Google Reader Launched

Google has recently launched a new service called Google Reader. This service, available at http://reader.google.com/ allows users to search for and easily manage RSS feeds, giving quick and easy access to the most current information and news on the topics that interest you most.

For those of you unfamiliar with RSS feeds, they are simply itemized lists in an RSS file that can be pick up and displayed on other websites and or read through the use of RSS readers. Bloggers typically us RSS to syndicate their blog posts. For example, people wishing to keep updated on what's going on at Google may use a reader to display their RSS feed (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml) thus allowing them instant access to any new posts in their blog.

As most are aware, the popularity of blogs and RSS with it has increased and undoubtedly will continue to increase for the foreseeable future. One has to admit, instant access to up-to-date information on topics of interest has it's appeal. The launch of Google Reader is a giant step for the average surfer. It provides an easy and powerful tool for visitors to find and manage the feeds they are interested in.

How To Use Google Reader?

For many who are less familiar with RSS, the notion of downloading an RSS reader, configuring it, etc. seems a daunting task when one can simply visit their favorite news site or use the new search feature of their favorite search engine. Understandably there are many who would rather not undertake the task of trying to understand something new when the information they are looking for is otherwise available through other means. While this is true, RSS allows a user to keep updated on the news they might not even be aware of to look for. Google knows this and thus, Google Reader was born.

To use Google Reader (and I high recommend at least giving it a quick try) you will need to take the following steps:

1. Visit the Google Reader site at http://reader.google.com/.
2. Use the search box for a topic of interest ("google" for example)
3. Look through the results for a feed of interest (I personally chose "Google News")
4. Click "Subscribe"

That's all there is to signing up for a feed. You can sign up for one or many of them.

At this point you're probably wondering what you just got for this 20 seconds of effort. If we now click back to the reader homepage (add it to your Favorites for easy access in the future) you see on the left-hand side a list of the feeds you've subscribed to. If you choose a feed, on the right hand side you'll see all the new posts to that feed.

This is perhaps one of the best products to come from Google in quite a while. I'll admit that the folks at Google are seldom short of interesting and innovative ideas however from a usability and "making your life easier" standpoint the system they have developed here allows even the less technical to easily gain access to current information and keep updated effortlessly.

Who Should Use It?

Quite honestly Google Reader, due to its power and easy of use, is a helpful tool for virtually anybody who wants to keep themselves updated on information from world news to hockey scores. That said, there are definitely people who will be prone to become "power users" of this service. People who need quick access to the most current information, from reporters and researchers to business people and consultants will find this service invaluable. I know as an SEO that I'll be using it often as keeping on top of even the smallest changes, services and search engine updates can be crucial to the success of a campaign.

Advanced Features

While all of the benefits noted above are good for the average user, they have also added some advanced features. The advanced features include:

GMail this - Never ones' to miss an opportunity to promote their own services and drop some ads in it, they have added a link to "GMail this" to others. Of course you have to have a GMail account to use the service which means you either have to be invited by and existing GMail user of have a mobile phone and be living in the US.

Blog This! - This is definitely my favorite of the advanced features. If you're using Blogger (again, a Google property) you can click the "Blog This!" link and it will open a window to your Blogger account and insert a link to the blog you want to reference.

What Does This Mean For SEO's?

The launch of Google Reader stands to make blogs and RSS an even more important componant in a thorough Internet Marketing strategy. With content syndication now made so much easier for the average user, it's popularity is sure to climb significantly. People will begin reading and using feeds more regularly and it won't just be the more technical that can benefit from this highly effective communications method.

Resources

While it's definitely a simple system to setup and use, there may still be many of you wondering exactly what RSS is, how to use it on your own site, how to set it up, and perhaps a few even wondering what a blog is and how you can add one to your site. For you, here are some links to some helpful resources on the topic:

RSS (file format) - One the Wikipedia site you'll find great information on this technology and links to other useful resources on the subject.
Client Communications As Ranking Tools - An article on the use of blogs by veteran SEO Jim Hedger. Covers the use of blogs for SEO as well as in client communications.
Blogger - There are many different tools and software packages for developing a blog on your website. Blogger is one of the easiest to use, includes a simple way to add an RSS feed of your blog, and do I need to mentioned that it's owned by Google? This won't get you a higher ranking on the blog search but it'll certainly help insure that your blog and feed are developed using a technology they can easily read.

SEO for Blogs – A Starter

In a perfect world, your well-written, useful and refreshingly original blog would rank well in search engine results just because it’s good. But that’s not reality. Great content is the foundation of a good blog, but it doesn't guarantee high rankings. There are some search engine optimization (SEO) things you simply must do to increase the chances that your blog will be found – and read.

Before we get to how you should SEO your blog, remember that your first and primary goal should be to create the most informational blog in your industry. Keep things simple, and make your goal to have first-rate, original and useful content on specific topics with the best, most current advice and information. You could have the best SEO, but your content is junk no visitor will ever return. You must fill it with great content that is helpful to your demographic. Once you have started down that road, there are a number of things you can do to increase your visibility.

