SEO, Search Engine Optimization, marketing online

First, let’s define the term Explosive Results for our usage.

A standard social media campaign helps spread the word about you and encourages other people to as well.

An explosive social media campaign has inherent viral exposure, inspires community driven communication, helps make the web a better place, and even brings joy to people, however fleeting.

Read more...

When looking at Google, one is struck by the somewhat Orwellian nature of entering a search term and being watched by Big Brother in a dispassionate, detached yet interested manner. When looking at the patterns people use in searching, it does come close to that totalitarian character from the George Orwell novel, 1984, but that is the truth of our times. Google is neither good nor evil. It just IS, and with that realization, people should adapt to the new SEO frontiers and how to not only deal with but capitalize on the wealth of information that search engines collect.

Let’s drop the Big Brother analogy, because when we started looking for things on the Internet, that became just another part of our paradigm shift towards the belief that anything we searched for on the Net was just out of our reach in the search results. Collecting data and disseminating it is a fact of life. As a business, one should rapidly get used to the idea and seek constructive, professional ways to harness this power. Because, in this case knowledge is truly power, and if you or a company that you hire can get a handle on the niche you want to control and dominate to deliver your sales message or well-placed, online advertising, then you’re ready to watch your sales double, quadruple and more.

The true value an SEO expert on staff or a firm that understands the value of search engine optimization can transform your company. The concept is really very simple: put your company, product or service in the traffic or search results of people who are looking for your product or service. That’s it. Success on the Internet.

When you look at it that way, it doesn’t appear to be so hard to conquer. What you may fail to realize is that there are millions of companies and businesses out there that have already realized this fact and have gone on to seek their fortune in that realm. You will need an edge, something that most of your competitors lack.

This is where the basic principle of personalized search comes into play. You see, whether you’re a millionaire or Joe-Nobody surfing the Net, every time you query Google or any other search engine for information, that query data is stored in a database. It is then tabulated, and cross-tabulated with other things you and others have searched for. On a personal level, the search engines build a profile of your search habits over time. Like artificial intelligence, the search engines long to understand you, your interests and habits. As you search and surf, you will begin to see an eerie thing happen - more and more relevant search results will begin to pop up as you type.

Before you run screaming back into the dark ages, this is a good thing. For example, if you’ve shown an interest in fishing while our neighbor searches for musical instruments. When you search for “bass”, the search engine will begin to return fishing results, while your neighbor who searches for the exact same term, “bass” will get back musical instruments that are relevant to him - bass fiddles, bass drums, etc. This is personalized search results.

Now that you understand the concept, let’s talk about how you can use it in your business in order increase sales in your business. These personalized search results, you need to either learn or hire an SEO firm that is familiar with this major shift in how search engine optimization is going. Google is currently testing the waters with this form of personalization, and you need to be signed up with one of their services in order to get this kind of personalization. Theses services include: Adwords, Google Toolbar, Gmail and the like. Through these various forums, Google is learning about you and your preferences.

When you search through Google, it places a cookie which is a unique identifier on your machine. It doesn’t do anything, but identify you as a user of their service. No biggie, right? It will be just as easy for them to use this technology to collect user data in order to personalize your search. Right now, they’re waiting to see if there’s screaming in the streets from users who abhor any kind of data collection. More than likely, it will go by unnoticed by most. As a business, you need to be on the cutting edge of this new technology and have either an expert or a firm working towards utilizing this major upgrade in order to take you to the next level of the Internet.

Truly good search engine optimization firms are already preparing for this major shift, using things like “clean” machines for data collection and in how they report on Google’s ranking of data to their clients. Clean machines are one’s that have had no Google programs or cookies dropped on it. This will be a baseline machine with results for the client that are delivered as a snapshot of what they user would see if their machine was Google-less.

First, the good news. Account holders with the search engine giant will probably not be deluged with certain products based on their profiles, but their entire surfing and querying history will be reviewed and results will be skewed toward the user’s industry.

Then, there’s the bad news. Search engine optimization firms will have a rough time trying to demonstrate these results because the client will more than likely be using a Google program on personal machines, so the results won’t match with the SEO firm.

What all this means is that the company needs to establish a level of trust in the professional skills of the firm they choose. In return, the SEO firm needs to take the time to explain in detail how the new search engine results work showing how these results can appear totally different from machine to machine and why this happens. As well, the firm needs to have the technical skill to be able to delve into the client’s machine, look at the current cookies onboard and explain how this is affecting what results they’re getting.

