Long Haul SEO or Algorithm Chasing?

I read somewhere recently (can't remember where!) that search engine optimizers fall into two basic camps - those that focus on long term strategies to improve site rankings and visibility using well-researched keywords and those that chase the search engines' algorithm changes trying to surf to the top of the rankings by using the latest "sure fire" method.

Recently the "sure fire" method has included link farming - getting any and every link to a website that could be begged, borrowed or stolen - regardless of whether the linking sites had anything remotely to do with one another.

Google states in their webmaster guidelines that they can distinguish between "natural" and "unnatural" links. While I think this might still be wishful thinking (considering the number of sites I find at the top of the Google results that have very obvious link-schemes going on), I believe that the algorithm will triumph and Google will begin dropping sites that are using link schemes down the rankings like stones.

I am in the SEO for the Long Haul camp. I think that over time, a well-designed, well-written, easy-to-use site will always triumph over sites that try to scam their way to the top of the engines.

Free Keyword Research Tools

While Free Keyword Research tools won't give you all the data that a paid service will give you (detailed competition numbers, effectiveness index numbers, costs-per-click for pay per click campaigns), they can give you good information on whether your top keywords are being used in the search engines and offer lots of good variations of words and phrases.

• WordTrackers Free Keyword Research Tool
  A new tool introduced just recently
• Keyword Discovery's Free Keyword Research Tool
  
• Google's Keyword Sandbox
  Includes a very handy tool for finding popular keywords in your existing site copy
• SEOBook Keyword Research Tool

As I've said time and again, keyword research should be the very first step in your search engine optimization efforts.

With ANY keyword research tool, you should not take the numbers you get as the gospel truth - the numbers are all relative. Each tool uses a different database of information to come up with it's figures and sometimes the numbers in each tool can differ widely. However, this type of research will give you a baseline of information about your primary keywords that will enable you to find the perfect mix of popularity and competition for the keywords you optimize your website for.

RSS feeds in Outlook

While doing some research on the ways to get customized RSS content from a variety of sources, I came across IntraVnews. It's an add-in for Microsoft Outlook that lets you subscribe to all kinds of RSS feeds that it then puts into folders in your Outlook Personal folders.

It's free for personal use, $24.95 for a commerical license for 1-5 people in your organization (licenses for more people are also available.)

This is a way to get RSS news feeds without having to visit a website like Bloglines, or Google Reader or any of the other news aggregator services available.

The RSS feeds I subscribe to include: Google's Official Blog, the HighRankings.com forum, Dilbert and the New Yorker cartoon.

SEO Hourly Consulting

In an effort to be able to assist individuals and businesses with all levels of budgets, we've just introduced hourly phone consulting for Search Engine Optimization.

This can be a one on one call or a conference call with all the members of your web team. We will review the top three things you can do to improve your website's search engine rankings and visibility for your primary keyphrases.

We've also just posted some of our client results and successes.

10 Signs That Your SEO Is a Quack

By Jill Whalen (reprinted with permission)

There are so many SEO/SEM firms cropping up that talk a good game but don't deliver results. This is in part because there's so much information that is freely available about search engine optimization. On the surface, SEO sounds easy -- and it really is -- once you've had a number of sites to experiment with. What's even easier than SEO, however, is discussing SEO as if you know what you're actually doing (when you don’t)!

Here are 10 signs to watch out for that may very well indicate that your potential SEO is a quack. Please note that one of these individually may not be bad, but if you notice more than 2 or 3 of these when speaking with any SEO company, you may just want to head for the hills!

1. Your SEO company talks about Meta tags and Google PageRank (PR) as if they are the magic bullet to high rankings.

For the most part, there's no reason to even bring up the keyword Meta tag nor toolbar PR in a discussion about what needs to be done to get better search engine exposure for your site. Both of them are issues that quack SEO companies will talk about because they actually believe they are the key to SEO success. They are not. I've discussed in previous articles the Meta keyword tag’s lack of importance, so I won't go into that again here. In regards to PageRank, increasing the little green bar graph's number should never be the ultimate goal of a professional SEO campaign. A good campaign will automatically increase your real and true PageRank (as measured by Google) without your specifically setting out to increasing it on your own.
Since PR doesn't bring you traffic and sales (nor rankings), increasing it should not ever be the main goal of your campaign. This fact is of course lost on SEO quacks.

