SEO - A Non-Spammy, Natural Linking Strategy

SEO - A Non-Spammy, Natural Linking Strategy

Despite there being over 200 parameters taken into account by search engines when ranking sites, one of the most popular facets of search engine optimisation (or SEO) continues to be linking.

However, this article isn’t about non-spammy content, it is about non-spammy linking strategies. Yes, although linking has fast become an industry whereby directories have popped up everywhere and links are put in footers, headers, background color, or a myriad of other disguised ways, there is still a non-spammy way to do links. Whats more, my history shows that this way works better for your ranking over the long term as well.

Before we get started, a very brief introduction for those newly initiated into the world of SEO. The bottom line is this - Google will recommend your site, if others recommend it first. This means, to get high rankings in Google, Google needs to know that others find your site useful. How does a search spider know what people think about your site? Links. If people are linking through to your site, the Google spider will think your site is well liked. If relevant sites are linking through to you, this is even better, because Google will consider you to be an authority on this topic.

So, how do you go about getting the nice mix of links that Google might consider appropriate? Well, you can just dive in and submit your site everywhere you can think of. Or you can take the longer, more well thought-out way around…

1. Before you even start - look at who your client is. What is and isn’t going to be effective for them? Where and where wouldn’t they want to be seen? You need to know exactly what the limitations of your link building strategy are going to be. For example, if you have a government body as a client, you are going to have to think VERY conservatively. Similarly for national brands or straightlace industries like insurance. On the other hand, start ups, media and online retail might be more willing to take risks. You need to note all this down, and make a memo of what kind of strategy you will be following. This is particularly important if you are sharing this client work with others.
2. Similar to point 1, point 2 is about relevancy. you don’t want to damage your brand image for some basically worthless links, so make sure all your links are on topic in some way. Its best for your SEO and it is best for your brand. The effect of directory links seems to be negligible these days, so you might want to consider if this is worth your time. In content links however are much more valuable.
3. Assigning the work. Link building is often assigned to junior staff, or as a starting task. Now, sure, it might seem like brainless work - but if your junior gets an irrelevant or inappropriate link for your client, and your client or a competitor sees it, you will have a lot of explaining to do. Make sure that the person doing your links has some experience or good training, and most importantly, that they have read your client memo.
4. Now, in the interests of corporate knowledge and continuity, it is also recommended that you keep good records of every link you do for your client. No, not so you can copy this strategy for the next client (see point 1.- client suitability!), but so that you can go back and see what has worked and what hasn’t. Going hand in hand with this is the obvious monitoring of rankings to see how your efforts are affecting them.
5. Step 4 will help you with step 5. Evolution. You can’t just get links and then stop. You need to constantly increase, improve and diversify your sources of links. This takes creativity and experience, and is yet ANOTHER reason why the most junior people in your organisation shouldn’t always be given linking to do. As part of evolution you need to monitor your progress, learn more about your client and keep up with their latest developments (look for linking opportunities), and also keep on top of general SEO industry developments.

This is the general overview of how a linking strategy should be undertaken. Sure it is a lot more complicated than just submitting your site to link farms, or sending out a mass email, but SEO is about having the edge over your competitor, and these steps will help you get there. Website Marketing is an increasingly popular and competitive form of marketing, you need to make sure you are keeping up with the Jones’s not just looking for the fast or easy route.

If this advice is too vague for you, here are some more specific do’s and don’ts:

Do use relevent anchor text, which helps Google to know what exactly it is you are an expert about.Don’t use ‘click here’ as your link - ever! * Don’t forget to check if a site you are trying to link from is nofollow’ed * Do try to diversify your links - 100 links from one site isn’t the same as 100 different links * Don’t use irrelevant links - Google can spot this a mile off, and may penalise you. Also, it just doesn’t look good if you want to retain some dignity for your brand * Do try and generate buzz with good content so that links will come to you naturally * Don’t undertake any paid links without thinking very very carefully about the implications * Do contribute valuable content/comments/reviews to other sites, with relevant links embedded * Don’t try and contribute spammy content with embedded links that aren’t relevant. Your content will either get blocked, or Google will devalue the links. * Do think laterally - always be on the look out for good, relevant, linking opportunities. There are opportunities out there if you remember to keep thinking, developing and diversifying.