Basic On Page Needs

Much of on-page work revolves around utilizing keywords intelligently – the best keywords, in the right places, done the right way. The first order of business is to do comprehensive keyword research to select strong keywords to begin with.

Good keywords are not just about what searchers type most often in the search box – you need to have a full understanding of what they are truly looking for. You have to understand their intent and their real end-sum desires. Integrate this better market understanding into your keyword research.

Then analyze the search engine results pages (SERPS). If there is information out there similar to yours, what keywords find it? Look at your competitors – what keywords are they targeting, and how successful are their efforts. Where are they doing right and wrong? When your run searches on your chosen keywords, what results come up and why?

Once you have developed the optimal keyword list, you want to use these keywords in a number of different, interrelated ways on the page. At minimum that they should be in the:

• title of the post
• title tag (if different from the title of the post)
• heading tags (not just h1, either)
• internal linking
• links to the post’s permanent link
• outbound links
• URL
• alt tags

Keywords also need to be sprinkled throughout the copy. “Salted” – not too much, not too little, and in the right places. Make sure you main keywords are in the first few sentences. Don’t overdo it by cramming in the same term(s) again and again. Be wise, use related and relevant keywords to break things up and give Google and the other search engines the variety that they expect from normal, organic, real-world communication.

Your SEO will have the best chance for success if it is balanced, realistic and natural. None of your strategies overrules the need for good, useful, original content that people will read and recommend. Natural, intelligent keyword usage in your content will guide the search engines; quality useable information in the content will encourage people to link to you, tremendously boosting your SEO efforts. Never kill good content by keyword spamming. Readers won’t like it and won’t return, other sites won’t link to it, and both of those will doom your efforts. Respect all readers and make them partners, not targets of clever schemes. Readers are not pawns to move around a chessboard—it is much better that you consider them your advertising department.

Link Love

Among the most important factors affecting your SEO results is the number and quality of links that point to your blog. The better your content, the more people will reference it. Google essentially looks at inbound links as “votes” for the value of your blog and its individual posts – if you have a lot of quality links, your content must be good, thus they should move it up the results.

So generally speaking, the more people that link to your blog the better. That being said, higher quality links help more. The more powerful the site linking to you is, the better (i.e., links from the Wall Street Journal are better than links from some random hobby site). The more relevant the site (and page) linking to you is to your topic, the better. Links with good, relevant anchor text – especially when they occur inside the body text of the page that’s linking to you – are better. Get all the above and you’re golden. Or at least the link is.

Just recognizing a good link doesn't get the job done – you have to have a link strategy. The best strategy by far is putting your energy into creating useful, first-rate content that people will read, use, link to, and recommend to others. You can contact people for links, use link-building programs and services, or even (gasp!) buy some, but the best approach is still to build inbound links the old fashioned way – by earning them with good content.

To give your linking efforts a jump-start, you can notify other bloggers and site hosts that you’ve written something they or their readers may find useful. Sometimes people that would like your content don’t know you exist. Do NOT ask them for a link – just let them know about the post(s). Don’t spam them, just send a nice note making them aware of content they may like. Make each note custom. People can tell when you have written a template you are sending to many people.

You can still get some mileage out of directory submissions, but confine it to the quality directories like Best of the Web and avoid the overused, “spammy” ones ignored by the search engines. A good rule – if the directory offers free listings, run away.

Link out. Yes, I said it. Although linking out to external sites carries the risk of steering people away, the benefits of being associated with high-level content should outweigh any negatives. Would you really expect others to link to you if you don’t link to anyone else? Are you really a good authority if you don’t reference anyone else’s good information? Link out usefully and shrewdly, and don’t overdo it. As always, moderation works best, and make sure you are linking to solid, reputable sites and content.

Internal Linking Strategy

A comprehensive internal linking strategy is hugely beneficial, yet often underutilized. It helps the bots easily navigate your site, makes it easier for readers to find what they want, and is significant for SEO. No-brainer.

Yes, group your posts into categories so that it strengthens topical authority and relevancy by grouping related articles together, but that is just the beginning.

If in one post you reference a concept covered in another post, link to that other post – and do it from within the text, using the best anchor text possible. Each post should have a list of related posts. This will help guide the reader to related information, and the related posts’ titles contain keywords (right?), giving you good anchor text there as well.

Don’t use the default links “Next Post” and “Previous Post,” instead substituting the actual titles of the next and previous posts. This again gives you an opportunity to have relevant keywords in anchor text. For the same reason do not use the defaults “Read more…” or “Continue reading…” to link to a post’s permalink page. Again use the title of the post (for instance “SEO for Blogs continued…”)

Of course, every page should have links to your homepage and a sitemap, so every page on your site can be reached in just one or two clicks.

