working more like search engines these days and there’s a huge difference between they way they dish out results and the way the search engines do. The social sites look at what your friends think about a subject and their results are based on that. You trust your friends, right? A perfect example is Twitter search. It’s based on tweets from folks you can check out and follow or who can follow you. And, look out Google, it’s really fast! And, it’s immediate. You can catch what is happening right now. Wanna see what the fans of Battlestar Galactica are tweeting? Check it out in real time (Or, if you’re a real Twit, check out by the hash tag #bsg).

The search engines dish out results based on the trust of folks you don’t know (PageRank, back links etc.).

Which begs the question, will trust kill the algorithm?

So, think of Social Media sites more like search engines that can help your visibility in, well, search engines.

Confused?

Don’t be. It’s simple. The more social links you have, the more you’ll be noticed and linked to and crawled. It works pretty much the same way as SEO.

Next, Optimization for Social Media Integration. Look for this post soon!

Twitter Weekly Palm Springs SEO Updates for 2009-10-18 is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

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Twitter Weekly Palm Springs SEO Updates for 2009-10-11 is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

If anyone gets a Google Wave invite, please send one my way! Puh-leez! #

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Twitter Weekly Palm Springs SEO Updates for 2009-10-04 is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

If anyone gets a Google Wave invite, please send one my way! Puh-leez! #

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Twitter Weekly Palm Springs SEO Updates for 2009-10-04 is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

If anyone gets a Google Wave invite, please send one my way! Puh-leez! #

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Twitter Weekly Palm Springs SEO Updates for 2009-10-04 is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

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Twitter Weekly Palm Springs SEO Updates for 2009-09-27 is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO