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Simple SEO Strategy::SEO Checklist-SEO Strategies That Rock

How to Build an Empire Around This Simple SEO Strategy : Proper Keyword Research. Intro to SEO Part 1

How To Build an Empire Around This Simple SEO Strategy :

Proper Keyword Research Part 1

Search engine optimization (SEO, or “search marketing” as some prefer to call it) doesn’t have to be complicated or require special technical knowledge. Even if you have absolutely no knowledge of SEO, you can learn the basics in a matter of days or even hours.

We’ll go over a basic intro to SEO here, and later I’ll share a simple seo strategy  you can build an online empire around.

If you’re already familiar with SEO, forgive me for getting back to basics, but I have a feeling a lot of readers will appreciate the foundation.

First, a Crash-Course in Search Engine Optimization

Search marketing is one of those things that takes little time to learn, but lots of time to master.

Just to define SEO for the uninitiated, SEO is the process of increasing or improving traffic that comes to your website from search engines.

Search traffic can be especially valuable to your site because search visitors tend to be very focused and engaged. Not surprisingly, an entire industry has grown up around the practice of search engine optimization. SEO experts tend to talk in technical terms that make SEO seem difficult and complex.

But the truth is, you can learn and apply simple SEO strategies and achieve results yourself without ever engaging an expert.

SEO efforts are usually broken down to two components, on-page optimization and off-page optimization. On-page optimization is focused on things you can do to your website to improve search rankings. Off-page optimization is about the external factors that can improve your rankings.

On-page efforts are important, but they’re fairly simple and easy to accomplish. Off-page optimization is by far the more difficult and important factor in topping the search results.

It All Starts with Keywords

At the center of all SEO efforts are keywords. Keywords (or keyword phrases or keyphrases) are simply the words or phrases that someone might type into a search engine.

People who aren’t familiar with SEO tend to think that if you do the right things to your website, Google will like you and send you search traffic. That’s only partly true, and that’s where keywords come in.

The search engines want to send search visitors to relevant results.  Naturally, a relevant result for any search will likely include the exact keywords the searcher typed in to the search engine. On-page optimization usually focuses on making sure you put the keywords in the right place on your pages and site.

Beyond keywords and content, it is also important to know how many people are performing a search for a given set of keywords. That’s known as search volume, and search volume determines how many visitors you could receive for a particular keyword or phrase. Search volume is also related to how competitive a keyword might be.

When planning any SEO efforts, you first start with keywords. You figure out which keywords you want to target based on search volumes and competition.

Your on-page efforts will then focus on optimizing your site and specific pages (or new pages) for specific keywords.

The things that matter on-page include:

• URLs
• meta tags (like title, description and keywords)
• keyword placement (in content, header tags, image alt tags, and other places)
• internal linking
• and a handful of other less important factors

We’ll get into more detail when we discuss our simple simple seo strategy below, but first, let’s get back to off-page factors.

Remember when I said off-page optimization is much more important and difficult to accomplish? Here’s why.

The search engines can’t just rely on your site’s content to know where to rank it in the search results. To really know where a site should rank, the engines have to rely on other site’s opinions as well. In fact, they weight other sites’ opinions much more heavily.

How do the search engines measure other sites’ “opinions?”

Through links. Links are the currency of the web, as they say, and links are the biggest determinant of where your pages will appear in the search results.

Quantity of links isn’t all that matters though. Quality of links is important too, as is the anchor text (the specific text that is hyperlinked) of the link, and the content of the page and site a link is coming from.

With me so far? Great. Let’s jump in to the simple seo strategy, and it will all start to come together. Then you can move on to building that empire I mentioned.

A Simple SEO Strategy

To make use of this SEO strategy, you’ll only need a couple of free tools, and a little time. Let’s start with some keyword research.

Keywords (and keyword phrases) come in all different types.

Keywords can be one word long, or a handful of words long. Keywords can have from zero searches per month to millions of searches per month. Likewise, keywords can have no competition whatsoever, or they can have hundreds or thousands of sites working to rank for them.

Usually, the higher the search volume a keyword has, the more competitive it will be, but not always. The opportunities lie in words you want to rank for that have low competition relative to their search volume.

Common keywords with high search volumes and high competition are known as “short-tail” keywords, and less common keywords with lower volume/competition are known as “long-tail” keywords. Check out the full definition of long-tail if you’re interested, but for now, I’ll just use the phrase to refer to those keyword groups.  Typically it will be easier to rank on long-tail keywords than short-tail keywords.  Google provides an excellent free tool for doing keyword research. It’s named the “keyword tool” (original, right?)  You can use it to find less competitive long-tailed keywords for our simple seo strategy.

To be continued…

How to Build an Empire Around This Simple SEO Strategy : Proper Keyword Research. Intro to SEO Part 2

How To Build an Empire Around This Simple SEO Strategy :

Proper Keyword Research Part 2

Search engine optimization is often unnecessarily complicated.

Sure, to compete for the most competitive keywords, you might need to know all the tricks and nuances, but for most of us, simple SEO strategies work very well.

In part 1 of this series, we covered an entire introduction to SEO for beginners. Check that out if you’re not already familiar with SEO basics.

Beyond the theory, we also started to dive into a simple seo strategy you can use to build an online empire around. We’ll continue now where we left off.

The simple seo strategy in 6 Steps

Here is the strategy we’re going to cover today boiled down into 6 easy steps.

1. Start with a broad keyword or phrase and narrow it down to a keyword that is 3 or more words long and is related to your website or blog.
2. Select a keyword phrase with about 500 to 2000 exact global searches per month (according to the Google Keyword tool).
3. Research the competition for that keyword. I’ll show you how to do it manually first, but there are tools you can use to automate the process greatly.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you have a keyword with low competition (more on the details of low competition later).
5. Write an article that uses the exact keyword phrase in the title, meta description, URL and throughout the article.
6. Make sure the article is linked to from your home page and then build links to the page from other sites by using social media, article marketing, blog guest posts, and other techniques.

The magic of this strategy comes together when you can profit from it directly. More on that towards the end of this article.

Ready to dive in? Let’s go.