Content Considerations

Now, about that “great content,” there are a few ways to make sure you are creating it the right way. A post should only cover one topic. If you cover more than one topic in a post, the search engines don’t know which to rank you for. If your topic is long and involved, break it up into a series with each subtopic getting its own post. Again, don’t keyword spam. Focus on making your point, not on keyword placement. If you make your point eloquently, the keywords will find their way into the right place. Don’t try to stick a keyword in every or every other sentence. If you find yourself having to do that, maybe you are not covering the topic in adequate detail.

Most importantly, update often. This does not mean changing already-published posts, but writing new ones consistently. Publishing content regularly is incredibly undervalued. Search engines love new content, so the more frequently you post the more frequently they will return. This simultaneously gives you more indexed pages faster, more opportunities for the bots to follow your well laid out links, and more chances the search engines to see what great content you have.

Tying It Together

Now that you know that great content is the genesis for so many good SEO factors, have learned a few ways to get the word out and are starting to think strategically, just what amount is the “right” amount?

If your content is good, then more is better. The more good content you have on a subject, the more the search engines will see you as an authority on that subject. The operative word is “good.” Don’t write useless drek just to fill space. It won’t strengthen your content foundation – on the contrary, it will dilute its focus and authority. Authority is like respect – it is built up by repeated quality. Publish good useful content daily, and in time you will have a foundation of authority.

Don’t be in a hurry, and don’t look for shortcuts. Your blog is about quality and balance – conceiving it, writing it, promoting it, optimizing it for search engines and all the rest. You will make mistakes and make progress just as in any other enterprise, so the main thing is to keep learning, keep trying, and keep track of what you’re doing. Once you start seeing certain actions creating certain results, you are on your way to developing your own, customized method for developing and implementing the best search engine optimization for your blog.

How to Write Engaging Blogs People Want to Read

Thomas Edison famously remarked that genius was “1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.” For bloggers this means that if you put your effort into it, you can create a blog that gathers a following. If you look at a group of bloggers, one with a worldwide following and the rest with small audiences, the former will not necessarily be the best writer, the funniest, the smartest or even the one with the most inside info or useful tips. The great bloggers you follow yourself could have varying amounts of these characteristics.

So what separates the good bloggers from the ones with larger followings? Many call it the “x factor.” Since this is a bit amorphous we’ll touch on it later. You can take your first steps toward creating an engaging blog that builds a loyal following by following some simple guidelines. There are definitely tips, techniques and tools that will get you there and equip you to compete in the blogging big leagues. We’ll return to the “x factor” after getting you to that starting line.

Audience as foundation

Know your audience. Marshall McLuhan observed almost 50 years ago that the world was transforming into a “global village” through mass communication. The global village is here. People don’t log on to the Internet to be lectured. They log on for information, but also for intelligent dialogue – for exchange, for discussion, for sharing – with people like themselves. Know your audience and the information and conversation they are looking for. You need to engage your readers and speak directly to them with a personal touch, a sense of inclusion, and even a hint of intimacy. Blogs are about relationships, and relationships are about discussions and dialogues of all kinds. The “Monologue Era” is over. Your blog will succeed to the extent that you connect with your audience.

In our Dialogue Era, if you offer people something useful you can become a resource. People bookmark resources and return to them repeatedly, expecting more of the same. Once you have defined your audience you must set about adding value to their visits. Provide information helpful to your audience. Write clearly and don’t try too hard – be natural but concise, instructive but conversational. Produce useful, supportive and brief pieces that people can apply – today, tomorrow, whenever. That will show they can return for more information without wasting their time. Blogs are not articles, so keep them to the point, but do not enforce an arbitrary word limit. Your length will depend on your topic and your audience – make every word count.

Draw them in, move them along

To engage an audience in the first place, craft interesting headlines that invite readers in and use subheads to move them along and allow them to scan for the specific information they are looking for. The flow is enhanced if you keep sentences shorter rather than longer, and active rather than passive. Don’t posture, pretend, boast or brag, and always maintain a healthy skepticism and sense of humor. You are not writing great literature, your helping your neighbor. Finally, always review your output and rewrite where necessary. During this process, make words “pay their rent” by weeding out unnecessary ones.

You have many things to consider, a number of bottom lines – plural. Bottom line: You need to read about writing, learn how to edit and refine your technique over time. Bottom line: You need to learn the particular writing techniques that have evolved around blogs, like how to craft good bullet points, when to use them, how to use the page layout to your advantage and so forth. Bottom line: You have to continue reading your competition and your colleagues, often one and the same, and analyze what works and what doesn’t. Bottom line: There are a lot of bottom lines in blogging.

Go forth and blog

Coming full circle, then, let’s consider that “x factor” again. Although it’s not possible to define it quite precisely, we know where it is located. It is in you. It is your personality, your spark, your unique outlook. Be yourself, not what you think they want you to be. In that jigsaw puzzle that is “you” there are many traits and abilities, opinions and truisms, dreams and fears, and the sum total of them all is what adds up to “you” – and no one else – and your own real personality coming off the page is often what engages people. How can you inject “you” into your writing? There’s only one way to draw it out, of course, and that is to write.

