Search Engine Optimization

Having gained a ranking for a competitive term, it is necessary to maintain that ranking with constant addition of new content and links. If however you continue adding hundreds of links with the one anchor text, overtime this may result in negative results, sometime even a ban from search results. A perfect example is Gocompare.com, which was outright banned from Google search results for actively buying links for terms like “car insurance” and “auto insurance”. Although in industries like travel, insurance, mortgage, it is hard if not impossible to stay afloat without buying links, one must do so discretely, without hitting Google’s red flags. I do not know what the red flags are, and no one except Google’s engineers can tell you for sure, but varying anchor text, adding deep links, and avoiding sites that openly sell links is common sense strategy if you have to buy links.

We do not endorse link buying, nor do we participate in any selling / purchasing.

Once you gained a spot for a competitive search term, it is time to protect it, especially if you’re in a competitive industry like mortgage, travel, etc. There has to be a constant stream of links to the site in order to maintain the spot, since otherwise the competitor will take it over. For instance if you gained #1 for mortgage, you better make sure that you keep adding links to the site, because if not you can say good bye to the ranking. You should not however get all the links with anchor text “mortgage”, pointing to one page. There has to be a spread (using mortgage as an example):

• add “mortgage” links to the index.
• keep adding all sorts of mortgage related anchor text variations. Use all of them you can find in the keyword research tools. This will make the spread look natural.
• Make sure there are some: directory links, blog comment links, no follow links, forum links, content links, footer links and all sorts of variations. A little bit of everything, with different anchor text. Obviously get best anchor text from the best links.
• Spread links to articles and content on the site with “deep links”. There has to be some content on site for this, which is not too hard to add.

Keep those things in mind when doing link building.

The speed of the search industry is amazing. Having let loose on checking news, developments and updates in search field, I was amazed to see number of new developments and new posts to read on SEO from all over the internet. The speed with which things change and move forward is extremely fast. Much of what was true 5 years ago, is still true, yet a lot of it has no value now. One has to stay on the edge of things, and invest time in learning new things in order to stay on top of things. That’s how the game is played in SEO, so prepare you RSS reader and an hour a day to go over the latest SEO posts (at the end of this post).

Here’s some of the most interesting news that I’ve personally missed:

• Google Introduces place pages - place pages replace the original “more info” bubble on Google maps, with an entire page dedicated to the business, with many new features. This is big news in Local SEO, since small businesses like painters, limos and hotels must stay on top of their games. As of now Google said it will not crawl those pages.
• Google Jump to Links - Google now features links in search results descriptions. In order to get the links the site must be broken down into topics, and have relevant anchor text links (at least internally) pointing to the pages.
• Yahoo Released new Search Format - the format still has the classic links, but features some options on the left, with the PCC ads in their spot on the right. The changes are not dramatic, but very bold in comparison to Google’s tip toe steps when it comes to interface updates.
• Google officially states that META KEYWORD tag does not matter - In Google’s words: Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword meta tags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.

If you’re looking for a list of blogs, here something to add to the RSS (from the SEO toolbar):