Hunting for Long-tail Keywords

We were talking before about our example keyword “pie recipes” (let’s say you have a site about making pies). As of this month, 22,000 global searches were performed for that exact keyword phrase.

For our purposes, that keyword is too popular and competitive. How do I know it’s too competitive? There are ways to check (which we’ll get into shortly), but generally keywords that have some commercial appeal and volume over 5,000 searches will be very competitive. By that I mean, those keywords would be difficult for us to achieve rankings for (not impossible, just difficult).

We need to dig deeper. As we narrow down to longer-tail keywords, we’ll start to find some that aren’t very competitive at all.

Think of ways you could narrow down a search even further by adding modifiers to the original phrase.

“Christmas pie recipes,” “pecan pie recipes,” “no-bake pie recipes” or “meat pie recipes” all might be good options, we’ll have to evaluate the competition to know for sure. Even narrower keyword phrases like “easy pecan pie recipes” should be even less competitive.

As you add more words, you’ll find that keyword phrases start to have lower search volume. As you get below a couple-thousand searches or so, it’s time to start evaluating the competition.

Scoping Out the Competition

There are tools you can use to make this process easier, but in this lesson I’m going to show you the free, manual way of looking this up.

Remember the fundamental aspects of SEO from before? There are on-page factors and off-page factors that determine how a page will rank for a given keyword.

When looking at competition for a particular keyword, we’ll want to know how well each competitor has covered the on-page factors. We will also want to know how many inbound links from other sites are pointed at each competing search result.

Our goal should be to achieve first page rankings for any keywords we target. Especially when dealing with lower-volume keywords, appearing in results after the first page won’t send us much traffic.

First, a couple of competition-checking shortcuts. In Google’s keyword tool, you might have noticed there’s a column called “competition.” That column actually represents how many advertisers are paying to appear in search results for that keyword. It’s not a perfect measure of competition for appearing in natural (free) results, but it does give us some idea of which keywords to dig deeper into.

Another way to quickly (but not completely accurately) judge how competitive a keyword might be is to Google for that keyword in quotes (like “pecan pie recipes”). Then, note how many search results are returned by Google (that number appears right below the search input box).

The lower the number, the less competitive a search phrase is. Look for results with 20,000 or fewer exact search results. Check out the money word matrix as a guideline for evaluating keywords using this method.

Once you’ve narrowed down some candidate keyword phrases using these two quick techniques, it’s time to dig a little deeper.

To identify who our competitors are, first we just need to Google our keyword phrase. Go to Google.com and search for the keyword you had in mind.

First, Google for “pecan pie recipes” (without the quotes) and you’ll see who you would be competing against in the rankings for that keyword. Now, click on the first listing to visit that page. Copy the URL for that page from your browser’s address bar.

Now head over to Yahoo’s site explorer. Type in the following into the search box:

link:[page URL] -site:[domain]

For example, to investigate the first page in my results for “pecan pie recipes,” I entered:

link:http://www.pecanpierecipe.com/ -site:pecanpierecipe.com

Press enter and notice the number of results listed in the left-hand sidebar. For this particular result, Yahoo tells me there are 231 results. That means there are roughly 231 links from other sites pointed at that page.

To appear in the first place in the results, we will likely have to attract more (or higher quality) links to our page on pecan pie recipes. 231 links is a lot of links. Not impossibly by any means, but maybe more than we would want to tackle.

This is just the first result. We will want to continue down the list of results and see how competitive each of the first 5 or 10 results are. In this case, the next four results each have between 3 and 29 links.

The real wildcard in this process is link quality. The number of links is important, but so is the quality of links. 1 really high-value link could be more important than 100 low-value links. This investigation of competition isn’t perfect, but it will point us in the right direction.

We also need to be aware of on-page factors for our competition. The most important factors here are the html title, URL and meta description.

If few of the top results have the keyword “pecan pie recipes” exactly within each of those three places, they will be easier to beat. That is, assuming we put the keywords exactly in those places. If you aren’t sure what I mean by html title, URL and meta description, make sure you get a better understanding before employing this strategy fully.

Tools to Speed Up Your Process

There are several tools that can automate some or all of this process. The two that I use are (not affiliate links) Traffic Travis (free) and Micro Niche Finder (not free). Both of those will do all of this research at the click of a button, and return a graphic or number that represents how competitive a keyword will be. They can save you TONS of time.

What to Do With Your Competitive Knowledge

The goal of this research is to find keywords that you can rank for with relatively little work. Ideally, you would find keywords relevant to your site that have lots of searches per month with no competition.

In that case, you would just have to write an article that includes your keywords in the html title, URL, meta description and throughout your content, and you might even appear on page 1 of the search results with no extra backlinks.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to find such keywords, so you’ll probably find keywords with either moderate search volume and moderate competition or low search volume and low competition.

What defines “low” or “moderate” competition? That really depends on your specific topic. In our “pecan pie recipes,” example, I would say that keyword had moderate competition. If you narrowed things down instead to “easy pecan pie recipes,” you would find that keyword had very low competition.

Sorry for all the technique so far, but this is essential to the strategy.

Writing an Article

To rank in search results for a particular keyword phrase, you’re going to want to create a page or article dedicated to that keyword.

The article or page should be relevant to the keyword being searched on. A visitor who comes to this page from a search listing should feel like they found what they were looking for. This is important because the search engines will penalize you if visitors don’t spend much time on your site.

Beyond relevance, we also want to be sure to include our keywords in a few specific places when writing this article. Ideally, you would want your exact keyword phrase to be included in the title of the page, the URL (web address), the meta description, meta keywords and throughout the body of the article in a natural way.

That basically covers the most important on-page factors. Sure, there are other things you could tweak, but this should get you started.

Building Links

With your article published, it’s time to move on to off-page factors. Again, the most important determinant of where your site or page ranks for a particular keyword is the quantity and quality of links from other sites pointed back at your page.

Link building is the most difficult and time-consuming part of SEO. In our case, since we’ve specifically chosen a low-competition keyword, it shouldn’t be too hard though. Basically, our goal is to get as many links as it takes to land us on page 1 of Google’s search results for our keyword.

