10 Mar 2010 05:37 am
When there's hope, there's always a chance that we can plant a healthy tree and it's on our attitude. The same thing with search engine optimization, when we do our SEO services, we must think that in order to grow our tree, high quality services must be observed. But first let's start from the bottom, shall we?
First we plant a seed that symbolizes a beginner or a newbie. In order to make the stem grow over and over again, we must learn from the basics to advanced. Don't jump till you don't know what you're doing, or else the stem will just stay as ease or will fall. We consider ourselves as the SEO tree.
As we grow our knowledge, it's just like the water flows like a rain to make the roots grow until leaves came out. We must try to see that when we are growing and growing, just keep pushing until you finish the course or the chapter of search engine optimization. The tree could take months until it bears fruit and to finish its exact form.
The same thing with us, if we're able to act as a SEO tree, we will always continue to grow and at the same time, our own tree could be more meaningful than ever. For all newbies and professionals, bearing our fruits to our branches will make us very successful, just like the successful websites of Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc.
10 Mar 2010 12:58 am
Hello everyone!
It's been a long time since I posted here few months ago because I am a very busy man right now. So I'm going to discuss on how internet is for better or worse? What comes into our mind when we are using the internet. There are basic things that we look forward to when we use the internet:
* For researching purposes
* For SEO (search engine optimization)
* To make money online
* For business purposes
* To make new friends online
* To play games
* To accept payments online
But what about those things that are worse in the internet?
* To spam
* Using blackhat SEO method
* To hack other's identity (passwords, full information, bank account)
* To spread malware and other forms of viruses
* To plagiarize other's eBook and articles
If you have the opportunity to choose which among them is truly legitimate and very useful in the internet right now. Even grade school children can understand when they read this article of mine. So is the internet for better or for worse? Definitely it's both, because it can be used for good and bad purposes, but when you are bad like a thief or a devil, don't ever use the internet or even stop playing around the computer itself, or else your computer might get destroyed as well.
So please use the internet in a better way, not on the worse way. :)
09 Mar 2010 01:49 am
We'll I'm not really good in creating a landing page, but I know why is it important? Why do we need a landing page? Why is it that every webmaster and SEO guru like me have to create our own landing page? Landing pages are a great preview of what are you offering to your customers and visitors before they will click on to the main page of the product or offer. It can be done through any affiliate hoplink or CPA offer. It's a brief introduction like no other.
So how do we create a simple landing page? Simple!
Choose from either of these blogging platforms:
1. WordPress (my favorite)
2. Blogger
3. Yola
4. Weebly
5. Squidoo
After which, you choose an affiliate product or a CPA offer that you would like to promote. We'll, if this product feel that you have passion like weight loss for example, then choose that product and get it's affiliate link for your landing pages. Now this is the most difficult part, which is the keyword research.
Of course, you want to be on the top of Google rankings? We'll you must go to Google Keyword Analyzer tool and to search keywords for your niche on who has low competition but average search numbers monthly (not too low, not too high), only average. After choosing the right keyword, name your blog with that keyword.
This is an example of a landing page which the keyword is used on the Blogger domain:
http://howtogetlusciouslips.blogspot.com/
This is so simple, as you can see there is only one blog post. You can also see the image being posted on the blog post, but where's the affiliate link? Simple guys! It's on the image itself, which is attached as hyperlink that points to the affiliate link on your landing pages.
Your final step is the promotion using your own SEO and link building tactics and promote the landing page to Facebook, Twitter, high PR forums, social media and bookmarks, web directories, etc. This is how important is a landing page, and it's one of the reasons why affiliate marketers are earning lots of leads and sales on their respective affiliate links. We can do it, as long we're smart and have knowledge on promotions and affiliate marketing.
06 Mar 2010 05:50 pm
Doing SEO takes a lot of technical skill, knowing and understanding how basic html is applied and how meta tags work along with knowledge of site structure and how it all is put together either dynamically or statically are all essential requirements to get a site up to speed in the search engines.
You can jump right into learning SEO if you know the fundementals. It can be easier for programmers or web developers to understand how to do on-page optimization for example.
The off-page optimisation techniques rely on creative approaches in order to get maximum results. If you have a creative marketing mind you can apply this knowledge online and really brand yourself out from press coverage all the way to corporate identity. It's all a matter of having the contacts though. You need to know where to go and what to get and how to get it!