2. Your SEO company's site (or those of their clients) has the same Title tags on every page. Sounds crazy I know, but I've seen this more than once!

I once got a client who had previously used a very major SEO company that most people have heard of. They had been with this firm for a whole year, and yet the Title tags on every page of their site were all the same (the name of the company). Since Title tags are probably the most important (and easiest) thing to change on a site, any SEO company that can't do this one basic thing for their own site or their clients’ is most definitely a quack!

3. Your SEO company talks only about optimizing for the "long tail."

Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with long-tail keyword phrases, as they can bring a lot of traffic when all is said and done. But you don't need an SEO company if those are the only phrases you're interested in -- you can do it yourself just by writing articles. Your SEO company should not be afraid to optimize for the actual keyword phrases that most people would use at the engines to find your site. Yeah, it's gonna take time and money to go after the most competitive keyphrases, but there's usually a happy medium. Most sites have plenty of phrases that are somewhere between long tail and highly competitive. Those are the ones you definitely want to target.

4. Your SEO company tells you it's ALL about links (or ALL about content).

SEO isn't ALL about anything. It's about lots of things all added together to make the perfect combination for your site. A linking campaign alone will never be as effective if you neglect your on-page content, and vice versa. Be sure that your SEO company looks at your site from all angles and makes sure all your bases are covered. Otherwise, they're probably a quack!

5. Your SEO company tells you that you need a linking campaign even though you already have tons of links and are a well-established popular site in your niche.

Not every site needs every SEO service out there. Just becauseyour SEO company likes to sell link-building doesn't mean you actually need it for your site. Why should you pay for something you don't need? The same thing goes for sites that already have great, well-written, optimized content. If you've got that, perhaps you just need a linking campaign to help boost your traffic and sales. Don't allow an SEO quack to fix what isn't actually broken.

6. Your SEO company is almost surely 99% quackish if they tell you that they can rank your brand-new site in Google for keywords that will bring you traffic within a few months.

In fact, if they claim they can do it in less than 9 months, they’re either inexperienced or lying. Google has an aging delay that is most certainly related to the age of the site, as well as a certain trust factor. It is only the very rare and wonderful site that can get around this delay. But if your site is like most, you're going to have to look to the long term for your Google results, regardless of what the quacks might try to convince you of.

7. Your SEO company never mentions that they may very well need to redo your site architecture so that your important pages are prominently featured within your site navigation.

In this case it's very possible you're dealing with an inexperienced, quack SEO. This is usually something that is not a quick fix, so most quacks are reluctant to discuss it with you (if they even know it's important). But if your site architecture is not search-engine-ready, everything else you do will have much less impact.

8. Your SEO company can't provide you with any quality references.

This one pretty much goes without saying, but do be sure to get references, and do be sure to actually call them. Yeah, a reference may very well turn out to be their cousin, but you should be able to get some feel for the company you're choosing if you can at least talk to some references.

9. Your SEO company tells you that you have to have a DMOZ listing or your site will never be able to get high rankings.

Sure, a DMOZ listing is great, but it's a link just like any other. Submit and forget about it. If you don't get in, it's no big deal -- there are plenty of other links you can get instead.

10. Your SEO company's site mentions that they'll get you high rankings in AltaVista, Fast, Inktomi, Lycos, Excite, HotBot and the like. If it does, you are 100% positively dealing with a quack! 'Nuff said!

Jill Whalen of High Rankings® is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and host of the free weekly High Rankings® Advisor search engine marketing newsletter. Jill's handbook, "The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines" teaches business owners how and where to place relevant keyword phrases on their Web sites so that they make sense to users and gain high rankings in the major search engines.

Jill specializes in search engine optimization, SEO consultations, site analysis reports, SEM seminars and is the co-founder of Search Engine Marketing New England (SEMNE) a local networking organization.

Internet Marketing 101 - Find Keywords!

The very first step any business should take when trying to improve search engine rankings is keyword research.