When setting up a campaign, companies will have to take more into account when starting out. Having a good SEO firm onboard will simplify this latest level of complexity quite a bit. Being able to utilize personal search results and consumer profiles is just a step away, and it takes a high-level of skill to deal with it effectively.

Like anyone who’s using Google Adwords in their
online marketing, I received Google’s small booklet
in the mail entitled “Google’s Adwords Top
Tactics For Tough Times.”

In it Google lays out 6 Adwords Tactics for tough times…
helpful tips to help their Adwords users get
through these hard times and keep using Adwords
in the process.

These tactics include: (quoting directly from the
mail-out)

1. Focus your ads on low prices and savings.

2. Use Value-related keywords.

3. Ensure your ad groups are targeted and relevant.

4. Don’t waste money on irrelevant clicks.

5. Make it easy for customers to buy.

6. Focus your money on your high-performers.

These are all good tactics for the tough times ahead…
I especially like the emphasis on low-prices and savings.
Everyone will be looking for bargains in these rough times,
by focusing your marketing on fulfilling that need will
make your campaigns more profitable.

You can learn more here:

http://www.google.com/adwords/tactics2008

Now I am first to admit I am not a PPC expert, the majority
of my marketing is done thru SEO with first page listings
in organic search (mainly Google) for my keywords. So take
everything that follows with a large grain of salt.

My main beef with Google Adwords, they won’t send you
enough traffic. If you’re in a competitive niche market,
the big players will obviously outbid you… no matter
how good or bad your landing pages are. I know that
your quality score is supposed to lower your costs and
if your ads have high CTR click-thru-rates, your Adwords
costs should come down even more and you get more traffic.

Still, it’s difficult to make a profit especially for
an affiliate marketer who only gets a percentage of the
sale and not the full sale price. I counter this by picking
affiliate products that give you residual income, make one
sale and get paid for years or the life of that client.
Even with using this tactic, Google Adwords is very risky
for the online affiliate marketer - you better know what
you’re doing or you can waste a lot of money.

Slap Yourself Silly!

Actually, that statement is not really true because it
has been my experience that Google Adwords simply won’t
deliver the traffic you want. Unless you want to make
outrageous high bids on keywords and slap yourself silly;
Google won’t give you the traffic. Unlike Yahoo Marketing
which will supply you with traffic to meet at least 60% to 80%
of your daily PPC budget - no such luck with Google Adwords.

They simply won’t give me the impressions, let alone
the traffic! Again, I am speaking from my own experience
here, and it is wrong to make a general consensus just
based on one person’s findings. I believe the main
reason is because the competition is so stiff and
Google traffic is so highly prized. Get a high
conversion rate and throw in this quality traffic
from Google and you can print your own money.

In several proven profitable campaigns, I would like
to spend 3 or 4 hunderd dollars a day but Google simply
won’t deliver the traffic at my bid levels… you have
to raise your bids so high, you can’t make a profit.
These are not minimum bids and my ads are placed
in the second or third spot on the right hand side
in Google Search. Even if you have first page placement
in Google’s organic SERPs for the same site and keywords
you’re bidding on - it’s still difficult to get the traffic.

I know you have to pick niche markets and campaigns
that are not so competitive that you can make a profit.
But I am not so sure… I believe Google Adwords are
way too strict regarding who they do business with.
Maybe Google is used to handling clients with budgets of
3 or 4 thousand a day and can’t be bothered with the small
guys.

You Must Establish A Good Credit History

Google Adwords also uses something called a proven track
record or history… unless you can establish this good credit
history, forget about getting large amounts of traffic from
Google. It’s much like SERPs where you have to prove yourself
before they will consistently list your site. The old
SandBox issue.

To be fair, you really have to view this situation from Google’s
standing… they give out all this traffic on a “pay-later”
basis, they have to make sure any traffic delivered will
be paid for by the receiver. It could all boil down to
a simple business procedure. Again, I am no expert at
Adwords.

However, I am hoping in these harsh economic times, Google
will have to become more open and give more impressions
and traffic to the smaller fry. Obviously, by sending out
the booklet, Google must be concerned with a drop in business
in these uncertain times. Maybe their numbers have already
dropped, maybe not. Only Google knows.