What I love most of all is when it comes to SEO and Internet marketing the sky is your limit. There is an endless approach to marketing on the internet and getting the best results through search engine optimisation usually by thinking smart and applying your strategies creatively.
If you have a mix of knowlege on the technical and creative side you will do well with SEO. This is why there are only very few good SEO experts out there as either they are only good at one or the other. It is very hard to find a creative technical person these days, but when you apply both skills this is when you get maximum benefit.
For example you can get very bored of doing what you do if you are not using creative approaches to keep yourself enthusiastic you must think and do internet marketing with a twist. Earlier I spoke about creative link building techniques . Even now with search engine changes including Spatial and Vertical there is lots to keep us thinking for the future and different approaches we need to take to prepare ourselves for.
I always am appreciative of my graphic design and web design background. I was very creative as a kid growing up, I loved art, and followed the footsteps of my father who was and still is a very talented artist both, painter and graphic designer. I then took my skills further and learnt programming and business. I loved the technical aspect for coding up bits and pieces to make something active on the internet, before that I was also very good with Flash and used to love to animate.
Now I also enjoy to teach through SEO courses that I am regularly holding. All the skills that I can pass onto with my students is very rewarding and to watch someone else have the knowledge that they can apply is also a great inspiration.
24 Feb 2010 02:00 am
Really to be strong with SEO you need to be fully focused on ensuring you stay quality by contiuely protecting your efforts. For example, your competitors can easily check your sites backlinks and target the same links.
Be sure that the links you get are not easily obtained. The easily obtained links are usually the ones that are not quality and will easily be scraped up by your competitors.
So there are 2 ways to stay ahead of the game, either go full speed and fast when getting to the top, so even when they do try and follow and chase your links you are already too far ahead. Or go slowly and steadily and cover yourself at the back of what you do. Alot of smart SEO guys do just that. They join in forums for example but they do not add a signature link in their posts. The reason why they don't add a signature link is so that they don't have their competitors track their every move.
The Easily Obtained Links:
Sites that say "Advertise here" add your link here" are prime examples of easily obtained links.
The More Discretely Obtained Links:
Partnering or specifically contacting quality sites and asking them to allow you to sponsor them.
Either way you go about it, just be quick and smart, don't let fear hold you back too much, as with SEO time is never on our hands and time is very precious. If you are not sure about what you are posting and which site you are posting a link on where your competitors can follow then leave it and go to the next task, but make sure it get's done.
When joining groups, forums or communities a very useful tip is try mixing up your usernames, for example if in one community you use the name joeblow, make the other community you join something totally differnent. This way competitors can not track your username in search results to precisely. Mixing it up is good and more confusing for followers.
Another thing is if you target specific keywords competitors will always be able to check the keywords you are optimizing for in your source code. Obviously when you are good with SEO, particularly on-page SEO you do not have to use keywords so precisely in your meta. I have seen sites rank to the top without using keywords at all in the source code. This can only be achieved if you are highly experienced with off-page optimisation.
If you are very good with off-page optimisation your users will not see what you have done if they usually are used to checking on-page that is, and if you are better with on-page and your competitors are checking your off-page efforts then go as crazy as you like. I tend to use no-follow attribute where and when I can, both off-page and on-page to keep myself covered.
So when slapping on the SEO Sunscreen don't just put the sunscreen on the areas that you think you will get burned. It's important you put sunscreen all over. This way you will not only keep your competitors away but you will also keep Google and other Search Engines from any kind of penalty. This might include dupicate content penalties, cloaking what ever the case may be, just work smart and effectively and good luck!
08 Feb 2010 10:50 am
I have recently been playing with thoughts and thinking of ways that perhaps in the future could be possible. Let's think about this for a moment in the way of Google how it displays it's results.
First of all it shows the top 10 results before you click next and then next again to the 2nd ten. Now what if it was possible that they could give you the option to view 100 results per page, without having to click next and next every time. Would this be better in your opinion for SEO companies? Would we then be able to tell our clients we can get them on the 1st page. Perhaps we would need to propose to them a slightly different scenario. But if the results were displayed differently like this could this effect the services we are offering?
Quite simply it would not necessarily effect anything, we would just have to approach our angle differently when offering placements to companies. Anyway like I said this has not happened, and perhaps it will never happen. I mean if it didn't happen before why would it happen now?