Since you are forming relationships, do what Dale Carnegie advised about 80 years ago and ask small favors of your readers. Invite their comments. Ask for their opinion. Encourage them to express their point of view. This tells them you value what they think. More importantly, it engages them and makes them a valuable active participant (instead of a passive visitor), a member of your community, and part of an ongoing and growing dialog. This is what will lead many of them to make the all-important cognitive leap that will have them bookmark your blog, link to your posts, tell all their friends about it and continue the dialog. The leap occurs when readers stop thinking of themselves as readers, and start thinking of themselves as “stakeholders” – readers that interact with you.

If you can convert readers into stakeholders, you’re on your way.

How to Write Engaging Blogs People Want to Read

Thomas Edison famously remarked that genius was “1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.” For bloggers this means that if you put your effort into it, you can create a blog that gathers a following. If you look at a group of bloggers, one with a worldwide following and the rest with small audiences, the former will not necessarily be the best writer, the funniest, the smartest or even the one with the most inside info or useful tips. The great bloggers you follow yourself could have varying amounts of these characteristics.

So what separates the good bloggers from the ones with larger followings? Many call it the “x factor.” Since this is a bit amorphous we’ll touch on it later. You can take your first steps toward creating an engaging blog that builds a loyal following by following some simple guidelines. There are definitely tips, techniques and tools that will get you there and equip you to compete in the blogging big leagues. We’ll return to the “x factor” after getting you to that starting line.

Audience as foundation

Know your audience. Marshall McLuhan observed almost 50 years ago that the world was transforming into a “global village” through mass communication. The global village is here. People don’t log on to the Internet to be lectured. They log on for information, but also for intelligent dialogue – for exchange, for discussion, for sharing – with people like themselves. Know your audience and the information and conversation they are looking for. You need to engage your readers and speak directly to them with a personal touch, a sense of inclusion, and even a hint of intimacy. Blogs are about relationships, and relationships are about discussions and dialogues of all kinds. The “Monologue Era” is over. Your blog will succeed to the extent that you connect with your audience.

In our Dialogue Era, if you offer people something useful you can become a resource. People bookmark resources and return to them repeatedly, expecting more of the same. Once you have defined your audience you must set about adding value to their visits. Provide information helpful to your audience. Write clearly and don’t try too hard – be natural but concise, instructive but conversational. Produce useful, supportive and brief pieces that people can apply – today, tomorrow, whenever. That will show they can return for more information without wasting their time. Blogs are not articles, so keep them to the point, but do not enforce an arbitrary word limit. Your length will depend on your topic and your audience – make every word count.

Draw them in, move them along

To engage an audience in the first place, craft interesting headlines that invite readers in and use subheads to move them along and allow them to scan for the specific information they are looking for. The flow is enhanced if you keep sentences shorter rather than longer, and active rather than passive. Don’t posture, pretend, boast or brag, and always maintain a healthy skepticism and sense of humor. You are not writing great literature, your helping your neighbor. Finally, always review your output and rewrite where necessary. During this process, make words “pay their rent” by weeding out unnecessary ones.

You have many things to consider, a number of bottom lines – plural. Bottom line: You need to read about writing, learn how to edit and refine your technique over time. Bottom line: You need to learn the particular writing techniques that have evolved around blogs, like how to craft good bullet points, when to use them, how to use the page layout to your advantage and so forth. Bottom line: You have to continue reading your competition and your colleagues, often one and the same, and analyze what works and what doesn’t. Bottom line: There are a lot of bottom lines in blogging.

Go forth and blog

Coming full circle, then, let’s consider that “x factor” again. Although it’s not possible to define it quite precisely, we know where it is located. It is in you. It is your personality, your spark, your unique outlook. Be yourself, not what you think they want you to be. In that jigsaw puzzle that is “you” there are many traits and abilities, opinions and truisms, dreams and fears, and the sum total of them all is what adds up to “you” – and no one else – and your own real personality coming off the page is often what engages people. How can you inject “you” into your writing? There’s only one way to draw it out, of course, and that is to write.

Since you are forming relationships, do what Dale Carnegie advised about 80 years ago and ask small favors of your readers. Invite their comments. Ask for their opinion. Encourage them to express their point of view. This tells them you value what they think. More importantly, it engages them and makes them a valuable active participant (instead of a passive visitor), a member of your community, and part of an ongoing and growing dialog. This is what will lead many of them to make the all-important cognitive leap that will have them bookmark your blog, link to your posts, tell all their friends about it and continue the dialog. The leap occurs when readers stop thinking of themselves as readers, and start thinking of themselves as “stakeholders” – readers that interact with you.

If you can convert readers into stakeholders, you’re on your way.

How To Win Links & Influence Engines

The title of this article is designed to prove (in an SEO kind of way) the very point that Dale Carnegie was making when he wrote one of the most influential business books of all times, “How To Win Friends And Influence People” (arguably one of the best business books ever written as well). In the titling of his book Mr. Carnegie was trying to do two things:

1. Write a title that captures everything that people want in order to sell more books, and
2. Tie two important things together that are related but often viewed as different. In the case of the book it was winning friends and influencing people which he points out are essentially based on the same core traits and actions. Similarly, in our title here we are capturing two of the key areas people interested in SEO are looking to read about and thus we will show the essential tie between winning links and the influence it will have on your search engine rankings. We will also discuss methods for actually winning them as opposed to settling for second-rate links rather like winning friends as opposed to settling for tolerable acquaintances.