Nine Ways To Get the Most out of Your Twitter Account

Nine Ways To Get the Most out of Your Twitter Account

Since March 2006, Twitter has evolved into one of the more popular ways to keep people connected from all over the world. As well, it has created marketing opportunities that no one expected.

Every month people are finding new ways to connect their marketing efforts to Twitter and while many of these Social Media sites eventually disappear, it seems Twitter will flourish.

The problem that most people have is finding how to make the most of Twitter and even understanding all its features. Although there are many tools available, we will only cover a few here and spend most of our time on how to use Twitter to improve your social networking status.

Step 1: Setting Up Your Twitter Account

If you already have a Twitter accounts don’t skip this section because there may be something you missed. Go to: https://twitter.com/signup and create your account. It is a simple process.

Now this is not a step by step tutorial, but rather a guide to give you some ideas of the things you can do. Creating an account is a pretty straightforward process that takes about 20 minutes to:

1. Complete the registration form
2. Connect with people you know
3. Create a profile to your main website and a bio about you or your company
4. Set your location, how you want to be notified of friends, updates and more

Take the time to go over all the settings as they are easy to follow.

Step 2: Customize your background

This is where it gets interesting. You simply login, click on “settings” and the click on “Design.” Then you can either choose a design that’s available or upload your own image. If you have a designer or are talented with Photo Shop you can create an interesting layout for your profile. Here are a few examples of some custom layouts:

1. http://twitter.com/nytimes
2. http://twitter.com/lookielookies
3. http://twitter.com/remotedatabase

As you can see, the possibilities run from design to even some marketing messages. Take the time to customize your theme or take the time to hire someone who can.

Step 3: Take Charge of Your Audience

You can write micro blogs here and spread any message about anything or you can focus just on your own niche market. Either way make sure you command your audience and get their attention. Your goal is to put out content that will cause other twitter accounts to spread the word about you and comment on your own posts.

It is amazing how much time and money large companies are investing to get the message out using twitter and the kind of effect this is having for that time and effort.

Think of catchy things or talk about newsworthy events that will get people to follow you. Just read the latest gossip columns if you can’t think of anything.

Step 4: Add friends and follow people

If you didn’t do this when you first signed up, use the friend features provided. You’ll be given 3 options to find friends:

1. Find on Twitter - You can type in names of people you know, companies or even famous people. Who knows, you may meet a celebrity online or at least someone who claims to be one.
2. Invite people from other Networks - Connect to your hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo mail or AOL mail and see if anyone in your current contacts is using Twitter so you can start adding them as friends
3. Invite by email - Add a list of emails you have on file to connect with friends. You can add them all in one area and send to all of them instantly.

Keep in mind that if you invite people to be your friend, they don’t have to be a member. They will either already be one or they can become one by using method 2 or 3. Spend about 20 minutes doing this the first time and then about 10 minutes after that as often as you can.

Step 5: Connect your Twitter to your blog

There are many tools out there to use for your Twitter page, but I just love this one. Alex King has created a great plugin if you are using WordPress that will automatically create micro blogs for your blog posts . Go to: http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress to read all about it and http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/share-this.2.3.zip to download it.

Read all the instructions and support issues involved if you blog on a regular basis. It’s better to not have to post twice and it is a great way to get mini blogs on your Twitter account.

Step 6: Use another Twitter clone and connect it to your main Twitter account

There are many Twitter clone sites popping up and to use them all is a waste of time, but using just one is well worth the time and effort.

SiteProNews.com has recently created a Twitter clone account and has spend many hours perfecting this program and even going beyond the program’s scope to bring you a version of Twitter that puts all the others to shame.

