The Key to SEO
It’s no secret, the Key to SEO is all about domain trust. If Google trusts your domain name, your site will tend to rank better. So how can you increase your chances of ranking better?
1. Get other sites to link to your site.
2. Verify the content of your site by creating logical internal links.
3. Utilize web 2.0 sites to link to your site.
4. Link your web 2.0 pages together to increase trust between the pages.
The use of web 2.0 sites is a great way to not only drive high-quality traffic to your site, it also passes link trust from authority sites. This results in higher page rank but more importantly, can help you to dominate many of the top listings on Google. Rather than just having 1 or 2 spots on the first page of Google, now you can have your site and each of your pages that you create on the various web 2.0 sites rank on the first page of Google, effectively eliminating your competitors from the first page.
Hope that helps. Until later.
Chadd Bryant
Aligning Your SEO Efforts
David Letterman just said that New York City is the #1 tourist destination in the U.S. That made me think about a post I did last week where I was discussing how you’d need to optimize a site for the phase, “New York City Vacations.” I was discussing how an inexperienced search engineer would link to that page using a phrase like, “Things to do in New York” rather than linking to that page with the phrase, “New York City Vacations.”
In addition to that alignment, it’s also wise to consistently use that phase in your external and reciprocal link-building campaigns. Rather than getting other web masters to link to your site using your domain name or worse yet, “click here,” use the optimized phrase.
So not only have you created an optimized page, you’ve aligned your on-page SEO strategy with your linking strategy. There are dozens of other small ways that you can align your strategies so be cognizant of your site’s alignment when you’re implementing them.
Chadd Bryant
Is it Time to Fire Your SEO Company?
SEO malpractice is rampant these days. It’s everywhere you look. I see blatant examples of SEO malpractice everyday, but fortunately, the majority of it is the result of ignorance, rather than intentional harm. So what are some of the most common issues?
I don’t see a lot of the old-school mistakes any more, like white text on a white back ground. But that used to work pretty well, until Google caught on to it. If anyone’s still trying that trick, they’re either a fool or are just trying to ruin your search ranking forever.
While I’m not seeing a lot of those types of tricks any more, I am still seeing a lot sites that just seem to miss the point of SEO.
It’s not just about filling your pages with keywords.
It’s not just about using keywords in your headlines or titles or even in the meta tags.
It’s not just about using your keywords in the right location on the page.
It’s about doing it in a strategic, calculated way.
It’s not just about getting lots of sites to link to your site.
It’s not just about creating lots of hyper links within your site.
It’s not just about bolding your text or using footer links.
It’s about doing it in a strategic, calculated way.
It’s not just about building a huge set of thousands of keywords.
It’s not just about finding words that get lots of traffic.
It’s not just about writing compelling headlines.
It’s about doing it in a strategic, calculated way.
It’s about aligning all of your efforts at the same time. If you get 50% of the things right, that’s not going to get you top rankings. You have to fire on all cylinders.
So how do you do that?
Align everything. If you’re focusing on a particular phrase, optimize a page for that phrase. Then point hyperlinks on other pages of your site to that optimized page using the keyword as link text. Re-read that last sentence until you get it. Inexperienced SEO companies neglect that simple point all the time. They create silly links that say things like “click here” as the link text. All that does is help your page rank better for the phrase “click here.”
Then build links from other sites into your site, using the keyword as the link text, pointing to the optimized page.
Don’t optimize a page for something like “New York City Vacations” and then point links to the page that say “Things to do in New York.” That’s not aligned. An aligned site would use links that say “New York City Vacations.” That reinforces the content on the optimized page and let’s Google know that an outside source have confirmed the content on the page.
Hope that helps.
Chadd Bryant
SEO: The Simple Truth
SEO isn’t rocket science, although some SEO firms want you to believe that. After all, if they keep you in the dark and make you believe that they know something that’s so difficult and so complex then you’ll be willing to pay extraordinary prices. But the fact is, SEO isn’t that difficult. Sure, it requires knowledge and diligence, but none of it is something that a high-school kid can’t do. If they can take chemistry and calculus, they can most certainly handle SEO. It’s just a matter of following the rules, or best practices. So next time, an SEO agency or a search engineer tries to convince you that they’re working magic behind the scenes, don’t fall for it. They may try to confuse you with complicated math (yes Google uses a complicated algorithm) but to get a site ranked at the top of Google doesn’t require you to even understand anything beyond 6th grade math.
Beware of folks who try to confuse you. That’s a common sales ploy. If you can’t get your head around it, then you’ll be more willing to pay high prices. But if you can arm yourself with a basic understanding of SEO, you’ll be educated and won’t fall for their schemes. Education is power. And we’re here to give you power.
SEO – The Recipe for Success
Last time we were talking about the recipe for SEO success and I equated SEO to a great chocolate chip recipe. Like a chocolate chip recipe, you can’t expect to get the same results if you forget to add all of the right ingredients. As I was pondering the similarities, I thought of another one. Many times, people think that you can do SEO a little at a time. But how would it work if you made a batch of cookies with the eggs and figured you’d add them later if the cookies tasted a little odd? Of course that wouldn’t work. You can’t just add eggs to a baked cookie. And there are some things that are fundamental to a great SEO recipe and can’t just be added later if things don’t taste right.
I know, many of you are thinking that the web is dynamic and can be changed at any time. Sure that’s true, but it’s much more difficult to improve a page’s validity with Google than it is to just do it right from the beginning. Once Google has tasted your recipe, they are less likely to believe that you’ve suddenly become a great cook (or SEO engineer in this case.)
Here’s a quick example. If you have a number of pages in your site, it’s likely that they weren’t all created on the same day. Google picks up on your pages as you create them, provided you’ve developed a site that’s regularly spidered by Google. If you want to see which pages Google has spidered, search Google for site:yourdomain.com. You’ll immediately see a list of all the pages that Google knows exist in your site. Some of the older ones will have link that says “cached.” Click one of those links. That will tell you in a box at the top the last time Google bothered to read through that page. I’m sure you’ll be surprised. While you may be thinking that Google loves your site and reads through it every hour, you may be surprised to see that Google is only bothering to read the pages that have changed regularly. Take your blog for instance. If you have developed a pattern of frequently changing your blog, Google may visit your site every hour or more to see if you have new content. But the other pages on your site that have not changed are not read again by Google. So might it be difficult to go back and try to fix them, to try and add eggs now. You could, but Google wouldn’t necessarily know you made any changes.
So how do you get Google to notice your changes so that your updated pages will be indexed again? We’ll get to that one later. Until then.
Chadd Bryant