How To Win Links

As with virtually every aspect in SEO, there are multiple areas of this single field. If there were one hard-and-fast answer to link building we would all be ranking highly on Google and the top 10 would be a VERY crowded place. Fortunately this isn’t the case and the rankings are becoming more and more a Darwinist exercise in “survival of the fittest” (which is how it should be). Proper link building will help you be the fittest and, over time, influence engines.

If you have a site in any competition level above “low” you will want to use at least two different methods for building links. Aside from speeding up the link building process this will help insure your site withstands changes in the way link values are calculated. While there are far too many methods for building links than can be listed here (and there are some that launch so far into the black hat tactics that I wouldn’t want to), here are some of the main link building methods you should consider using:

Reciprocal Link Building:

There are many who would write that reciprocal link building is dead. While it is undeniable that the “rules” around reciprocal link building have changed it is far from dead. That said, there are specific guidelines that must be followed to make a recip link building campaign a success. Some of the more important are:

1. Relevancy is arguably the single most important factor to consider when building recip links. For every link exchange you are considering you must ask yourself, “Is this a site that my visitors would be interested in?” If you can honestly answer that your site visitors would be genuinely interested in a site you are linking to then it’s a good link.
2. PageRank is not the end-all-be-all that is once was however it is still a decent measure of the relative value of a website. While not as important as relevancy, it is a factor and obtaining higher PageRank links will require less links to be built.
3. Does the site you are considering linking to have a solid link building strategy in place? Just because you’re following the best practices of link building doesn’t mean that everyone in your industry is. A good site may be following misguided link building practices (real estate sites should not link to poker sites) and if they are then their overall value is or may well be reduced in the eyes of the search engines. If they have an active and ethical link building program in place then their overall value is likely to increase making them more valuable down the road than they are today.
4. How many links appear on each page and where will your be positioned? If your link will appear at the bottom of a page with 87 links it is far less valuable than a link near the top of a page with 25 links. This fits into the “ethical” category of point 3 above but worth mentioning again.
5. Links that exist within content are weighted as more natural than directory-style links. Thus, when possible send HTML code that places your link within the descriptive text rather than in the title. For example, we may use the following HTML for a link to the Beanstalk site:

<strong>Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization</strong><br>
Beanstalk offers ethical and effective <a href="http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/">search engine positioning services</a> that will get your site to the top of the rankings. Whether you operate a small business and need regional results or if you are the VP of a Fortune 500 company needing consulting on new site changes and internal page ranking strategies, we have a search engine positioning solution to fit your needs.

These links are won as opposed to gained by default. Finding people to exchange links with on the net is easy, it’s finding quality partners that will help influence the rankings (in a positive direction at least) that requires a clear understanding of what the engines want and how to give it to them.

Non-Reciprocal Link Building:

The area of non-reciprocal link building is a slippery one. There are many methods that can be used with varying degrees of success. Due to the sheer number of methods we won’t be able to get into them all here (and there are some that shouldn’t be used anywhere) we will focus below on some of the most significant and more widely applicable:

Directory Submissions:

This is perhaps the easiest and fastest of all link building methods though it can also be one of the more costly depending on the directories you submit your site to. Yahoo! for example, charges $299 for a commercial site to be submitted into the directory. DMOZ is free however, and is certainly the most important given that Google uses the DMOZ directory to provide the listings for the Google Directory. Note though: it can sometimes take months to get a listing there and sometimes even that’s not enough.

That said, there are MANY topical directories and smaller business directories that will accept free submissions and these should definitely be considered. While they may have a relatively low PageRank they will provide reasonably relevant non-reciprocal links and help build your anchor text relevancy.

Articles:

Writing articles like the one you’re reading righ now is an excellent link building strategy. By providing valuable and useful content to other webmasters you are providing them a service, which will generally translate into a link to your site “in payment”. One of the great features of articles is that the payment isn’t only in link value but in the actual traffic you get from the link itself. But we’re not talking about traffic, we’re talking about rankings; so how do articles influence engines?