You can create an account at: http://microblog.sitepronews.com/tw/home and in your profile settings put in your Twitter.com account so that when you post to your Twitter clone account it also posts to your Twitter.com account. This is a great way to gain exposure on Twitter and also a way to utilize another site with other features that Twitter doesn’t have.

Step 7: Monitor Your Twitter Grades

This is a fun tool that shows you how you rank in Twitter and how you fair against the Twitter giants! Go to http://twitter.grader.com/ and enter your user name to see how you rank from 0 - 100 possible points.

Twitter Grader bases their numbers on:

* Overall Rank
* Followers
* Following
* Updates

By staying active you can see how high you can rank.

Step 8: Build Links To Your Twitter Account From Social Bookmarking Sites

Why not take the time to build up your social networking account with Twitter by bookmarking it to your social bookmark accounts? You might as well put a lot of effort into this Twitter movement and play to win.

Bookmark your site on your favorite bookmarking sites like Digg.com, Propeller.com, del.icio.us, dropjack.com and more.

Step 9: Use Twitters Advanced Search Features

This is going back to Step 4, but taking it a bit further. If you really want to connect with people related to your industry and target market, then you need to use Twitters Advanced Search features. Visit http://search.twitter.com/advanced and look at all the options. You can search keywords, names, locations and more.

Connect with people who truly relate to what you are doing. Be picky here and find those who have high grades and write great information. Find people who are active and will respond to your requests to be friends.

Watch your social status change as you optimize Twitter and take advantage of all it can do for you. Again, this is not a step by step guide, but an article helping you to see the potential in building up an online social networking site the right way.

Hot Tips to Keep Your Blog Safe and Secure

Hot Tips to Keep Your Blog Safe and Secure

More and more of my I.M. colleagues and indeed new people that I meet on line are `getting into blogging’.

And why not? Blogs are relatively easy to produce and use, no matter which platform you choose, and they can be a brilliant tool for internet marketers.

However, no matter how easy they are to install and use, and no matter how helpful they can be to your business, the one thing that I’ve noticed more frequently is that many people are neglecting the security of their blogs.

Now I’m actually talking in particular about Wordpress blogs here. Yes, I have used Blogger blogs in the past, and I know that many people swear by them, but I found Blogger a bit too restricitive for my liking (though I understand that things have changed a lot at Blogger since I first used them).

Because Wordpress is an open source blogging tool, meaning that it’s free and available to everyone, it’s a prime target for hackers and ne’er-do-wells.

Of course, the Wordpress development team are tireless in constantly working on the script for our benefit, but none of this is any use if we don’t actually get up off our backsides and do a bit of work on our blogs behind the scenes.

It’s par for the course to worry about your blog theme, your next blog post, your readership, attracting subscribers to your RSS feed etc. etc., but do you actually think very much about your blog’s security?

I suppose that I might perhaps see more Wordpress blog security problems than most, being in the hosting business.

Did you know that probably the biggest cause of server compromisation is actually people who install Wordpress blogs and other open source scripts and don’t keep them up-to-date with the latest versions and patches?

Hackers find it easy to search around, find a way in through an old script, hack your blog, access your email accounts, start sending viagra and cure for baldness spam emails `from you’ and generally get up to all kinds of nasty things.

I can’t tell you how many panicky emails I’ve had to answer from people who’ve logged into their blog one day and have been smacked in the face by a skull and cross bones proudly proclaiming that their carefully crafted, lovingly nurtured blog has been hacked by Hound Dog Horris the Hardcore Hacker!! Great!

So I’ve put together a few suggestions that you might like to implement to help keep your Wordpress blog `safe’.

Keep Up-to-Date

First of all, the most obvious fix is to ensure that you keep your blog up-to-date with the latest version released by Wordpress.

