SEO Guidelines - Step to Success

As if social media needed any more reasons to be included in your SEO efforts, Google offers a Realtime search results page that pulls information from Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, MySpace, TwitArmy, Jaiku and more. This results page is constantly updating as new content is being created by online users. The more “hot” a topic is, the more activity there will be. Much like the ticker tape at the bottom of a news broadcast, Realtime is constantly updating itself with new, relevant results for your search.

You can choose to include the updates by clicking the Realtime link, usually found in the “More” menu on the left-hand side of the results page. Just like any other search, Realtime results are based off of keywords, not URLs. So if you are looking to promote your blog, press release or website, be sure to include relevant keywords in your tweets/updates/posts. Realtime will also include when your content gets reposted by another user, helping keep your company name in the search results.

Realtime lets you create an email alert for your search keywords (like your company name) so you can stay up-to-date with how your company is being talked about online. This is a great tool for helping manage your business’s online reputation because you can address any consumer issues or negative press as soon as they arise.

Realtime also provides you with a Top Links section in the right hand column that pulls up the most cited links for your search keywords. The Timeline feature shows you how much activity has been growing around your search, spiking and declining as the amount of content has risen and fallen. You can scroll back in the timeline to find and read older commentary. You can even filter your Realtime results based on date, location and if you want to search by images.

Google’s Realtime Search goes to show that SEO truly is an ongoing process and its efforts need to be continuously evaluated and altered as need be. You cannot always control what is being said about your company or website, but this tool helps you see what kind of comments are being made by your online audience. It is definitely a good way to get a lot of online chatter in one place so you can keep an eye on things.

source: http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/google-realtime-search.htm

Link building is one of those things that is a complete learning process if you are trying to perform your own link building campaigns. It is important to realize that link building doesn’t always deliver direct traffic, so using the right measurement tools to determine effectiveness is a very important step in the process.

Here are some ways to be a great link builder for your business:

You Need To Be Patient
Link building results do not happen overnight, so make sure that you have the patience required in order to be successful. If you are acquiring links but still do not see results just be patient, because they do come in at a drips pace sometimes.

Be Able To Dig
If building links was easy we would all be on the first page of the search results. Once you get the more obvious links out of the way it is time to really start digging to find those hard to find links that are buried deep in the web. You have to dig through search results and really find those locations where you can submit your company info that not everyone else has found already and beat into the ground.

Think Like a Business and Not Like a Spammer
It can be very enticing to want to purchase that “amazing” product for $29.99 that claims to acquire you 1,000 new links, but try to avoid these distractions at all costs. These types of services are nothing more than a spamming tool which usually results in little to no search engine optimization value causing you to spend your hard earned money.

Be Able To Put a Plan Together
Like anything in business, you need to be able to put a visual plan together so that you can see what you are doing on a monthly basis. A good solid link building campaign should be visible in the sense that you can see the outline on paper so that you know where you are heading with your search marketing efforts.

Link building is one of those search engine optimization efforts that requires a unique approach that is consistently changing as our web space evolves and changes. Being patient and organized is very important.



source: searchengineoptimizationjournal.com

Keyword research is probably one of the most important steps you will take when you start your on site optimization for your website. Keyword research when done right can have your website operating like a well oiled inbound marketing machine. When done incorrectly it could cause you to miss out on very valuable web traffic leading to a loss in sales and revenues. In this post, I will recommend several helpful tips that could help you research relevant keywords to optimize every page of your website, after you have written your content.

Here are some keyword research tips to help you isolate only the cream of the crop keywords:

1. Thesaurus – A major point in keyword research is the ability to find a variety of keywords that your audience might use in order to find the same exact thing. A thesaurus can help you eliminate the guessing game from sitting there and trying to come up with variations of a certain keyword in your head. Don’t guess just use an online thesaurus and cut through the frustration.