There are three main benefits of articles as a link building tactic:

1. The link to your site will be on a page that is entirely related to your topic. If you have a site about search engine positioning for example, including that phrase in the title and content gives you the opportunity to build the relevancy between the linking page and the page it links to.
   (note: I know I have not used “search engine positioning” in the title – sometimes one has to consider the value of the title from a visitor standpoint and the fact that you came to this page and are reading this article indicates to me that the right decision was made not to change it just for a bit of added relevancy.)
2. The link will be non-reciprocal. While we indicated above that reciprocal linking is not dead (and it’s not) there is a solid belief among SEO’s (myself included) that non-reciprocal links are weighted more heavily. Having more non-reciprocal links will also help safeguard your site against future changes in the algorithm that may reduce the value of recip links.
3. You will likely have the ability to determine how the link to your site is worded and you may have the opportunity to link to more than one page on your site. Many people settle for a directory-style author bio. Myself, I prefer to submit my bio in a couple formats (text and html) both of which place the links inside the content. The text format will simply include links such as http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/ whereas an html link will contain code very similar to that displayed above. As far as multiple links; if the site you are submitting to will allow you to reference a couple pages you may want to link to your homepage as well as one or two internal pages that you would like to see rankings attained for. Make sure these pages are related to your core article topic or a service the reader would be interested in (see the bio for this article as an example).

Quality Content:

This next part might be a bit shocking. There are actually people out there who will link to your site simply based on the fact that they have found content there they believe will interest their readers. That’s right, people actually link to sites they find of value. On the Beanstalk site and specifically in our blog we often link to other web pages that we have found useful. Other articles, tools, blog posts, etc.often receive non-recip links from us due to the value of the content they contain and we’re definitely not the only ones doing this.

Providing quality content, useful tools, or other helpful services can be a great way to attract non-reciprocal links. After all, this is the entire reason links received any value in the first place, that they are perceived as a vote for the other site.

How To Influence Engines

With proper onsite optimization in place that includes attention to such things as site structure, site size, cohesion of the content across the site, internal linking structure, keyword density and those other onsite factors you’ve likely read much about, all that is left to do is to continue to grow your site (hopefully with quality content people will want to link to) while winning strong links to it.

If what you want to do is influence engines you will need to have strong onsite and offsite factors but don’t stop there. Influencing engines isn’t just about rankings today. You will need to continue building links down the road to insure that the search engines continue to be influenced by how people have linked to you in the past and kept those links in place and also how new people are finding your site helpful and relevant. If the engines see a sudden spurt in link growth and then see that growth stop you are not likely to have a strong ranking indefinitely in any but the lowest competition sectors.

And remember; don’t focus on just one link building method. To insure a solid and secure influence you’re going to need to win links in at least two of the methods discussed above or other ethical methods you may be considering.

Additional Notes

While we couldn’t possibly cover all the methods for link building here in an article I’ve tried to cover the main ones. A couple of methods that receive much attention but which we didn’t have room for above are press release distribution and paid links.

Press releases are an excellent way to get exposure but I have not found them as good as articles for links which is why they weren’t covered above. They are good for traffic however and you will get some links out of them if the release is good so it was worth a short mention here.

Paid links are a dangerous area to discuss as there are so many factors and so many ways it can go wrong. The only advice I will give to those looking to purchase links is this, ask yourself, “Am I expecting to get traffic from this link?” What this will weed out at the very least is small footer links and links on irrelevant sites. Basically, if the link is worth it without the boost in rankings then continue to pay for it and consider any ranking increases a bonus. If you aren’t getting any traffic from the link then it’s likely not worth paying for. If you’re not getting traffic then the site likely isn’t relevant or the link is in a poor location. The engines will likely pick either of these up and you’ll end up paying for a link that isn’t passing on any weight anyways.

SEO For Google In Five "Easy" Steps

A few years ago I wrote the article Ten Steps To Higher Search Engine Positioning. The article was well received due to the breakdown of the core requirements for ranking a website being reduced into simple steps. Well today we're going to break it down into 5 steps. Is it even easier to rank a website today than it was a few years ago? More straight forward? Yes. Less time consuming? Not a chance.

As our company provides guaranteed SEO services for our clients, two things are necessary:

1. We need to know that our tactics work
2. We need to maximize efficiency so we're not having to charge our clients unreasonably high rates

And so we've developed processes by which we can attain maximum results in the least amount of time through carefully developed stages. While we are interested in all the major engines, it is of course Google that we spend the lion's share of our time studying (having never heard a client say, "I don't care about Google, just get me ranking on Ask.com.") Here are the steps we use to optimize websites (including our own) for Google.

Step One: Website Structure

The structure of your website affects the way search engine spiders see your site and thus, affects your rankings. I'm going to assume from the get-go that your site is in a position to be spidered and the internal links followed (i.e. none of the content is hidden due to poor development). This does not mean that the structure is optimized.

The way the code appears on your page affects the way the search engines prioritize specific content. For example, if your navigation appears higher in the code of your web page than the content then it is given a higher priority. The goal then is to make the core sections of your page appear higher in the code than the portions that are not critical to the optimization of each page. Generally the content area of your page contains the majority of the keywords and is more easily optimized and tweaked. For this reason, you will want the content of your page to appear higher in the code. This is especially true if you have image-based navigation.

The methods for doing this differ depending on how your site was initially built. If your website was built using tableless design practices (ideal) then the matter is "simple". Now, I can't get into all the details here as this is a huge area unto itself. There are many great sites, articles and forums on CSS that get into this area of structural optimization in detail and where you will find many helpful forum members willing to help out and answer questions. Or of course you could hire a professional developer who already knows how to do this in which case it will take a fraction of the time. This will depend on your resources, time and of course - whether you're a do-it-yourselfer simply interested in learning another web development skill.