Well Google has always tried to make things complicated for us SEO companies and will always do what they can to change the way they display data to move with the times. It's just part of nature and the internet game, don't get frightened as this has not yet happened but you never know what the future lies ahead. I always like to think one step forward.
Another thought that came to mind and something that you never know could happen is what if it was possible to display results all on one page without having to click next and next. Perhaps one day there might be such a thing. You never know, so again would this effect us? Perhaps it would, but again we would have to adjust our market and what we offer.
No matter the case the way results will be displayed their will always be someone on top of someone else, so for us SEO companies it is not a case of what page you are on, it is more a case of who is ahead or on top of you, as everyone looks from top to bottom anyway, it's just natural. I don't know anyone that searches and looks from bottom to top? Do you?
In my real opinion, what has worked well already will continue to work well, now that Google have introduced other data displays such as Twitter results products and videos in the results, you never know what could happen one day good or bad. We just have to be prepared and always be one step ahead!
04 Feb 2010 06:06 am
One common error people make when designing a website is embedding text into images. This is done through any photo editing program. A lot of web designers focus too much on images, image links, and embedded text into images to spice up their website. This is the same concept as our other article “Focusing On Navigation Menu’s” .
Search engines cannot and I repeat CANNOT read text in images. If you are using an image with text in it to link to another page within your site, simply scratch that image and put a text link in there (anchor text link).
An anchor text link is just a basic URL/Href. Instead of putting a URL in it for the text, you put a keyword of whatever you may be linking to. Visit our other article on Anchor Text for more information on what they are and how to use them properly.
Search engines determine what your website is about by reading the text on every page. Using " tags really helps with optimization. These tags weigh more than regular text. Bolding and italicizing text also weighs out.
What weight means is, when a search engine crawls/reads your page, use of these tags makes these words stick out,
being the most. Use these for category names and article headings. When using any of the others, you don’t want to over due it for it will make the users experience miserable, for example bolding way too many words. Bold keywords that you want to rank for.
So the conclusion of this is, keep image use at a minimum when linking or using category names/keyword names. Using CSS can spice everything up AND use all of the text you need.
SEO
04 Feb 2010 06:04 am
A Navigation Menu in SEO can play a huge role in optimizing your website for search engines. The reason being is when a search engine crawls your website, it is going to read everything in the header and the first 100 or so keywords in your body which would usually be your article..
In this lesson we are going to discuss using targeted keywords, using text, why not to use image or flash, and why css is your best bet when it comes to header, footer and other navigation menu’s / bar’s.
Using targeted keywords in navigation menu’s
I am sure you have seen websites which use flash or image navigation menu’s in their headers. If you are trying to optimize your web site, this is a major SEO Mistake which has been added to the SEO Black book on here as reference.
The reason this is a no-no when it comes to SEO is because, search engine crawlers are not human, no matter how much you may want them to be. They cannot read images and flash. This is where using a CSS menu comes in handy. The reason this will come in handy is because you can spice up your navigation menu with awesome looking graphics and effects but at the same time you will use text to overlap every item on the menu. When designing a menu and adding categories and items, you want to use keywords that you are trying to rank for in search engines. We are going to discuss more of this below.
Using targeted keywords in your navigation menu’s
This will play a crucial role in your site ranking for keywords that you are targeting. In a normal menu you will see it categorized like this for example:
Home | News | Forum | Reviews | Tips | Tutorials
These are just general keywords. Now let’s say you have an SEO site like www.therantandrave.net and you are optimizing for SEO Keywords. When getting a site off of it’s feet, you want to use keywords in your menu until you start ranking for main keywords that you are aiming for. For example below.You would want your menu to resemble something like this:
Home | SEO Tips | SEO Tutorials | SEO Forum | SEO Tools
Now that you have a hint, these are keywords that I am trying to rank better for (SEO Tips, SEO Tutorials, SEO Forum, SEO Tools). As you can see in the top header navigation menu on our site therantandrave.net and on this site, our menu’s are in CSS. If you use wordpress, almost every wordpress theme comes with CSS menu’s which saves you a lot of work.
Notice that the keyword “seo” is used in each phrase. It is alright to use it in there like so when a site is getting off of it’s feet. Once you start ranking for the keyword “SEO” in this case, you then can change it up to just tutorials,forum,tools , for the search engine will start grabbing the information seo tutorials, seo tools in the future especially if you are building pages are given keywords.