How many links will it take? That depends on how relevant our page is, how relevant our site is, how important Google thinks our site is, and how relevant and popular our competitors are.

Since there’s no way to know specifically, our approach should be to start building links to our page over time, and then monitor the search results. When we end up on page 1, we can stop manually building links.

To get links to your site, you can choose to employ lots of different techniques. You can submit your page to directories, you can use article marketing, social media, write guest posts for other blogs or make your content so good that people will naturally want to link to it.

The possibilities are endless, and I’ll let you research link-building techniques for more ideas.

What to Do With Your Competitive Knowledge

Here’s where the real value of this simple seo strategy comes in.

There are virtually limitless keywords out there that have low competition. There are probably plenty of them related to your topic.

The question is, how much does it cost you to rank for one of those keywords? Once you’ve answered that, then ask yourself, how much money could I earn with the traffic that comes from those keywords?

Once you’ve found a combination of ranking cost and search traffic revenue that yields a profit for your site, you can start building an empire based on this simple seo strategy.

The specifics really depend on you, your site, your topic, the competition and your revenue model.

In any case, try going through the process I’ve outlined at least once to get a feel for how you can attract visitors using SEO. Then decide if you can monetize those visitors effectively enough to employ this strategy on a bigger scale.

Simple SEO Strategy = 10 Easy SE Strategies

simple seo strategy= 10 Easy SEO Strategies

Search engine optimization is a complicated subject, and it takes time and hard work to gain an intuitive understanding of SEO. Even the strongest intuition can’t predict all of the eccentricities of search engine algorithms, though, and there are some simple SEO strategies that a Webmaster of any skill level can implement. These are ten SEO strategies that I incorporate in all of my Web sites.

1. Define keyphrases for each site. Target keyphrases that are actually reachable with the resources you have. This could be 3 terms or 20 terms, depending on the nature of your site. Usually 5-10 primary phrases. If your site already has search engine traffic, focus on the phrases that you are already being ranked for to improve SERPs.


2. Use keyphrases regularly in content, URL, titles and especially anchor text for backlinks. Keep it natural, though. Don’t SPAM your keyphrase everywhere, and make sure to include lots of other natural content and words that are contextually related.


3. Publish new content regularly.


4. Optimize your URLs. Get rid of dynamic IDs and sessions, and include page titles and keyphrases in URLs.


5. Obtain relevant, natural backlinks from authoritative sites. This means finding links on relevant Web sites with good PR, traffic, age, popularity, etc. Let me stress relevency again. Relevant links are important to SERPs, so if you’re optimizing a ringtones Web site you probably shouldn’t seek out links on say, knitting forums. Links from a content-rich section of a site are better than areas saturated with links, like a list of links in the footer of a site. Sitewide links increase link popularity but need to be complemented with homepage/single-page links. A good mixture of both is best.


6. Deep-link URLs. Obtain backlinks that link to individual pages in addition to links pointing directly to the home page.


7. Be consistent with URL usage. Don’t link to ‘http://www.example.com/’ on one page and ‘http://www.example.com/index.php’ on another. Pick one and stick with it.


8. Reduce link clutter. More outgoing links on your page will not reduce your own PR directly, but it will reduce the PR a link can pass which translates to less PR passed back to your own site indirectly. Also remove any unnecessary internal links, with the exception of having 2-3 links for top-level pages (such as in the header, menu, and footer).


9. Google to find tools like PageRank checker, link popularity checker, and SERP checker to keep track of performance.


10. Regularly analyze and improve your own strategy, and monitor results in SERPs on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. There is no document that can improve your intuitive understanding as well as doing it yourself.

These are some of the simple SEO strategies I incorporate, and are by no means writ in stone. These basics have worked for me and I hope they help you as well.

Simple SEO Strategy : Title Tags

simple seo strategy : Title Tags

SEO is a topic that is usually on the minds of most companies and individuals.  Everyone is always trying to figure out how to drive more traffic to their site.  A company usually has to jump through several hurdles to get anything implemented and that can usually take months.  As an individual or a small (perhaps even medium size) business you are much more flexible when it comes time to make changes.

As someone who runs a team of technical SEOs and has been in the SEO game for several years, I have a pretty solid understanding of how SEO works, and doesn’t work.  This is the first of a series of posts that is going to cover a few simple SEO strategies, these posts are designed to educate and inform, but it’s up to you to research and implement.  Let me also make a small disclaimer by saying that this whole site is going through a redesign so several of my SEO elements are not optimized (just in case you wanted to let me know).

Title Tags

We all hear about how title tags are the most important SEO strategies to go after, but, not many people understand how to write proper title tags.  Let me also be clear and state that the title tag is but one factor of SEO, and in order to really see results you need to implement not just this simple seo strategy but a holistic SEO strategy that covers much more then just title tags.

First let’s go over what the title tag is then we will go over how to write one.  The title tag is the bit of text you see in the upper left hand part of your browser; when viewing my blog homepage, this is what my title tag looks like, the lower portion is what it looks like in html:

Every page on your site has (or should have) its own UNIQUE title tag.  The problem that I see most companies or individuals running into is that they either leave generic title tags i.e. “home page,” they try to stuff every keyword into their title tag i.e. “web design, design, online design, design software…” or, they create identical title tags for all of their pages.  This is not the proper way to create title tags and you are not going to see the results you want.  So now that we know what a title tag is, let’s go over how to create one.

Remember that every page on your site should have it’s own unique title tag.  Think of the title tags as being titles of the chapters of a book, you want the titles to give the reader a good idea of what to expect.  If your chapter titles are all identical or stuffed with keywords then your reader is probably not going to know what to expect.  Now here are a couple of things to keep in mind when creating title tags:

• You don’t want anything too broad such as “shoes” because chances are you don’t sell every single shoe known to man.  Go after your target audience.

• Think about your audience, are you aiming specifically for a gender or demographic, perhaps you are only located in a certain geographic location?  If so, this information should go into your title tag to improve your chances to rank for your niche, after all it’s much easier to rank well for “discount nike shoes” then it is to rank for “shoes.”  This information will also give more information about your page/site to the users.