Better yet, if times get very dire, competition just might go
down and this will open up new opportunities for the small
marketers out there, including in Google Adwords. Now that’s
one tactic I hope Google will adopt. There are probably thousands,
if not millions of other small marketers ready to take up the
slack, Google would just have to work harder dealing with many
more advertisers rather than centering all their efforts on
the large corporate clients with huge pockets who I am now
assuming get the majority of Adwords traffic.

In any case, it sure would be nice to have more PPC traffic
from Google. Give me the traffic first, and I’ll worry about
the other Adwords Tactics later, after I get the traffic
flowing.

That’s my response to this Google Adwords Mail-out.
http://www.google.com/adwords/tactics2008

Are you fed up waiting for your website to reach the top of Google? Or are you getting far less visitors than you would like from Google? If this sounds like you, read on and find out whether you are committing any of these search engine sins!

Sin 1 - Keyword Ignorance

One of the most common mistakes that people make when building a website is to completely disregard keyword research. The result of this is that you could end up building a website around keywords that nobody actually searches on or you could build a site using the most competitive keywords on the internet and have to wait forever to see any results.

At a minimum you should pay a quick visit to the free Google Adwords Keyword tool and type in a few keyword ideas. Take a look at the results and be sure that the keywords you pick have a good number of searches per month. Also type your keywords into Google and make sure that you feel confident about beating the competition and getting your site on to the first page of results.

Sin 2 - Keyword Spamming & Hidden Text

Mentioning your keywords hundreds of times throughout your web page or making big lists of keywords with a font color that is the same as the background color is not going to help your search engine rank. Neither is adding keywords that have nothing to do with the content of your page.

Remember that you are writing primarily for your visitors, not the search engines. You do want to mention your keywords in specific places such as the TITLE tag, H1 tag, alt text and throughout your copy, but don’t overdo it. If it doesn’t sound right when you read it back, you have probably gone too far.

Sin 3 - Only Optimizing the Home Page

Many people will spend all their time concentrating on optimizing the home page. The home page is often the most important page on your website with the most visitors, but that doesn’t mean you should neglect the rest of your website.

Choose different keywords for each page on your website and for each blog post you make. This will allow you to “multiply” your search engine traffic. Even if you choose less popular, less competitive keywords this can have a dramatic impact on your traffic if you have lots of optimized pages on your site.

Sin 4 - Not knowing your Competition

Before you go ahead and optimize a page on your website for a particular keyword phrase you should take a look at the websites that you are competing with.

Enter your keywords into Google without the quotes and take a look at the web pages on the first two pages of results. Most people don’t go past page 2 of the results when they are searching, so you need to be able to compete with the sites on the first two pages.

Are these sites big multinational companies? Do they have high page ranks or thousands of backlinks? If so, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t compete with them, but you should at least have an understanding of where your site is in comparison to these sites and make an educated guess about whether or not you can compete with them.

Sin 5 - Bad Linking

It pays to be careful about who you link to. Linking to “bad neighborhoods” i.e. sites that have been penalized by the search engines could have a detrimental effect on your own ranking. Similarly, selling text links on your website is also looked upon as bad by Google.

You should also be careful about how many links you have on a single page. The Google webmaster guidelines state that you shouldn’t have more than 100 links on a single web page.

Sin 6 - Poor Navigation

Having a site with a poor navigation structure or using exclusively javascript menus could result in your website not getting fully indexed by the search engines.

Search engines can’t read javascript, so be sure that if you do have a javascript menu, supplement it with a text based menu. You should also make sure that visitors and search engines can easily find all the pages on your website. One way to do this is to generate a site map.

Sin 7 - Forgetting about Off Site Optimization

Finally, one of the things that you cannot afford to forget about is off site optimization. This means getting lots of backlinks from related, good quality websites and using your keywords and variations of your keywords in the anchor text. Building backlinks is the best way to increase your position in the search engine ranks and you should aim to grow your backlinks steadily over time.

Obviously the obsession for most is off page SEO (building or getting links from other websites)…Well, I have a little secret for you, authority trumps it all. An authority site can rank using less backlinks, pages or keywords that any other type of website; so, doesn’t this indicate where you should apply your focus?

