Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

From time to time, Google hosts live chats with webmasters attended by some of their key developers. If anything, this is a great venue to ask that nagging question in your head. The first time this was held was in March 2008, and you can read the details of the successful launch at SEOroundtable.com. As a consequence, a follow up was held earlier this month and an MP3 of the discussions is available here, as well as a transcript of the chat session.
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6. Use UFOs. Though not the flying kind, UFOs (Unobtrusive Flash Objects) are cool in their own way. They are DOM scripts that add intelligence to your website by allowing it to detect if the visitor’s computer has the Flash plug-in or not. They will only embed Flash objects on your site if they are supported. A similar but improved technique would be to employ SWFObject 2.0.

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We may be living in the 21st century, but as far as Flash SEO is concerned, it’s as if we’re trapped in the Dark Ages. While there are successful, high-ranking Flash websites, most of these are of already established brands and/or have the ability to generate a huge number of backlinks to boost their PR (and therefore they don’t have to rely on their content being crawled). If you’re designing for a new product/concept, it’s definitely a lot harder. The rule of thumb is still the same: avoid Flash if you can. But if you absolutely must use Flash for web design (and who can blame you?), there are some things you can do to make your site a little friendlier to search engines.
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The keyword here is “social”. To be able to take advantage of social bookmarking sites, you have to become a part of the community, learn their culture, and use your knowledge to play the game (following the rules, of course). In social media, there are regular users and power users. When regular users submit a page, they get usually get modest traffic. In contrast, when power users submit a page, they are likely to generate traffic that would make servers cry. The difference? Power users have many friends within the community, and when they talk, people listen.

How do you become a power user?

1. Observe. Choose your preferred social bookmarking site and particular niche, then subscribe to it. The more specific the category, the better. Get a feel for the trends. Know what works and what doesn’t.

2. Keep ahead. Also, subscribe to the top blogs or sites related to your niche. Your RSS reader should have at least 20 of those. Some of these are probably among the most dugg sites already.

3. Branding. Join the site using a short catchy username, and an equally memorable avatar.

4. Get personal. Go to the Upcoming section and try to digg the ones you think will make it to the top. More importantly, be the first one to add comment of support. Add them as friend and check their profiles constantly to digg their other submissions. If you do this, they’ll most likely return the favor.

5. Test. Once you’ve accumulated about 50 friends or so, start digging posts from your own blog, one at a time. Don’t spam or you’ll get banned. Only your best posts should be dugg. See how much diggs you can get automatically, and how close you can get to Digg’s homepage. You might need to ask a little help from your friends first so that they know about your site. If you fall short of the number of diggs needed, just go back to #4 and expand your network. Remember, it’s all about being social.

Now that you know how to get a ton of traffic from social media, you need to prepare to make the most of it, if and when it happens. Visitors that reach you this way behave differently from people who were directed to your site via search engine, or from a link on another related site. These are a fickle bunch, and you have to adapt to their behavior. Her are just a few ideas:

CPM Ads

One thing I’ve noticed is that StumbleUpon traffic generates poor CTR. They just don’t like clicking on Adsense. This may be because they are more Internet-savvy than the average surfer, or maybe the Stumble toolbar button just makes it so convenient to hop from one site to the next. You have about 5-10 seconds to grab their attention, or they move on to the next. A good way to monetize this traffic is to look for banner advertisers that pay per impression, so that all those pageviews count.

Feed Subscriptions

Having a deluge of targeted visitors is a great opportunity to increase your subscriber base. If you got them interested on your post, they’ll look around for more. It’s important that you maintain a high level of quality for your site. A portion of that initial traffic will eventually come back to check out your new posts, and if they see that it’s consistent, they’ll sign up for updates. Your feed icon should be prominently displayed near the top for maximum effect. Then, it’s all up to you to keep them there.

Readership

Don’t stumble all the content you have, just the better ones. If your blog or site is fairly new, chances are these Stumblers or Diggers will be mostly fresh pairs of eyes. First impression is key. If they like what you have, they’ll come back and even tell others about it. Some people posted links to my site on different forums and in their own blogs. This exposure and word-of-mouth effect will give you an even broader readership.

Sometimes, you can actually have a cake and eat it, too. Here are a few free SEO resources for the earnest beginner, and those that just want to brush up their skills.