• Keep the length of your title tags to around 65 characters or less, anything longer will usually get truncated by search engines

• Research your online competition to know what the competitive landscape looks like, this is just a good overall SEO practice.

• Branding comes second, keywords come first.  What I mean by this is don’t start your title tag with your company name because that’s the easiest thing to rank for.  Start off with your target keywords and include your company name at the very end.

• Don’t bother using fancy company jargon, you need to do research to see what your users are actually searching for.  My team uses its own tools/process to get search engine data for keywords, unfortunately this information is not public so I can’t share it.  I have found that all the public tools out there are skewed and inaccurate.  Having said that you can try a few of the free tools out there (you can just do a google search for “free keyword research tools and you will plenty!) for general research such as:
  • wordtracker
  • google adwords tool

Let’s say that you have a site that sells discount computers and computer parts.  You would probably want to start off with a more general title tag for your home page something like “discount computers and computer parts | company name.”  Now let’s say you have a section for only Dell computers and Dell parts, you could create a title tag like: ” buy discount dell computers and dell parts and accessories | company name.”

Getting the idea?  You want each title tag that you create to describe the content on the page this tells the search engines and the users what each page is about.  It’s really quite simple to create title tags once you have the guidelines down and research your market, the rest is just entering in text.

Dangers of not creating proper title tags

• Pages will compete for the same keywords, this is not a good thing since you want the most relevant page to be presented to the users.  If each page (and title) is unique, then you shouldn’t have multiple pages from your site showing up for the same keyword, the goal here is quality not quantity.

• Not targeting your audience, this is something I see a lot from people/companies who try to focus on terms that they believe will drive the most amount of traffic.  Traffic does not equal conversion.  If you rank #1 for shoes but your site is about cookies, then sure you will get a bunch of traffic but then the users will just leave, meaning you will not get the conversions you are looking for.

• Focus on branding and not on the target market.  As I mentioned above ranking well for your company or brand name is usually easier than ranking for a particular keyword.  If you focus too much on ranking well for your company name but are then invisible online to people that are actually searching for a related keyword or phrase, then you are missing out on a very large portion of your target market.  For example a client of mine in the web analytics space ranks very well for their brand name, yet when you type in “web analytics,” or “web site analytics,” the company is nowhere to be found

Generally speaking, SEO is usually considered quite complex.  As you can see when you break it down into a specific element,  implementing title tags correctly is a simple seo strategy that eveyone can do.

Simple SEO Strategy: Use Unique And Relevant Meta Descriptions

simple seo strategy: Use Unique And Relevant Meta Descriptions

This is part of a series of posts for various simple seo strategys.  A few days ago I wrote, “quick and easy seo tips – title tags,” today we are going to cover meta descriptions.  Meta descriptions are actually quite important because they are among the first thing a user sees when deciding on whether or not to click over to your site.  Yet they are a simple seo strategy to implement.  Again I am going to make my small disclaimer by saying that this whole site is going through a redesign so several of my SEO elements are not optimized (just in case you wanted to let me know).  Let’s get into it.

Meta Descriptions

I’m sure many of you know what a meta description is.  It’s that small snippet of information you see in the search results under the title of the search results.  This is what the meta description looks like:

Did you spot the title tag in there?  Remember I talked about that a few days ago.  The meta description is all that text you see below the title tag.  Now as I mentioned for title tags, all of your meta descriptions should be unique and hopefully describe the content on the page.  Think of it as a movie trailer before the main attraction.  You want the trailer to be enticing, relevant, unique, and short and sweet.  Some of the common mistakes companies and individuals make when it comes to create meta descriptions are leaving this field blank, keyword stuffing, or using identical meta descriptions for all the pages.

Leaving the description blanks means that the search engine automatically generates a meta description for you which may or may not target your audience and in some cases may or may not make any sense!

Look at the following meta descriptions.  The first site doesn’t have a CREATED meta description so Google made one for the site and as you can see it’s not very good.  The content is pretty much nonsense.  There is nothing enticing about it and I have no idea what I’m going to see if I click on the link.

I decided to use my home page meta description as an example.  My description clearly explains what the site is about and what you are going to see when you click on the link.  My title and description will change soon though, once my new site design is completed but for now you should get the picture.

Things to keep in mind when creating meta descriptions:

• Try to keep the meta description to at most 150 characters (google can display up to 160) otherwise search engines will truncate it and add a “…” at the end of the description.

• Make sure your meta description stays relevant with your title, meaning if your title says the page is about “shoes” and your description is about “cookies” then something isn’t right.

• Your description should further elaborate on your title.  So again, think of it like the title for a movie with the trailer.  The title has keywords and gives you a general idea of what to expect, the meta description adds a bit more information and detail to support the title.

• If you include keywords from your title in the meta description then they will show up bolded in the description.  For example if you search for “Jacob Morgan” you will see that “Jacob Morgan” is bolded in the description.  This just calls the users attention to the keywords and may slightly improve conversions.

• Take a look at some of the other meta descriptions that are created for your industry (competing or related sites), try to sound UNLIKE them so that your page stands out when users are looking through the search listings.  Get a look for what their tone is and what keywords they are going after.

• Remember to create a unique meta description for all of your pages, each page on your site talks about something different and should thus have a unique title tag and description.

As in the title tags example, let’s say you run a discount computer and computer parts store.  The sample tile tag we created was:

“discount computers and computer parts | company name”

So now let’s create a meta description to go along with that title.  Something like:

“At Jacob’s store we offer quality discount computers and computer parts for popular models such as Dell, Toshiba, and IBM. Check out our specials!”

This meta description is 146 characters long, has a call to action, is enticing, and tells the users exactly what they need to know so that they can decide if the page is relevant to them and worth clicking on.

Again, as in the title tags example let’s say you have an internal page for only Dell computers and Dell parts. The sample title tag we created was:

” buy discount dell computers and dell parts and accessories | company name.”

So what would a matching meta description be?

Something like this:

Are you looking to buy a discount dell computer or dell accessory? Jacob’s store offers high quality products at affordable prices, check us out!