• http://www.seobook.com/rss.xml
• http://community.seobook.com/external.php?type=rss
• http://feeds.searchengineland.com/searchengineland
• http://www.webmasterworld.com/index.rss
• http://feeds.sphinn.com/sphinn
• http://www.techmeme.com/index.xml
• http://feedproxy.google.com/TechCrunch
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogstorm
• http://massa.techndu.com/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss
• http://www.audettemedia.com/feed
• http://www.bluehatseo.com/feed/
• http://feedproxy.google.com/chrisbrogandotcom
• http://feeds.copyblogger.com/Copyblogger
• http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/feed
• http://fantomaster.com/fantomNews/feed/
• http://www.gapingvoid.com/index.rdf
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/3DogMedia
• http://www.jimboykin.com/feed/
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/johnon/pDvU
• http://feeds.mattcutts.com/mattcutts/uJBW
• http://feedproxy.google.com/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney
• http://ppcblog.com/feed/
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/PPCHero
• http://feeds.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog
• http://www.searchengineblog.com/atom.xml
• http://feedproxy.google.com/searchengineguide
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/SearchEngineJournal
• http://feeds.seroundtable.com/SearchEngineRoundtable1
• http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/sewblog
• http://seoblackhat.com/feed/
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/seomoz”
• http://feedproxy.google.com/typepad/sethsmainblog
• http://www.semvironment.com/feed/
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/ShoeMoney
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/SlightlyShadySEO
• http://feedproxy.google.com/SmallBusinessTrends”
• http://www.stuntdubl.com/feed
• http://feeds.sugarrae.com/sugarrae
• http://feedproxy.google.com/OnlineMarketingSEOBlog
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/Traffickdotcom
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/WeBuildPages
• http://wiep.net/feed/
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/Wolf-howl
• http://seoroi.com/feed/
• http://feeds2.feedburner.com/techipedia

Search engine optimization is about finding keywords with high search volume and rankings sites for those keywords with onsite and office techniques. The game on the agency level is sometimes decided by the sales people, while on the inhouse level it is highly influenced by C level executives.

There is nothing wrong with ranking for competitive keywords with high search volume, however there are more gems to be discovered in the analytics.

Here are some interesting facts that will help you understand this article better:

• 25% of all searches on Google have never been searched before (source Google)
• Long tail keywords sometimes account for 60% of the website traffic (from my personal experience this is true).
• Long tail searches convert better and are easier to rank for

If you’ve gained good rankings on Google for competitive terms, and have a lot of content on the website, chances are you are picking up a lot of long tail keywords, some of which convert extremely well. If you have goals set up in the Google analytics, it will conveniently tell you which of the keywords convert best, which is EXTREMELY valuable data, because if some of the long tail keywords give 1% - 80% CR, you can increase the bottom line by ranking top for those keywords.

In order to find out which of the keywords convert best using Google analytics, go to Traffic Sources > Keywords. There select the “Goal Conversion tab” and set the display to 500 keywords. Google will show you the first 500 keywords and their conversion rate for each of the keywords. You can see the highest converting keywords for each goal, by clicking on the goal. There, browse around and write down all the keywords that gave you any sort of conversion. You will find that in many cases some of the keywords were only searched once, and have a CR of 100% which is a wrong way to measure, since if the other keyword was searched 100 times and has 7% conversion, it is still better than the latter. So record all the keywords that gave you the conversions.

Now go ahead - create page and allocate some linking for those keywords, because it is time to rank #1 for all of them and double, triple, and quadruple the traffic, increasing the revenue from those phrases by at least 100%.

Outsourcing link building to companies in UK, Europe, US and 3rd world has become a common practice among SEO companies and in house optimization departments. The benefits and savings are obvious. Link building is a tedious, hard process that requires a lot of time and a lot of manpower. Third world can provide that man power for a fraction of a cost of what the western workers would charge. Link building outsourcing not only saves money, it has become a competitive necessity, as all companies that shoot for words like vacations, mortgages, etc are doing it, and the ones with the most budget and the most innovative teams get the top spots.

There are several ways link builders go about doing their business. The first tier, and usually the least effective are the mass submission to directories, which ones pure gold in terms of SEO, but has since lost their power. The second one are one way link building packages, priced from several hundred to few thousand dollars, delivering anywhere from 50 to few hundred links. The links vary, but the saying “you get what you pay for” applies here just as anywhere else. On the lower end link builders will get links from blogs and sites, designed for the sole purposes of link building / link selling, where navigation is cluttered with sites, while the site only consists of articles, which hopefully were not scraped.

On the higher end of link building services pricing is structured on per link basis, usually by page rank. Although SEO’s have long critiqued toolbar page rank as an incorrect way of judging about a website, everybody is doing it, and TBPR is not going away. As Eric Ward said (me paraphrasing) “if you think TBPR doesn’t work, go ahead and uninstall that toolbar… go ahead”.