SEO Guides

Search Engine Dictionary – A lexicon of search engine terms, and a useful reference while you wade through the sea of SEO gobbledygook.

Search Engine Chart - Learn how the major players are interconnected.

Google Webmaster Help Center – Get it straight from the horse’s mouth.

SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide - This guide provides a complete overview of many of the processes, techniques and strategies used by professional search engine optimization specialists.

SEO Tools

SEO Quake – A Firefox toolbar that gives you the PR of every page you browse and other info. It also integrates with Google search results, giving vital data on each.

GoogSpy - If you are interested in finding out what search terms your competition is ranked for or is adverting on, then this site will be a great tool for you.

SEOmoz Tools - A comprehensive set of tools for everything you could possibly need.

SEO Book Tools - Another compilation of tools, with free video tutorials.

SEO Blogs

SEOmoz Blog - SEOmoz provides companies around the world with consulting, Internet marketing and search engine optimization services.

Google Webmaster Blog - News and updates from the world’s most popular search engine.

Matt Cutts - One of the better known Google engineers talks about technology and search engine optimization.

SEO by the Sea - Maintained by Bill Slawski, Director of Search Marketing at Key Relevance.

SEO Forums

Webdigity - Webdigity is a discussion board for webmasters. You can discuss here anything relative to your website, from coding to promotion, seo and affiliate programs.

SEOchat Forum - Professional SEO and webmaster discussions forum. The forum is categorized into four different sections. Search Engines, directories, web design and development, and general chat.

High Rankings Forum - Search engine optimization forum by Jill Whalen. Great forum to ask her and different search engine marketing experts.

Cre8asite Forums - Cre8asiteForums.com covers Usability, User Interface, Website Design, Search Engine Optimization & Marketing, Internet Law, Blogs and more.

SEO experts suggest that 80% of a site’s search engine ranking depends on backlinks, while only 20% is based on on-page optimization. Given this lopsided preference for backlinks, a lot of site owners go on massive link-building campaigns. But don’t just get yourself links left and right, my friend. There’s more to backlinks than having the numbers.

1. Quality over Quantity

The more, the merrier – correct? Well, not always. Sites with 10 good backlinks can beat others with 1000 or more backlinks. How? See, with Google, each webpage has its own Page Rank, a measure of its popularity. If you get backlinks from a few sites with PR7 or higher, chances are you’ll get ahead of a site that has hundreds of backlinks from PR0 pages. Choose wisely.

2. Relevance

Sites giving you backlinks should be relevant to your own site’s content. For example, if you blog about pop music in Asia, your backlinks should ideally be on sites that are also about music, the Asian region, or both. Having links from sites about gaming will not do you much good, I’m afraid.

3. Keywords

Every link has an anchor text. That’s the word or phrase that people click to go to your website. The best anchor texts are keywords or key phrases that people use to look for sites like yours. In the example above, a good anchor text would be “Asian pop music”. If you’re starting out, choose keywords that are not very competitive. This way, you’ll have a greater chance of landing on the first page.

4. Directories

A popular way to start link-building campaigns is to submit to directories. However, submissions to popular directories usually take months before they get approved because of the volume of applications. Time is money, so plan ahead. You can also submit your site to the smaller directories, especially those that cater to your niche. Other than this being more relevant linkage, you’ll probably get approved much faster.

Podcasting makes sense. By adding premium audio content on your blog, you become more than just another site on your niche. Since blogging has exploded like crazy, you need all the edge you could get. However, because podcasts are usually audio content, search engine spiders can’t crawl them as easily as they do blogs. Is it even possible to make your podcasts search engine friendly?

Fortunately, the answer is yes, and here’s how:
1. Name that tune – Think of a good keyword-rich title for your show.

2. Future-proof today - MP3 files have ID3 tags which you can embed with relevant keywords. These include title, artist/author, comments and URL fields. Only a few search engines can read the ID3 tags now, but in the future, this will likely be a standard search parameter.

3. Summarize – Write a synopsis of each podcast show and blog about it. As with basic SEO practice, important keywords should be as high up in the blog post as possible.