Hopefully you are starting to understand the process and the idea behind creating solid meta descriptions.  If you have any questions feel free to ask me.

Dangers of not creating proper meta descriptions

• Not capturing the traffic from your audience.  If you rank well for your target keyword or phrase yet your meta description turns users off, then you may be losing on targeted traffic.

• Creating identical title tags confuses users (and yes even search engines to some extent) so they won’t be able to determine the most relevant page to click on.

• Creating descriptions that don’t accurately describe or explain the content on the site may result in users visiting your site and then leaving immediately because they weren’t able to find what they were looking for.  When a user visits your site and quickly leaves, this is called a “bounce rate.”

Hopefully this gave you a solid understanding of what meta descriptions are, how to make them, what to consider when making them, and the dangers of not creating proper meta descriptions.  As you can see it is a very simple seo strategy.

Simple SEO Stategy: Know And Use Correct URL Structure

simple seo strategy: Know And Use Correct URL Structure

This article is part of a series of posts for various simple seo strategy.  So far we have covered title tags and meta descriptions, today we are going to cover URL structure.  If you look at the top of your browser you will see a URL such as http://www.jmorganmarketing.com or http://www.google.com.  The URL is the particular address of the site you are visiting.  The URL structure of your site is very important for search engine visibility.  I’m not going to talk about sub-directories or folders (these are topics that my team of technical SEO consultants will be covering on the blog once the new site is up and running), I am just going to look at the basic URL structure.  Remember, this is a simple seo strategy.  The goal behind this post is to show you the difference between a bad URL and a correct URL.  Again I am going to make my small disclaimer by saying that this whole site is going through a redesign so several of my SEO elements are not optimized (just in case you wanted to let me know).  Let’s get into it.

URL Structure

There is a lot to cover here and it can get pretty technical so I will try to keep it quick and easy as the title suggests.  The URL structure, along with your title tags and meta descriptions (and other SEO elements) should all work together to help you with search engine visibility and rankings.  Just like your title tags and meta descriptions your URLs are also all going to be unique.  Let’s take a few examples of bad URLs and correct ones.

The URL above is what I would classify as a bad URL, why?  Well, let’s think back to our title tags and meta descriptions, remember how we always try to use specific targeted keywords.  The main problem with this URL is all of those characters at the end, the “?ID=1435667….” search engines cannot interpert such characters for relevancy therefore it is advised to use relevant keywords in your URL that search engines can actually crawl and understand.  Let’s take a look at a good/clean URL to see what I mean.

This URL is taken from a page from the site of the SEO team that I run, notice the difference?  This URL is clean and targets specific keywords that are also being targeted on the page (title tag/description/etc.)  There are no weird characters in the URL and thus it is easily crawled and interpreted for relevancy.

Things to keep in mind when creating URLS

• Try to use keywords in URL, if the particular page is about “discount del laptops” then try to create a URL that looks like “http://www.jacobsstore.com/discount-dell-laptops” as opposed to one that looks like “http://www.jacobsstore.com/topic7/id=%732?”  See the difference?

• Try to use dashes instead of underscores in your URL structure.  Although Google claims that they have started treating dashes and underscores identically, our tests reveal that this is not the case in all situations.

• Try to keep your URLs short and descriptive.  You can use a few words but don’t try to fit a thesis into your URL.  Also, the shorter they are the easier they are to remember, there are a few other factors at play here, but these will be covered on the SEO blog (as mentioned above)

• Make sure the keywords in the URL are targeting the same words that your other SEO elements are targetting.  What I mean is that if your title tag, description, etc mention “discount dell laptops” but your URL has the keywords “christmas-cookies” then something isn’t right.

• stick with lowercase letters, URLs can take both so stick with the default lowercase

Having a poor URL structure can result in:

• internal competing pages

• lack of indexation by search engines (meaning your pages basically don’t exist)

• inability of users to remember the URL

• targeting/ranking of irrelevant keywords

There are a few other things but I’m keeping this very simple.  Again, the whole point of this post is to show you the difference between a poor URL and a good/clean one.  You should now be able to tell the difference between the two and have an idea of corrective measures you can take to clean up or create new URLs.  And there you have it!  A simple seo strategy.

Simple SEO Strategy: Combine SEO with Your Social Media

simple seo strategy: Combine SEO with Your Social Media

A simple seo strategy is to combine SEO with Social Media.  Social Media and SEO can be a very powerful combination when used together properly. A lot of companies and individuals usually focus on one or the other, that’s a mistake. SEO is basically the process of “getting found” in search engines. Type my name “Jacob Morgan” into any major search engine and my site comes up first out of around 10,000,000 total search results, that’s SEO. Now read one of the articles and scroll down, see the comments? The links to my twitter/facebook/linkedin pages?  That’s Social Media.

Why do you need SEO?

Well quite frankly you need SEO to exist online. You can offer an amazing product or service, but if nobody can find it (or you), then you don’t exist. If someone types your name into Google what comes up? If someone types in a particular service or product that you offer into search engines, (let’s say discount laptops or PR consulting) does your site come up?  Now, SEO is actually a lot more technical and complex but as I said, the whole point is to get found online. You have to remember that you aren’t the only one out there who offers marketing services and you’re not the only one who sells laptop parts. There are thousands of other people or companies out there that you are competing with, so you have to make sure that when someone is looking for something that you offer, that they find you.  SEO is quite complex but we are sharing a simple seo strategy with you here that anyone can do.

Why do you need Social Media?

You want to build relationships with your readers and users so that you know what they want and expect from you. Relationships also let you communicate with the people that actually care about you. To use an analogy, if a random person with a megaphone comes up to you and starts yelling at you to buy a new razor would you?  Now imagine that a friend of yours tells you about the same razor, who are you more likely to listen to? That is the power of relationships and every company and individual needs to build them…always! Social media is the best relationship building tool there is.  Social media also benefits multiple departments such as HR, product development, marketing, advertising/sales, and customer support, not to mention internal communication.  Social media is a very robust communication and relationship building platform that everyone should be taking advantage of.  Of course, most of the platforms and tools out there are free, but you have to put in the time in order to succeed.