With so many ranking factors that can impact your position, who you link to (forward-linking or up-linking from your website) is often overlooked as a viable way to expedite the authority process.

By definition an authority site is a popular website frequented often by the virtue of the content/information or experience it provides. Considering the potential to create real value by providing a product, unique angle, news, cool tools, widgets or a service that is phenomenal, that website can be deemed an authority.

One way that they make the initial impact is (a) to do something worthy of being linked to or (b) by linking to enough authority sites that it tips the scales of relevance in the site providing the forward links. In essence, linking to authority sites can expedite the process for your website developing authority. What you do with it after that is up to you.

The reason why linking out is important is, authority sites often link to other authority sites and they is how they preserve the purity of the link graph online. The mark or seal of approval a site gets when it gets a heavy link from a real player can do one of two things immediately.

First, it can toggle a barrage of traffic, which also indicates that your website is a target from a referrer (with authority). Can you see how Google and other search engines might measure this in tandem with popularity?

The second thing it provides is a solid backlink to your website if they provided a do follow link. If you were to appear in a local newspaper, a national story or anything syndicated (even if it is an RSS feed) you can expect for someone, somewhere to latch on to the content and (1) reference it (2) scrape or reproduce it or (3) hopefully just provide a link back (as their way of saying thanks)…

Even if it is scraped, Google and other search engines are smart enough to know who the original source was, so eventually, your site will get credit for starting the ripple effect across the web.

Just like a grappling hook, if you link to the #1 website that ranks for that keyword you are targeting, have relevant titles, strong internal links and additional backlinks pointing at your page, the synergy can provide search engines with a robust array of information to feed their algorithm.

Considering that most would never uplink (since they feel that is supporting the competition) which is what keeps most websites stuck in a certain plateau. Authority sites are generous (if the quality is present), yet other sites that greedily horde the link flow within their own website, only isolates themselves from the rest of the web.

If you are isolated and emanating another signal entirely than what search engines have identified as the prime cluster of websites returning relevant hits for the main keywords for any given root phrase, can you see how this would leave your pages out in the cold.

Shameless self promotion can only catapult your rankings so far, and if your website is always a destination and never a path to another more relevant or equally relevant source for additional information, then you will never attract the type or quality of editorial links that other authority sites get by default (as a result of providing visitors with a range of options).

Linking out by providing in-depth mash ups, top 10 or top 20 lists and consolidating an array of resources on your pages for others is (a) the right thing to do from time to time as well as (b) that value of hub status can come back and reward your site with the ability to rank for the keywords you intend on with a fraction of the effort.

Wikipedia is in my summation, the grandest authority site to date. It has user generated content, is self moderated and constantly provides information and traffic to all of the links it assumes, devours and emulates.

As a result, there is hardly a search phrase you can enter without cross-referencing some shingle in Wikipedia. The reason is (a) the depth of content on multiple topics (b) tons of deep links to each page from a variety of IP addresses and types of sites and (3) the fact that they link out (even though its nofollowed) to so many other types of websites.

Take some time and start looking at the backlinks from some authority sites in Yahoo to get an idea of what really strong links really look like (link:google.com link:Wikipedia.org, link:cnn.com), you will note that there are similarities of co-occurrence; and that a like links to a like (authority sites to other authority sites). Also, take a look at where they link to using MSN’s linkfromdomain:google.com | linkfromdomain:Wikipedia.org | linkfromdomain:cnn.com

SEO is full of minute details with a multidimensional array of granular layers to explore, fine-tune and create, so, instead of thinking of attacking a ranking of an authority site, look behind the site and see who is propping it up. Perhaps you can either get a link from an editorial sponsoring “authority site” of scale the tipping point needed to push past that page by concentrating your websites ranking factor.

Even though the “nofollow” attribute was intended to stop the flow of link juice “something always gets through”. Trust is a ranking factor as well…and that is something that can wear down a nofolllow tag over time and seep into all of the sites embedded into its link graph (the sum total of all the internal and external links that site connects).

The takeaway here is (a) don’t be greedy (b) be careful where you point your links (better and more trusted neighborhoods are better than questionable ones) and (c) realize the long term value of building authority for your website, instead of just building links and you are one step closer to ranking for more keywords with less effort as your website scales the ladder of relevance on its way to the top of thousands of relevant and competitive keywords.
(Jeffrey Smith)