4. Transcribe – While we wait for the ideal future when search engines can understand audio, right now the work has to be done manually. Find a good transcription service provider. Divide the transcript up into sections, and give each of them related keyword-rich titles. If it’s a long interview, you can put each section on a separate page.

5. Directories - Submit your podcast site to specialized podcast directories and search engines such as audio.weblogs.com.

6. Publicize – Be sure to let people know that you have a podcast. Not everybody has one, which makes you especially linkworthy than a run-of-the-mill blog.

7. Reach out – You may love hearing your voice, but it’s always best to give your show some variety. From time to time, it wouldn’t hurt to do an interview, particularly if you can convince people who already some street cred in your niche. Don’t worry, though, they would usually jump at the opportunity to be featured. It’s mutually beneficial.

Try these out. Once you get going, I’m sure you’ll come up with your own creative strategies.

This is part 2 of our series on “How to Sell SEO to the Web Challenged”.

3) Expect comparisons with traditional advertising
“So why should we avail of SEO services when we have ______ advertising? What would this increase in traffic do to us?” Now here is where it gets tricky. When we asked you earlier to dispel the wrong notions about SEO, it’s because SEO isn’t really an exact science. No SEO expert can really predict the increase in sales being on the top of search engines bring. So how is SEO different from the traditional advertising? With traditional advertising, the potential for generating revenue lasts only as long as the advertising does. In SEO, the effect on revenues goes on and on.

4) Know your audience
Your audience may not be knowledgeable about SEO, but they may be an expert on another field. The key here is to understand that SEO may be filled with jargons and terms, but at its core, it relies on tried and tested principles, the same principles used by traditional marketing. So research and find out what language they use. Try to find out how you can explain SEO using their language and before long, you’d be seeing them bobbing their heads, understanding the things you are talking about. And once they do understand what you are talking about, you are now ready to start talking about the services that you offer.

5) Provide Additional Resources
Create an SEO 101 primer that you’ll give out to new clients. It could be an ebook, video, or printed pamphlet. Make sure to include the following: what the clients should expect, a simplified overview of the working process, as well as additional services you provide. It also helps to provide the client with progress reports throughout the course of the SEO work as this lets them know how far the project has come. When presenting information, try to use easy-to-understand visuals rather than numbers. If you can, present case studies of previous work so that the client has a better idea of what to expect.

So, you’ve decided you’re knowledgeable enough now and would like to start selling SEO services. That’s great. Now if you are starting to sell your services to people who have ideas what SEO is, then usually a deal will be sealed and done without too much snags.

But what if your client has no inkling on what SEO is all about? How do you then sell SEO services? Usually, you have to do a crash course before you start rattling off the pricing for your services, making sure they understand what they are getting into. So better polish those layman terms and get ready to explain exactly what SEO is about.

1) Dispel the wrong notions of SEO outright.
Believe it or not, there are still those who believe that SEO “will generate sure sales of their products” as soon as you get the site back up and running. Now the problem here is that when they don’t get an increase in sales immediately, the least they can do is to call you a thief or something to that effect. So dispel them right away.

2) Tell your clients what they are buying…. Slowly.
Tell them what SEO is and what it is not. Don’t spew out jargon while explaining. Remember, these are people who don’t know SEO. So don’t go all out and start talking about Result Pages, redirects, keyword density. The idea here is to get the client understand what you are offering him by slowly getting into the details one by one.

a. Explain the Search Engine – So you start with search engines. Don’t even try to attempt to explain what algorithms are, as you would probably met with dazed looks. The best way to go about explaining search engines is by making it clear what they really are and how they arrive with such results, including the ranking. Once you’ve gotten past that hurdle, then it’s time to explain that each search engine is different from one another and that they return different search results.

b. Moving on to Links – “Aren’t these the ones you click on to get to another page?” Well, yeah, but when it comes to SEO, you also have to explain that these links are a factor when it comes to ranking your site on search engines. Now since you will be doing all the SEO work, you don’t have to go through all the topics regarding links. Once you have briefly explained in simple terms why links are important, then you can move on to the next topic which is…

c. Keywords – Quite a simple topic to discuss. Just explain the rudimentary principles behind keywords and how they work hand in hand with search engines. Also, put in the importance of keyword research just to give them an idea about another part of your job if ever they avail of your services.