Why do you need SEO and Social Media?

Look at it like this, SEO brings people to your site and social media lets you build the relationships and connections WITH the people that are visiting your site. Think of it as trying to continuously get repeat business. Once you have built relationships with people you can then reach out to them. For example, I have around 900 plus twitter followers (most of who have found me through my blog or an article I have written elsewhere) and when I write a new post those 900 people find out about it instantly, then they can share the post with THEIR followers and so on.

You have to understand that even if you begin using a social media platform such as Wordpress, that you will need SEO to make your Wordpress site rank. My site is 100% Wordpress powered and yes there was a good amount of SEO that was involved in order to get my site to rank #1 for my name.

Sure you can use just SEO or Social Media independently of one another but they deliver greater results when they are used together to form a cohesive strategy.

How have you been incorporating your SEO and Social Media strategies together?  Connect them and you will have one more simple seo strategy in your tool box.

Simple SEO Strategy: Choose The Right Web CMS For You

simple seo strategy: Choose The Right Web CMS For You

A web content management system is the platform that you can use to build your website, and as the name implies, manage your content.  Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla are probably the best known content management systems.  However, a totally new CMS unknown to the masses, has now arisen on the horizon.  The website you are now on is built with this new CMS. I am a new amateur web developer...this is my very first website.  I chose this CMS because it does most of the SEO for me especially link building and as a beginner that is a HUGE benefit.  As you can see, the site is not very "pretty" (yet) because of my lack of experience but the underlying software has taken care of the SEO for me and ranked me high in the search engines.  If high rankings is what you are looking for in a CMS then this is the CMS for you.  If that's not important to you read on to hear Dr. Cyberspace's evaluation in choosing his CMS.  I dare say he has never seen the CMS you are on right now...

 Dr Cyberspace:  Wordpress is the CMS that comes to my mind when I think of content management systems and SEO.  However, I want to share with you a post I found that is causing me to consider more options.  After reading, the question I must ask is...Drupal CMS- a simple seo strategy...or not?  You decide:

When comparing seo strategies among the top content management system (cms) software, I always seem to reach the same conclusion. When I think of SEO (search engine optimization), Drupal cms comes to mind first every time. Of course the top three I'm comparing are Drupal vs Joomla vs WordPress. I will admit that I haven't built a Joomla site for several months and WordPress I haven't built for almost a year.

Drupal cms I build all the time because I like it. If you want a pretty site and you don't care so much about SEO, Joomla might be your choice. If you want a simple blog and forget the SEO, WordPress should be your choice. An excellent        simple seo strategy starts with the ability to implement the SEO techniques your site needs. Not all sites require the same SEO strategy.

The idea is to rank better in the top three search engines for your targeted seo keywords. Sometimes that means optimized page titles, sometimes it requires a new link building strategy, and sometimes it means rethinking your SEO keywords. No matter what seo strategy you wish to implement, when you use Drupal cms you have a module to assist you. You are free, in Drupal cms, to combine the best attributes of several modules and produce your own unique seo solution. In Joomla, I was finding that if you wanted a definitive seo solution it would cost you.

I found the free Joomla modules lacking. That's fine, because I believe everyone should be allowed to be compensated for his or her talents. If you can write and sell a module more power to you. In WordPress, I found most modules lacking, but they also make very pretty sites. Don't get me wrong, I prefer Drupal cms but Joomla is an excellent content management system, a few developers rank it above Drupal.

At Last A Simple SEO Strategy to Get Your Twitter Campaign Ranked on Google

At Last A simple seo strategy to Get Your Twitter Campaign Ranked on Google

Most people struggle with trying to combine their SEO Marketing with their Twitter Account to achieve premium SEO results. In fact, most people say that Twitter  in general is useless for SEO organic ranking.

Let me prove how you can have ultimate results!

I will give you this, Twitter does not have link juice. However, because of Twitters extremely high pagerank, and your ability to have your Twitter page achieve a PR of 5 or higher, your tweets and even your Twitter profile page can rank on the first page of Google, with the simple tricks that I will show you below.

I call it…wait for it…THE 7 Simple SEO Strategies FOR TWITTER SUCCESS…(that sounded better in my head)

Oh well…moving on.

Step 1. Keyword research.  Find a longtail keyword that you would like to have rank.  Something like “Parrot Cage Set”  With a little research we realize that there are over 60 people a month that are looking for help in making a parrot cage.  There are also a lot of other closely related keywords that could be profitable.

Step 2. Write a Tweet with the keyword phrase in it. Ideally, it should link to a blog post or article of a similar topic for additional traffic.  It would look like “Check out this designer Parrot Cage Set http://www.yourlink.com

Step 3 Write a 300 word article and post it to Ezinearticles, Articlebase and a couple other article sites using the keyword phrase as an anchor text to your “Parrot Cage Set” tweet.

Step 4 Take your original article and “spin” it into another 300 word article.  With this article create a page on HubPages or a lens on Squidoo with an anchor text backlink to your Tweet.  The more you do the better results that you will have.

Step 5 Social Bookmark everything.  Use Digg, Mixx, Delicious and Propeller to bookmark both your EzineArticles/Articlebase articles and your Hubpages/Squidoo post.

Step 6 The key to success is rapid listing.  The way to accomplish this is to Ping everything.  You will want to ping your actual pages and the RSS feed.  This will result in listings within minutes.

Step 7 Sit back and relax and watch your tweet travel up the SERPS.

This is the best way for you to integrate simple SEO strategies into your Twitter campaign.

simple seo strategy: Do-it-Yourself or Hire an Expert?

I just came across this article online. It's very releva to every website owner.  Sooner or later you will have to decide  whether you will do the SEO for your site yourself or hire an expert. This article will help you make your decision based on a list of considerations. The first consideration perhaps being your budget.

According to the article budget of $1000 a month will allow you to hire an expert. If you don't have $1000 a month then you are pretty much stuck doing it yourself. I definitely don't want to spend $1000 a month on an expert (right now) nor perhaps do you. Nor do I want to spend hours of my time doing SEO. The reason for starting my own web business was to have more free time! So I went looking for a better strategy and this is what I found. Check out my Secret Strategy

simple seo strategy: Do-it-Yourself or Hire an Expert?