Your best bet is using text/css navigation menu’s in your header, sidebar’s and footer using targeted keywords.
SEO Navigation Menu
04 Feb 2010 06:04 am
So you are here because your are wondering what SEO is? SEO is called Search Engine Optimization. The name pretty much gives you a hint itself but, let’s take a deeper look into better understanding what Search Engine Optimization is, how it works, and how it will benefit you and your website or blog.
If you own a website or a blog, you of course want to rank(be placed higher within search engines) and target as much traffic(website visits/hits) as you can. Nothing beats Organic Traffic. Organic Traffic is natural traffic that comes from people searching for keywords and terms that relate to your website within search engines and simply going to yours.
The more traffic that your website receives,the more money that you can make off of simply managing your website about something you may or may not love to write about. With this you don’t have to put in money to make it. If you are clueless to making money online with your website, shoot on over to our “Making Money Online” category.
Now that these basics are out of the way, let’s discuss SEO. As stated above, this is a practice of optimizing your website to rank well within search engines. I will discuss a couple of the main, basic ways of doing so.
- Building Back-links
- Using Anchor Text
- Using Keywords To Target Traffic
- Optimizing Your Meta Tags
- Unique Content
The best way to rank well within Google is by building back-links. A back-link is simply a one way link back to your site. Google counts this as a vote for your website. You want to build quality back-links with sites that are relevant to your niche(what your website is about) and with high PR websites. (PR is Page Rank 1-10, 10 being the highest). You can check website page rankings by simply using the Google Page Rank Checker tool.
Within back-links you want to use anchor text. Anchor text is the text within a link. Within this text you want to use keywords that you are trying to rank for within Google. So for let’s say this site, I would link with a few sites with my site link on theirs being “SEO Tips” then on a few others “SEO Tutorials” and on others “Search Engine Optimization” and so on so forth. You don’t want to over use just one keyword. Try to rank for a few different ones that are related to your website. It’s up to you how many you want to try and rank well for.
Using keywords which are related to your website to drive traffic is of course a must. As stated above, these are terms that you want people to search for within Google and stumble upon your site by searching them. Use keywords in meta tags, page titles, article titles, categories in your navigation bar, within your articles and etc. Do not overuse keywords in articles or on pages for this is called keyword stuffing and your site may get penalized or banned.
For every web page that you have, you want to have optimized meta-tags which are in the header of your page. Use keywords within your meta-title, description, and meta-keywords. Meta-keywords really aren’t too effective on ranking anymore because of the abuse of keyword stuffing in the past. It still doesn’t hurt to use it though. In your titles of pages, use some keywords you are trying to rank for. In the description, describe what the page is about while using a few keywords within the first 150 characters or so.
Unique Content is something I have to stress. Google doesn’t like duplicate pages and plagiarized work. Always update with fresh content that hasn’t been discussed before. Even if it has, write it better than all of those others out there. I do not recommend using article re-writers. If you can’t write a decent article about something you are interested in, you don’t need to be running a website.
Remember, you don’t have to pay out thousands of dollars to have your site ranked well within Google. You can do this yourself and we give you all of the tools, tutorials, and tips needed to achieve this. We use all of these methods on this site constantly and by each day that goes by, we rank higher and higher.
If you have any further questions simply leave a comment.
SEO Tips
04 Feb 2010 05:54 am
A lot of people out there are always asking and looking for article rewriting scripts and programs. I do not condone to this type of thing but, we do have an article rewriter on here for download.
Having unique content is something that search engines like. If you are just writing about something that a couple million other websites already covered, it is just old news. If you have something new and fresh, search engines and visitors alike will eat it up like a fat kid bum rushing the cake on his birthday. Hehe.
Also never, NEVER, plaigiarize content and steal from other people. You will get penalized or even banned from search engines for this. In some cases you could even have a lawsuit filed against you! Would it really be so hard to spend 10 minutes on an article? People come to your website for YOUR opinion and what YOU have to offer. So keep it real, don’t steal.
Sometimes, or in most cases, webmasters and authors are afraid to speak their mind and their opinions because of the bad feedback they think they might get. Even if you do get bad feedback, it is still good feedback. It is your website and you are speaking your opinion so let it be heard. There are always going to be critics whether you like it or not, learn to embrace it.
SEO