Start with identifying the keywords that you want your site to rank well for in the search engines. Make this list as broad as you can, and do not limit it to single words - think about phrases people might use when they are ready to buy your products or services.

Once you have your list of words, research those words for popularity, competition, etc. by using one of the free (or paid) keyword research services.

My favorite is KeywordDiscovery.com Keyword Research Tool

Keyword Discovery offers an incredible amount of information about search terms, trends, and competition. Also - and this is important - keyword research gives you variations on words and phrases that people are searching on that you may never have thought of!

After doing your research you should have an even larger list of keywords than when you started. The next step is to analyze your site, keyword popularity and competition and make some decisions on which words you want to target your site for.

Search Engine Marketing New England

If you're located in the New England area, I highly recommend checking out Jill Whalen's latest venture, SEMNE.org. From the mission statement:

SEMNE’s mission is to provide networking and educational opportunities for search marketers in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, while having a little fun along the way.

I have been a long time subscriber of Jill's High Rankings newsletter - chock full of useful, down-to-earth, no-hype information about how to get better search engine rankings. I joined SEMNE.org as soon as I saw the announcement about it.

Will Google's Real Inbound Link Stats Please Stand Up?

For anyone interested in their website's rankings in Google, I am sure you've heard about working to get incoming links to your site - links from other relevant sites to yours is one of the primary ways that Google and other search engines determine how important your site is.

For a long while now the link: operator in the search field (eg. link:www.askjoanne.com) has not shown "real" results of Google recognized links.

Today on the Official Google Blog, I saw this post: Who links to your site? Google has added a section to Google Webmaster Tools That shows you exactly how many sites are linking to yours and when the link was last found.

To give you an example of the difference in the two tools, if I type link:www.askjoanne.com into the Google search bar, the results return 11 inbound links to my site. When I check out my site in the Webmaster Tools link area, it shows 242 inbounc links to my site.

So, if you want to know Google's real inbound link stats on your website, checkout the webmaster tools.

Blogging for fun and profit

The other day I wrote briefly about a book I got from the library called Blog Marketing. Well, I've finished reading it and am about to start again! It's not only about how and why to start your own business blog, but it's also about how blogging is changing the face of web publishing. Blogging opens conversations with your clients and customers, it allows you to quickly find out what people are saying in the blogosphere about you, your company and your products.

And besides all that, it's fun and interesting and ever changing. You can "monetize" your blog by running ads on it, or making recommendations of books, products or services.

Try it, you might like it. I recommend www.blogger.com as the fastest and easiest way to get started.

Delicious Tags influence SEO?

Do tags from deli.cio.us make a difference in a website's rankings? To be perfectly honest, I don't know. Do I suspect that it might make a difference, yes. Why? Because it's all about trust - and there is a certain trust value in going to a site that's been linked to by thousands of people. Even if it turns out not to be the right place for me, there must be some value in the fact that so many people chose to bookmark a site. I find that the really fun stuff on the web can easily be found by doing a search on deli.cio.us.

And anyway, having a personal bookmark database at your beck and call from any computer on the web, is a pretty handy way to store the sites you'd like to return to.

Blog Marketing and The Long Tail

In a world of fast information on the internet, does anyone read business books anymore? I rarely do, but this week I was at the library looking on the New Non-Fiction shelf and I found these two books: Blog Marketing and The Long Tail.

What did I like about them? Well, Blog Marketing encouraged me to get back to blogging - I had been very enthused in the beginning, but then felt that I ran out of things to say. And sometimes that is true, but Jeremy Wright suggests blogging or "cruising" blog posts for about 15 minutes a day and that helped me to realize that it doesn't have to be a big deal "new job" but that it can just be something I do for short periods of time each day to keep the flow going.

The Long Tail is a very interesting book about how the internet is changing the face of business. It used to be that everyone tried to capture the "hits" - sell the most of that "everyone" wanted to buy. But now with the ease of storing and indexing digital media, businesses are finding that the long tail... the non-hits are the ones that consistently continue to sell even after the hits have come and gone. It's about keeping more information available to people because not everyone wants to buy the hits.

Anyway, that's my blog-post for the day... a couple of good internet business books I found while browsing through the library this week.