For all of you who have a website, I’m certain you have an SEO strategy in place that you implement on a weekly basis without fail. No? Well, I have news for you — SEO is not an option. It’s not a matter of if, but when. If you want to be found in the search engines, you’re going to have to work for it.

In February 2009, Netcraft did a research study that estimated there were more then 215 million websites worldwide. And Google has said they have indexed over 30 billion web pages. That’s some pretty stiff competition, so you better roll up your sleeves and dive into that SEO plan!

What if I don’t have an SEO plan?

How do you begin the process of implementing an SEO plan? The first step is to determine your available resources to engage in an active SEO strategy. Your resources would include:

• Budget available
• Man hours available
• Internal SEO knowledge amongst employees
• Technical knowledge of your website
• Capability of learning about SEO

Basically, your resources include: $money + time + knowledge.

Do-it-Yourself or Hire an Expert?

Now that you know what resources are at your disposal, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I have a minimum of $1,000 a month to spend on SEO?
• Are the people in my company already overloaded and have little or no time to spend on SEO?
• Do I have a hard time coming up with a single person in my company who would have the knowledge or capability of learning SEO techniques?
• Do I need my rankings to jump quickly (i.e. a strong, swift implementation of a plan)?
• Is my competition using an SEO professional to help their rankings?
• Is my website an integral part of growing my business?

If you answer yes to all of these questions, then an expert would be an optimum choice for you. If you answered no to all of them, then you need to considering doing SEO yourself. If you have mixed answers, you need to make a determination based on budget and man hours available.

Budget and man hours are generally the two biggest determining factors when choosing who should implement SEO for your site. Most of our clients are small to medium businesses with little or no budget, so obviously an expert is not an option. Some are so small no man hours are available either, so doing it in-house is also not possible. But if you have neither, then you have to adjust your perspective and find room in one or the other so you can put a plan in place.

If your website is integral to your business, then SEO must be a part of your plan. While self-implemented SEO may seem inadequate, it’s better than no SEO at all. If you’re a small company feeling the pinch of money and time, I encourage you to find an hour a day (could be shared by more than one person) to begin implementing SEO techniques. Over time your efforts will accumulate, and while they may not show dramatic results, they will have an effect.

What if I don’t have the budget, but have no clue how to do it myself?

Then you will have to do a hybrid of self/expert implementation. You will have to engage an expert to teach you, but you will implement the SEO tasks. There are many excellent books available on SEO, or you could take an online SEO class.  You could also follow blogs of SEO experts to learn and implement strategies.

Doing it myself sounds too hard!

SEO can be very intimidating. There are aspects of it, like keyword selection, that require focus and some deductive logic. So perhaps for those tasks you get some assistance. But some of the tasks to implement SEO, like link building, can be implemented by somebody with basic use of the Internet. Just remember that a little is better than none.

But I have heard SEO experts are charlatans!

Just like any industry, there are some that take advantage, and the Internet industry is no exception. SEO implementation can be tedious to track, and some aspects are not trackable. So you rely on the honesty of the company that is providing your services.

It is best if you could choose a company that comes recommended from an actual customer. It is worth the time to investigate your options so you choose a company that will provide the services for a fair price, while also implementing the latest techniques to gain optimum results. Steer clear of any company that promises top spots in Google search results. While SEO strategies are very effective, there is no way to guarantee results.

Conclusion

SEO should be taken seriously. If you have the budget, an expert is the way to go. But if you don’t, then find a way to implement a plan in-house. The goal is to be seen online, and you need to use the means available to you to achieve this objective!

6 Clichs That Help You Understand simple seo strategy

6 Clichés That Help You Understand simple seo strategy

Clichés are a funny thing. We don't like to hear them... especially in movies, TV shows, or blog posts, but we frequently use them in everyday conversations. Clichés are a great way to make a point because the meaning of them is pretty much universally understood, even if not entirely true.

Just because something is a cliché doesn't mean it can, or should be, disregarded. Here are some clichés that we can use to help us better understandsimple seo strategy.

Good things come to those who wait

We've all heard the expression, "Good things come to those who wait". Whether you're waiting for your Heinz ketchup to pour out onto your burger, waiting for Christmas day to open your gifts, waiting for summer vacation to be let out of school, or waiting in line at the BMV, good things will come if you simply allow them to come in their own time.

But, under normal circumstances, this cliché is largely untrue. You'll still get your ketchup if you shove the butter knife into the bottle and drag it out onto your burger, you'll get all of your gifts if you choose to open them all on Christmas Eve, you'll get your summer vacation if you skip the last few days of school, and you'll still get your drivers license renewed if you go to a BMV express.

The real lesson behind this particular cliché is that patience is a virtue. And that much is true, especially in search engine optimization.

Unlike placing sponsored ads via Google AdWords or Microsoft Advertising, where results are almost instantaneous, SEO does not produce immediate results. You won't get your return on investment a week after SEO starts.

Optimizing your site for your targeted key phrases won't get you to #1 overnight. You won't find all your keywords rankings in the top 10 on Google in 19 days (despite some claims you read), nor will you get significant traffic improvement after an hour of SEO consultations. To use a simple analogy, SEO is like boiling water: you don't get a hard boil the moment you turn on the burner... you have to wait for it.

The process of optimizing a site can take weeks and, in some cases, months or years, depending on how big the site is. In most cases SEO is an ongoing process with growing measures of return. The return in SEO is good, but you've got to be willing to invest the time to let it happen.

Can't Hit the Broad Side of a Barn from the Inside

The front end of the optimization process can include hours and hours of research, site architecture, and fixing usability issues. This isn't even considering the actual optimization of specific pages. Everything from keyword research, industry research, competition research, marketing research, and more, all need to be completed before any optimization can begin.

We often get asked if research time can be shortened if we have performed optimization work for another site in the same industry recently. The short answer to that is "no". Every site has different construction, design, layout, history, and each speaks to it's audience differently. These are all factors that are considered in the multiple levels of research performed. No two sites are the same; therefore no research is the same.