Most Wordpress blogs display a little warning in the Dashboard that tells you when a new version is released and a link for you to click to download it. If yours doesn’t, then it’s worth checking the Wordpress website fairly regularly for updates. They also invite you to sign up for email notification of updates.

If you feel a bit daunted installing updates via FTP, or you installed your blog initially using Fantastico in your cPanel, so are not sure how to install the updates, Wordpress offer quite a good set of instructions for this.

Plugins

It’s a good idea to hide the list of plugins you are using. Any known vulnerabilities and bugs that may occur in some plugins can be used as tools to harm your website.

Check out your blog, now… yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins

The chances are, you will see the full directory of all of your blog plugins, and in some cases, the date they were installed.

To hide your plugins, simply create an index.html file and upload it to the wp-admin/plugins folder. This index file can be blank or you can be really creative and add some promotions to it.

Another way that Hound Dog Hacker uses to determine whether your blog is furtile ground for hacking is to check which Wordpress version you’re using.

So, if you’re one of those that has put upgrading on the back burner, then you could be announcing that you’re ripe for a hack harvest with a huge magaphone!

How so? Well, go to your blog… go on, open a new tab in your browser and type in your blog’s url. Then right click on your blog with your mouse and select View Source, View Page Source, or similar, from the drop down menu.

Check out the coding… about 10-12 lines down, you will see something like this

The plugin is merely one small .php file that you upload to your plugins folder, and then activate it in the usual way in the plugins section of your Dashboard.

Block Access

A folder that Hound Dog Hacker likes to have a good old nosey around on your blog is your wp-admin folder - this is the storage place for all your blog’s most sensitive data. So here’s a quick tip to secure this directory…

Open notepad or wordpad on your computer, and add the following code:-

AuthUserFile /dev/null AuthGroupFile /dev/null AuthName “Access Control” AuthType Basic order deny,allow deny from all allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE

If you don’t know your IP address, you can find it here whatismyipaddress.com

Next, save your txt file as .htaccess and then upload it to your wp-admin folder.

NOTE: This method might be a pain in the neck for you if you don’t have a static IP address, however, if you are with an internet service provider that has a range, you can add the range.

I have to say that my IP address isn’t static BUT, I’ve only had to add extra IP addresses twice in the past 6 months or so, to allow me to login.

I did wonder why, when I went to my blog login page whilst on my laptop that I was denied access… doh, then I realised that my .htaccess file was denying me access from this computer.

I now keep the .htaccess file on my desk top and just add an IP address, if and when it changes, to the file and upload it in seconds. So your file might look something like this

AuthUserFile /dev/null AuthGroupFile /dev/null AuthName “Access Control” AuthType Basic order deny,allow deny from all allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE

I hope this has helped give you some ideas, or at least galvanized you into taking a closer look at your blog security.

Cash On Social Marketing

7 Things You Can Do Now To Cash in On Social Marketing


Seven is a magic number. Why? Because there are seven simple strategies every small business can employ to jump on the social marketing bandwagon. The best part: most require only a moderate investment of time and/or money.

1. Start Blogging - Blogging is old news to many. Not quite the distant past, but still not the future... sort of a Web 1.5. Is blogging what's 'hot' at the moment? Well, no. It certainly doesn't compare with chasing a link from the front page of Digg. But blogging is alive and well! It continues to be a great way to get interactively connected with your customers. 'Dialoguing' is the reason social marketing exists. How much time you invest in your blog is up to you, but you'll get out what you put in. You don't have to drive yourself crazy putting in daily entries, but you should establish a regular schedule for your blog updates. Otherwise, when people check your blog they'll see the same-old/same-old so often that they'll stop visiting your site... which is the whole reason you started the blog! So don't shoot yourself in the foot by creating a blog that's a visitor-repellent rather than a visitor-magnet.