If learning a new development skill appeals to you, here are some useful resources you'll want to check out:

• CSS Zengarden
• DezWozHere
• Designing Without Tables Using CSS

If your website is designed using tables the solution is actually much easier though less ideal. As Beanstalk's Mary Davies wrote about in her article on Table Structures, with table-based designs the issue is resolved by simply structuring the cell layout in such a manner that the spiders "read" the content before the navigation and/or other, less easily optimized portions on your page. Knowing that a picture is worth a thousand words I'll resurrect the one used by Mary to illustrate how this is done.

We can see that a blank cell is placed above the left hand navigation. Because a search engine spider reads from top to bottom, left to right they will hit the top table (the header) and then proceed to the table cell down and to the left. With the vast majority of sites this will be the left hand navigation however, if the table structure illustrated above is followed this will lead a spider to a blank cell. The spider will then quickly move to the cell on the right which is the main content area of the page. It is only after seeing the content that the spider will move back to the left, crawl the navigation and then proceed down to the footer.

The Point Of This
The goal with site structure optimization is to create an environment where the spiders will crawl the most important (and most easily optimized) content as early on the page as possible. This will give increased priority to the content that matters most.

Step Two: Content Optimization

Content optimization is, for our purposes here, the optimization of the wording and formatting of the page and site content to maximize its effect on a site's rankings. There are three defining principles to this stage:

• Keyword density counts
• The formatting of content matters
• Overall site relevancy helps

So let's discuss these in order:

Keyword Density

Keyword density is essentially the number of times the keywords are used on your page relative to the total number of words on the page. If you had a page that was 1000 words in total and you used your keyword 100 times you would have a keyword density of 10% (this is way too high by the way).

The optimal keyword density generally seems to hover around the 3 to 5% range. Of course the optimal level fluctuates with the algorithm however it's been a long time since I've seen it leave this range. You will find sites that rank with higher and lower densities than this. Keyword density is not the only factor (or how easy would an SEO's job be?).

If you want to check your density against the densities of your main competitors there are a number of tools you can use to do this.

• Beanstalk's Keyword Density & Rank Checking Tool
• SEO Chat Keyword Density Tool
• Keyword Density.com

The Formatting Of Content

Content in header tags as well as bold, italic, anchor text and other formatting options increases the weight this text carries. Now, this doesn't mean to run out and bold every instance of your keywords in your content but rather to make use of this as you are trying to draw the visitor's eye to the important content on your pages. Logically enough, if you are targeting a phrase on the search engines then it is highly likely that you will end up wanting to draw the visitor's eye to these keywords periodically on the page. This is more about usability and conversions than anything else. If a visitor enters our site using the term "seo services" we want to make sure that they find this phrase quickly when they land on the page. This will make the visitor feel more comfortable and help them more quickly find the content they are looking for.

If a page we are working on has an overall keyword density of 4% we would target to attain roughly 25 - 30% of this in some sort of formatting outside of the standard of the site. That said, the visitor is more important than the engines and if doing this will take away from the visual appeal of the site then it is not recommended. We can make up any loss in other areas.

Overall Site Relevancy

The relevancy of your entire site is going to impact the rankings of an individual page. If your entire site is about mortgages for example, you're going to find it easier to rank for related phrases than if you have a general site with a single page about mortgages. This is because the cohesion of content among the pages of your site builds the overall relevancy of the site to that topic. If we think about it, when Google is trying to determine if a searcher if likely to find what they're looking for on a site are they likely to believe a site with a single page on a topic is going to give the searcher the information they're looking for or are they more likely to assume that a site with many pages on a topic is going to prove more useful to the searcher?

So we'll resurrect the overused saying "content is king". Many pages on one topic will fare better than many pages on different topics.

Step Three: Link Baiting

The next step (and an ongoing one at that) is link baiting. Link baiting, as we discussed in our article on the topic, is the development of content/tools/etc. for your website with the primary function of attracting links to that page or to another page on the site.

Link baiting can be something as simple as a blog where updates are posted on a topic that others would want to link to (you're of course going to have to market your blog to get these posts found so they work as link bait). Link bait can also be created in the form of tools, contests, humorous stories or cartoons, or really anything you can dream up that would inspire someone to link to your site. SEOMoz's Rand Fishkin managed to make his proposal to the lovely Geraldine link bait.

While most link bait doesn't inspire links being built directly to the homepage of the site they do work to build internal links which boost overall site strength as well as to build links to internal page which might themselves rank for phrases.

Link baiting is an ongoing process. You don't simply build some link bait, get some links and move on. The more often you develop content that others link to the more often people will visit your site, the more content they will find and the more new links they will build. You will also want to test out different methods for marketing your link bait: Press releases, articles, blog feeds, etc. People won't simply find your bait because you built it, you need to inform the world that it is there.