2. Competitors – Take a look at your competition and see what they are doing and what keywords they might be targeting to give you a starting point if you feel stuck in any way. I never recommend anyone copying someone else’s approach but you can look at keywords to get a better understanding of what your audience and competition is using on the internet to attract attention.

3. Keyword Research Tools – Always use a keyword research tool, such as Keyword Discovery. Don’t ever assume you already know all your industry keywords because you have been working in a specific industry for some time. Chances are there are many long tail keywords in your industry that are being used on a daily basis that you are unaware of. Some of these long tailed keywords could be great for conversions because typically the end user knows exactly what they are looking for.

4. Be Strategic with your Keyword Research – When you start putting your lists together be realistic. Take a look at who is sitting around in the search results for the keywords you are picking and truly analyze whether you compete against them or not.

Remember that keyword research is going to be the foundation for almost everything you do online as business in the future. Pick the wrong keywords and you will get the wrong web traffic which could cause you to operate at only half capacity.



source: searchengineoptimizationjournal.com

To some it means simply putting together a series of inbound links that look like a science project and to others it looks like an online marketing business building plan aimed to actually brand and generate revenue, I think I would take the second approach. The right SEO strategy is not complicated but rather obvious to anyone that is wearing their entrepreneur pants.

Here are some tips for putting together your ongoing SEO strategy:

1. Never go after links from irrelevant sources. This meaning that if you sell car tires a link on a baby product website is absolutely NEVER going to help your link building in any way.

2. Always be consistent. One thing you do not want is to do a big push forward than stop, than do a big push forward and stop again. Keep it consistent and cut that big push forward and spread it out over 2 months rather than doing large “thrusts” of marketing efforts and stopping.

3. Don’t focus on websites that clearly have no link power. If the website just launched that link might not be that great for link building. Age will help link building in a much greater way.

4. Don’t focus on just one area to market yourself. Keep things diverse and your SEO strategy will go much further than just finding a certain location to hammer into the ground.

5. Don’t syndicate an article across a thousand directories thinking you are going to get anything out of that. That type of approach worked years ago and is no longer a real viable SEO marketing approach in today’s online market place.

6. Lack of deep linking. Build links to your important internal service pages and popular blog posts. This will spread your SEO out throughout your website and not just your homepage.

There are good approaches to marketing yourself online and there are bad approaches. It is important to realize that some of the older search engine optimization approaches that were used years ago are simply not the right way any longer. Building a business online now calls for a quality approach backed by a solid plan.


source: searchengineoptimizationjournal.com

In the world of SEO, “duplicate content” refers to content that is repeated on numerous pages of the same website word for word. It’s bad to have duplicate content on your site for two reasons. First, it provides a bad user experience. If a visitor is clicking through the pages of your site and realizes that they are all the same they will essentially be wasting their time and will become frustrated and leave the website. Second, the search engines frown upon it. They view duplicate content as a spammy way to manipulate the search engines and get your site to appear more than once in a search engine result, increasing the likelihood that a user will click over to your site. If a search engine catches you using this tactic they will likely penalize you for it.

It’s important to note that duplicating content isn’t always done maliciously. For example a web page, and the “printer friendly” version of that page are technically duplicate content but the search engines realize this and don’t penalize for it. In some cases people just don’t have the knowledge and don’t realize that they are creating duplicate content. Some web developers don’t build sites with SEO in mind and may create two homepages: the regular one and one that is listed as the “default” or “index”. While the content is the same, the pages are different and each have different inbound links. Splitting the link value like this is very bad. One of the key components of SEO is building quality, inbound links to your site which builds trust with the search engines. The more that you have, the better. If half of these links are going to the homepage and half are going to the “index” homepage neither one of them is reaping the full benefit of these links.

Therefore, it’s important to watch out for duplicate content on your web pages. The search engines like new, unique content on every page. It’s likely that the content on each may be similar since they are all a part of one website which is generally about one thing. However, if you notice that the content is too similar make some tweaks to it, or just put it all on one page. Your visitors and the search engines will appreciate it.


source: searchengineoptimizationjournal.com