Blogging is not a monologue. Your blog is not the electronic equivalent of Hamlet's soliloquy. Just the opposite! Blogging is about creating conversations and joining others in progress. Take time to read what others in your industry are saying. Get in on the discussion (and get your name out there) by posting your comments on other blogs. It's free, and again, the amount of time you invest can bring some very big returns. The beauty of blog posts is that you'll almost always be encouraged to supply your name and URL when leaving a comment. This is a great way to build visibility and create a springboard to catapult traffic from other blogs to yours.

2. Take and Share Digital Photos - Flickr can be a tremendous marketing tool thanks to its incredibly active photo groups. The time and cost investment are minimal, and you can use Flickr to reach thousands of highly targeted prospects with compelling images of your product.

3. Be The Answer Man (or Woman) at Yahoo Answers - There's one thing you have to provide that no one else does - your expertise. If you're a service-based business, your knowledge is your #1 marketing tool. Yahoo Answers is a great place for you to hammer away at prospects. Imagine being the go-to person that people seek out. That's who you'll be at Yahoo Answers.

There's no better way to share your expertise and make an instant and direct connection with potential customers. I know dozens of marketing pros like me who spent as little as an hour or two each week answering SEO and promotíon-oriented questions there. They tell me that they've been able to track big results from even that small investment of time.

4. Get Into the Movie Business - Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but moving pictures are worth their weight in solid gold marketing. Fortunately, good video cameras are cheap these days, and a short video needs little editing/production work in today's "everyone's a filmmaker" environment. And if you've got the creative "chops" to add some sizzle to a video, go for it! Be the next Scorsese, if you can. Fortunately, the software you need to add special effects won't break the bank. The most "viral" videos are usually spontaneous and unproduced... merely "captured" by a videographer. For marketing purposes, however, a produced video is the way to go... and a how-to video featuring your product is a good choice. If the look or location of your business is a selling point, "tour" videos - of a workplace, a restaurant, the homes you sell, the real estate you landscape, etc. - are your best bet.

Marketing videos are finding a home on local search portals like CitySearch. The find-it-in-your-town site announced that local video ads will be added to its listings. YellowPages.com is also exploring the idea of video opportunities.

Upload your videos to a unique page on your website or add them to your blog page. But don't stop there! YouTube is the most obvious - and the most active - sharing destination. And there are so many others. Just nose around the web and you'll find 'em.

5. Don't Wait To Visit StumbleUpon.com - There are many so-called 'discovery' type sites in social marketing. The best-known are Digg, Reddit, and Netscape, but they're also a bit complicated. StumbleUpon requires the lowest time investment. The site's functionality makes it much quicker and easier to join groups related to your industry and add friends from those groups.

Once you've joined and created your lists, you can start to upload "sticky" (appealing to visitors) content and before you know it, other users will "stumble upon" what you've added. That's when the "magic begins". When visitors give your pages good feedback, your content is shown to even more users.

You can't sell your product or service on StumbleUpon. The benefit it offers is increased traffic, which can lead to increased profíts. Those profíts are just a click away because your site is just a click away. Think of StumbleUpon as a way to raise awareness, Blog readership, grow subscribers, etc... all of which ultimately feed into your profit stream.

6. Join Up - A HUGE part of social marketing is detective work. You need to find your customers where they like to hang out. Well, if your customers are like most people on the planet, it's pretty likely that they hang out at Yahoo Groups or Google Groups to share interests and opinions.

Fetch, Marketer! Go get those prospects.

Like Flickr, the groups at Yahoo and Google are organised into interest-based lists. When you join the lists and discussions, you can provide your expertise (there's that word again) and become a trusted member of the community... the person that other people will want to do business with. There's no better outcome to marketing than that!

7. Make Friends, Not Noise - As you explore social marketing opportunities across the web, be sensitive to the rules and regulations posted on various websites. As a member of a social community, it's your obligation to play by the rules... so make sure you know them and follow them! But here's one general rule for using these sites as marketing tools: Don't spam the system. Flickr doesn't want your entire product inventory posted, and they have rules against doing so. But a few high-quality photo submissions that add to the community are fine.