The pricing on per link basis varies from agency to agency, and does not always reflect quality. There are many variables at play. For instance a UK company might charge $50 bucks per PR4 link, while their indian counterpart may offer $25 for the same PR4 link. What is the difference? The UK company might be simply outsourcing the work and charging a 100% margins to the clients, or they might be offering a better service, and better link building. The indian company may be good at what they do, or they may deliver lousy links from scraped sites. You never know, and the only way to find out is to actually place an order, and then review the work link by link.

Speaking of reviewing the work. If for instance you have a case when you ordered links for several sites in one niche from one company, be careful! If the company knows what they are doing, they’ll get links to those sites from different places, on the other hand they might put links to the same sites from the same places, leaving and easy to follow trail for Google - which calls for penalties, from the long war against the link buys. Make sure there is no trail when you order links from one company, for several sites in the same niche.

Link builders vary in their volumes of work. Some can spit out hundreds of links per month, but not so good quality, while others only a 10 or so, but of high quality.

Your company will benefit from local search engine optimization strategies which help you get customers from Canadian and American cities, states and provinces. Local search engine optimization strategy targets customers who use key word phrases that indicate local city, province or state. Visitors delivered with those keywords usually prefer to meet your company face to face.

This strategy is an optimal selection for private professionals, small businesses and companies that operate in one city. Larger companies also benefit from local search engine optimization by expanding their customer base in Canadian / American cities, provinces and states of their choice. You can get a 360 degree look at our local search engine optimization strategy and search engine optimization process to know more.

Here’s a small sample of what you’ll receive from our search engine optimization company:

• Increase traffic to your website 80% - 1500%
• Raise revenues delivered with your website due to a flow of visitors who are interested in your products and services
• Get customers from Canadian and American cities with local search engine optimization services
• Establish a flow of new customers, four seasons, 365 days a year.
• Reduce marketing costs in other, less effective marketing vehicles. Reduce cost per new customer as a result(CPA).

Obviously, SEO has the capacity to help you achieve business objectives and get you where you want to be. Unlike any other marketing methods, SEO provides your company with a constant flow of customer traffic. A onetime investment gets you a return within 2 to 6 months. The investment itself can be measured on a granular level with website analytics software. You can measure precise increase in traffic, monitor search engine positions and ultimately calculate ROI delivered by our search engine optimization company – not a possibility with any other marketing method.

If you have any questions during campaign stages, want to implement changes, have new keyword ideas or want to consult with us – give us a call or write an email! You’ll get all the answers.

Michael Wilson or Silvo Frank, founders of our search engine optimization company will also directly update you, your team or your representative on the state of the SEO campaign, rankings, progress and visitor flow.

Take care, research and be careful where you invest your money. Look for transparency , referrals and real client examples.

SEO Expert™ has worked for over 250 clients in the years we’ve been in business(check our BBB profile). Fortune 500 level customers, private companies and individual professionals. (check our clients).They all understand and benefit our search engine optimization company delivers.

Contact SEO Expert now at 514 – 397 – 9512 and speak to a real person. Prefer email? Fill out this application to get in touch with an SEO professional.

Here is a strategy you can use if you have local website, that needs to be optimized for a local city. This first part of the article talks about onsite SEO, while the second part touches off-site (link building).

Address

Having a local address, preferably downtown is a MUST if you want to rank for local keywords such as “montreal lawyer”, “atlanta pizza delivery” etc. The closer your address to the downtown, the easier it is to rank in the local box. If you are located outside of downtown area, or worse if you’re located in suburbs, than rent a phone line / PO box downtown. The benefits are HUGE while the costs are little. There are many sites that rank A, B, C with little (or sometimes no links) based largely on the relevancy of their location.

Include the address in the contact us section of the site, and also drop it on the homepage somewhere.

Titles / Content.