Sure, some elements of the research can be applied, but you can't just take what works for someone else and apply it to your site. Cloning a competitor never works. But, outsmarting a competitor does.

Nothing to Write Home About

A good SEO will actually write or re-write content to properly (and effectively) work in your targeted keyword phrases. We often put "SEO writer" and "copywriter" into two different categories, with the SEO writer being someone less skilled than a "real" copywriter. This is a fallacy.

An SEO copywriter is a "real" copywriter that also understands how keywords get worked into content. Any copywriter can be trained in writing SEO copy. But, if you're not already a writer, forget trying to write SEO copy. Any programmer can throw keywords on a page and call it "optimized", but that doesn't mean it is.

A professional writer should be able to take the SEO recommendations for keyword usage and incorporate that into existing content in a way that reads naturally (i.e. does not look as if you just tried to insert keywords here and there for search engine relevance) and maintains the ability to convert your visitors to paying customers. This is no small task and should be done with the utmost time and care.

You Can Take It or Leave It

No all SEO is a matter of simple seo strategy.  "Code bloat" is probably one of the most overlooked parts of the SEO process. Eliminating page code bloat can be an incredibly daunting task. Removing excess tables and re-coding in CSS, moving CSS and javascript code off the page, and generally making the code as lean as possible can make a considerable difference to page download speeds. Since Google, and likely other engines, are looking at speed as a significant factor, "code bloat" removal becomes an essential part of the SEO process.

There have been times where we have had to nearly rebuild entire pages, removing tons of excess code. These changes may only add fractions of seconds to download speeds, but those can weigh heavily against other sites that may be running much faster.

Even a Broken Clock is Correct Twice a Day

Validating your SEO code has no effect on your search engine rankings. I want to make sure you're clear on that... so I'll say it again. There is ZERO SEO benefit to having your code validated. However, as an SEO, I'm a big proponent for using valid code.

When code isn't validated it means there are coding elements that are incorrect. While browsers and search engines can be extremely forgiving on these errors, there are some coding errors that can stop the search engine spiders cold. The error may prevent them from reading the paper properly and, consequently, not assign values of your content correctly.

Again, validating your code won't achieve good rankings, but it can help prevent you from getting poorer rankings due to confusing and improperly created code.

If you validate your pages, it is easier to find potential problems as you continue to make edits. If one of your pages has 50 warnings but no problems with the search engines, great! But, let's say you edit the page and you now have 51 warnings, and this new one is crippling. That error is just another one in the group and, unless you're paying attention, you won't even know it's there.

On the other hand if you have zero warnings or errors and after an edit you see one pop up, you can correct it before it becomes a crippling issue for you.

All Things Being Equal

"Site maps", "custom 404 redirects" and "robots.txt" files are all important to the overall construction of your site, even if they don't necessarily have a direct effect on the actual on-page optimization of your site. Site maps help both search engines and visitors quickly and easily get to the information that is important.

A "custom 404 redirect" eliminates that annoying "page not found" error and lets you keep visitors on your site if they somehow access a page via a bad link. The "robots.txt" file is useful to communicate with the search engine spiders about content they should or should not index. This allows the search engines to focus its time on the good stuff instead of the irrelevant portions of your site.

Up against a similar site, these things can help you keep visitors engaged with your content and prevent them from jumping off to a competitor. It's often the small things that can make the biggest difference.

There are a lot of nuances to SEO.  It is not all a matter of simple seo strategy.  There is often a lack of understanding from those that are not directly involved. Even still, quite a bit of bad information is easily spread. You don't have to know SEO well in order to understand it, but having a basic understanding of SEO can help you converse intelligently with your SEO provider. Turning a blind eye to the work they do often leads to incorrect assumptions and false expectations. Having a better grasp on the needs of the SEO will help you ensure that you're both working to keep the SEO project on track and not chasing after pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.

simple seo strategy::10 Simple SEO Strategies

Simple SEO Strategy:: 1 Simple SEO Strategy To Get More Visitors To Your Site From Google

1 Simple SEO Strategy To Get More Visitors To Your Site From Google

This simple seo strategy is debateable.  Read the article and decide for yourself if you want to incorporate this SEO strategy into your site...

Search the web long enough for ideas on boosting your site’s ranking and you are bound to find pages with text like this

Did you know that you can dramatically increase the number of visitors that come to your site on a daily basis from Google? And it’s not constantly improving your position in Google search engine result pages (SERPs) for your competitive keywords which can take some time after working on your search engine marketing campaigns.

After reading through the excitable prose you’ll find they are espousing doorway pages. These are a simple SEO strategy that are a big no-no for the search engines and may buy you short term gains but they are bad practice and not worth the effort in the long term.

What is a doorway page?

Wikipedia has a definition of a doorway page

• A page designated as an entry point for viewers arriving from another site or search engine. It’s content doesn’t appear to be part of the site, but nor is it a classic front page.
• A page which focusses on a specific keyword but provides limited information as the keywords are repeated over and over
• A page which links to another part of the site, or another site – but those pages never link back to the doorway page
• A doorway can be a .php or .html page
  

  A doorway page is a static HTML page created in order to rank higher in search engines results for a particular keyword or keyword phrase.

this statement is mischevious because search engines aren’t concerned with a page’s origin. You don’t need static pages to do well.

Is there such a thing as good doorway page?

No! But that doesn’t mean you can’t have pages which focus on specific keywords. As a simple seo strategy you do need to have these pages integrated into your site however, if they don’t fit easily your whole site will be devalued.

Consider PC Property Manager. I might want to tackle the following keywords:

1. property management software
2. rental management software
3. apartment management software

I could possibly get away with having a page talking about how the program was suited for apartment owners but if I had specific pages talking about #1 and #2 the site would start to look very odd as the only difference is in the terminology.

So, if you need to have the specific pages be very careful to include them into your site as legitimate content.

Don’t use doorway generator software. These will not help you in the long run.

So there you have it!  Now you decide...to use doorway pages or not to use doorway pages.  Hope this article helps.