Whatever social marketing you do, make a contribution to the community. Try to add content and comments of value, not an endless spew of "Buy my product" messages. In other words, don't be a leech that's merely there to suck up prospects. Give back a little. Or, better yet, give back a lot! When you do that, you're on the road to social marketing success. (Translation: more money than you'll know what to do with!)

And remember, with social marketing we're not talking about any old traffic. We're talk about platinum, USDA Prime, pre-qualified, eager to do business, trusting, ready and willing prospects who don't think of you as a business... they think of you as a friend.

So be a good friend. Deliver on the promise of quality and service. If you do that, social marketing will make you rích beyond your wildest dreams.

So stop dreaming and start marketing... socially.

A Quick SEO Tune Up

SEO: How Do I Give My Website A Quick SEO Tune Up?

Cars need tune ups and airplanes go into the hanger to get optimized for the next flight. If you are a web owner that has the "upload it and leave it" mentality, consider adding a weekly or monthly tune up to your website. Ten to Fifteen minutes here and there can only do one thing--make you more successful.

1. Start small with the meta information.

a. Examine your Title meta tag on each page. Do they describe the page contents? Do they contain the right keywords to drive traffic to that page? Is at least one part of the Title geo-specific? Example, "Attorney, Los Angeles, CA" and not just "Attorney" or "Lawyer" or "My Law Firm."

b. Examine your Description meta tag. Make sure that each page, if it is at all possible, has a different meta tag description. Google does not like repeated information.

2. Check your links.

Use a free online program to make sure you don't have any broken links. Go to your favorite search engine and type in "free link checker" and use one that looks good to you.


3. Do a little marketing.

Go to your favorite search engine and search for something you do or sell. Let's say you are a dentist. Perform two different kinds of searches, global and geo-specific.

Example: 1. "dentist," global and 2. "dentist, (city)", geo-specific. Examine the backlinks to make sure that you are also on the same business directories as the top ranked websites. You do this quickly using a "backlink checker." You can easily find one of your choice through a quick search engine search.

Steps 1, 2, and 3 can be repeated daily, weekly, monthly--whatever your schedule allows. The next 2 steps go a little deeper into your maintenance plan.

4. Google Analytics.

It's free, it's easy, and it's extremely useful. If you aren't paying an SEO company to handle your website, you should definitely take advantage of this amazing tool.

You sign up for it here: http://www.google.com/analytics/.

Google will give you a unique code to put on each page you want to track. You don't need to be a programmer to figure it out. It's just a few lines of script that you paste into your webpage exactly where Google shows you to do it.

It really is as easy as it sounds. And what do you get? You find out how many people are visiting your website, what keywords brought them to your website, what websites referred them to your website, where they are from, how much time they spent on your website and much more.

This is an amazing free treasure trove of information. You will find out if the people visiting your website are, in fact, the type of visitor you are targeting. If not, all you have to do is tweak your Title meta tag and your content to let the search engine know, for example: you want people who were searching for "logo design" not "graphic design" or "child therapist" not "couples therapy."


5. Alexa.

Alexa monitors traffic levels for websites. While arguably a flawed system, it is still used as a measuring stick to gauge your website.

Why should you care?

Let's say you own a flower store in Boston. You look up your competitor and find that they have an Alexa ranking of 79,000 and you have one of 4,500,000. This is a quick indicator that THEY and not YOU are getting all the flower shop web traffic in the area. Additionally, the more traffic you get, the more likely your organic search engine results will go higher. Marketing activities that increase web visitors will give you a better Alexa ranking.

Across the board, SEO experts agree that if you download the "Alexa Toolbar" and visit your website once a day, encourage friends and colleagues to download the tool bar and visit each other's websites--that this will increase your Alexa ranking, too. It's a simple thing to do, but don't expect dramatic results. You can also flaunt your url in Alexa forums, but the best use of your time is simply to try to get targeted visitors to your website through standard marketing channels.