Plug your city keywords + service / product you offer on the homepage title and within content, and offer some other relevant pages to the keyword you’re targeting. Find out relevant keywords with Google tool:

• Main keyword and look for other related phrases topics
• Main keyword + your city and look for other relevant keywords

Once you have some topics go ahead and pages to create relevancy. The more the better.

Content is KING so it is preferable that you become the RESOURCE in your industry. There are plenty of articles on the topic, so do some research on how to become one. It also WAY easier to get links once you have some content leverage instead of dead marketing speak that no-one wants to hear anyway.

Internal Link Structure

Once you have the content, make sure to cross link the pages in the navigation/footer/content with relevant anchor text in order to guide the Google Bot and visitors. Homepage is the most powerful page so link from within text for the pages you want to rank.

Make sure to link from all pages to the homepage with keywords + city (basically the main target phrase).

read second part on link building.

Google is an incredibly popular news portal, which according to Meredith ranks number 5 in the world. Traffic that the first page listing on Google News homepage can deliver is immense. Not only that, Google news is capable of delivering constant traffic to the pages with keyword refined search via email alerts, known as the Google Alerts.

So how do you get included in Google news?

The official guidelines for inclusion are located here.

Getting Started

• Submitting Your Content
• Technical Requirements
• News Sitemaps

Your site and Google News

• How It Works
• Changes To Your Site
• Removing Content

Updates to your Site

• Troubleshooting
• Additional Tips

The number #1 you must follow - content must be 100% original. Having a scraper does not work. You have to constantly put out new and unique content for the bot (with the exception of some press release distribution platforms).

Another big factor is the number of editors. Google does not accept one man websites, and requires real editors. You must have biographies and publisher info easily available for the Google employers to review your website, since inclusion in Google News is manual.

The number of articles per day is not specified, but at least 2 - 3 per day is a must. There are not guidelines as to the length, since Wall street sometimes has 5 page article, while Barry from Search Engine Roundtable usually posts only few paragraphs.

Its OK to include images, video and ads.

The title of the article should be informative and cannot contain a day. No keyword spamming in the title. Having keywords in the subtitle / content is sufficient enough for Google to show your article in a keywords search on Google News.

Another interesting thing - Google supports redirect with ads before the article. You can also ask for subscription every time a visitor comes from Google News, but allow Google Bot to proceed without the login in order to successful spider content

More resources:

• Submitting Your Content: Google News
• Getting Into Google News Revisited
• How to get your site into Google News
• Getting Included in Google News

Hub finder is an extremely USEFUL link analysis tool from SEO book available for free. If you do SEO for yourself or for your clients, this is a must use tool.

Some background on the tool and how it works:

Hub finder is a web based software made ad hosted by, in my opinion the best SEO resource, SEO Book. The tool uses Yahoo API, meaning it gets data from Yahoo. In the nutshell, Hubfinder looks at your competitor’s backlink profiles, and identifies pages which link to at least 2 competitors at a time. For instance, if your competitors are example.com, site.com, webaddress.com, and somesite.net links to all 3 of them, Hub finder will identify it, making somesite.net a link opportunity for you.

The tool uses Yahoo API, and Yahoo is known to put the most authoritative sites (by Yahoo’s calculations) at the top of the results in the Site Explorer. Hubfinder has “depth” limit from 50 to 250 links on each backlink profile, so to ensure you find the most authoritative hub pages, limit the volume to 50.

How to do the analysis

First, go on Google and type the keyword you want to tackle. Copy all 10 websites that show up for that word (or 9 if you’re already on the first page) and put them in the Hub Finder.

Then set the preferences. If you’re just starting a link campaign for the client or for your website, it is best to see as many link opportunities as possible, so I max out the preferences:

• Results: 20
• API: Both
• Min Match:
• Depth: 250
• Link Type: Domain
• Application: Sort By

Query and Hub finder will give you the results:

Now you have a very good list of link opportunities!

More on Hub Finder:

• About Hub Finder