Step Four: Link Building

Ahh link building, perhaps the single most discussed aspect of SEO out there and also the topic shrouded in the most confusion. Do reciprocal links still hold value? Is it worth my time to post to forums from a link building perspective? Are articles really worth the time they take to write and submit? The short answer to all of these questions is "yes" but with conditions (isn't there always a snag?)

Never wanting to give advice I wouldn't take myself, Beanstalk applies a minimum of 3 different link building methods for each client. Now, exactly which methods we use for link building depends on the client, the type of site, and a number of other factors but the core reason that we use at least three different link building methods is the same for all: one link building method may increase or decrease in value with an algorithm shift. The sites that tend to skyrocket and plummet with algorithm shifts are those that use a limited number of tactics and thus aren't safeguarded against changes in the way rankings are calculated. Sites that use multiple techniques are better shielded from these adjustments. And so you are left to ponder, which link building tactics will work for my site?

The link building methods you choose now are not set in stone nor should they be. Should you choose to go with three different link building tactics and settle on reciprocal link building, directory submissions and articles you are not locked into this forever. I generally recommend getting some of the easiest out of the way first. Directory submissions are a no-brainer and should be part of virtually every promotion so they make a good first round. If there are a lot of related sites in your industry (say, if you're a real estate agent) then reciprocal link building makes a fairly simple second tactic to employ. Now, let's be clear on reciprocal links. Reciprocal link building is not dead but it has been brought back to what it should be - an actual vote for a site. A link exchange between the mortgage site noted above and the Beanstalk site would hold little value for either of us. The sites aren't relevant. That said, a reciprocal link between said mortgage site and a real estate broker would make sense to both the visitors and the search engines and thus, it is a good candidate.

So you've launched in with two link building tactics, let's assume you decide to try your hand at publishing and submitting an article next. First you're going to need to accumulate information and check around to see what editors are publishing and people are asking. This should (and likely will) lead you to forums. While you're there you might as well answer some of the questions people are asking that you'll be writing about. This is a good test of your material (but please, make sure your comments actually answer people's questions and aren't blatant ads - I visit a number of forums daily and nobody likes the ads and they don't stay posted for long). So you're in the forums gathering information and answering questions while writing your article (which has added a fourth link building method into the mix), now you've got your article published. The next step is to submit it.

A few simple searches on your favorite search engine will provide long lists of sites that publish articles, you'll simply need to create an account and submit it. I recommend setting up Google Alerts to email you with a random sentence from your article. This will allow you to monitor where it's being picked up and, of course, make sure the credits are in place.

So there you are, you've already employed four different link building tactics (and we're not even including link baiting in this total). From this stage you need to keep on each of them to insure your link counts continue to climb but you can relax a bit and move on to Step Five.

Step Five: Social Media

The use of social media for SEO purposes is a fairly recent evolution in the community. While the links from social networking sites themselves do hold value, the larger purpose of social media from an SEO perspective is the effect that it will have on personalized search results. I wrote a very length article on personalization and so I won't repeat all of the details here (if you're so inclined you can read it after this. It's titled, "Personalization & The Death Of SEO").

Now, using social media as a traffic and SEO tool is a highly specialized area. To keep posted on this ever-changing field I recommend reading Neil Patel's blog onsocial media marketing. In his blog he covers a lot more than social media as an SEO tool but I won't get into that in this article.

Aside from the links themselves social media holds one basic function for SEO's - building relevancy. Google, in their personalization-related patent applications, has been very clear that they will be looking at community and group similarities when personalizing search results. If I like site x then it is likely that if it shows up for a different search I will find it useful again. That is the current state of personalization. It is clear it is going to go further than this and evolve into a situation where the results will run on assumptions such as, if I like site x and my friend Jim likes site x then if Jim, on a different search, like site y - chances are that I will like site y if I run the same search. Now, this doesn't work well in a micro, two-person universe however when the technology evolves to the point where the patterns of millions of users can be analyzed effectively the results will likely yield quite significant shifts in rankings. But what does this have to do with social media?

Social media is user-based votes wrapped into communities. If I find a site worth bookmarking in Digg and another SEO finds the same resource worth bookmarking, and so on - soon it can be assumed that people involved in SEO communities feel that a resource is worth saving and thus, that result will - when personalization evolves - rise in the rankings.

It is for this reason that social media is going to be an important factor in the ranking of websites down the road. This makes today the perfect day to get started; you don't want to be playing catch-up to the sites that are currently employing social media tactics now.

Conclusion

So, as you can see, I was not being altogether accurate in the title when I called them "Easy Steps". The tactics required to rank highly on Google can be complex and time consuming however the path itself is straight forward. If you are willing to spend the time it will take to do it right, success is virtually assured. If you are not, then prepare to make way for those who are.

Ten Tips to the Top of the Search Engines

Having a website that gets found in Google, Yahoo, and Bing, etc. isn't hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are my latest and greatest tips to get you started:

1. Do not purchase a new domain unless you have to. The search engines put a lot of stock in how long your website and domain have been around. While you can purchase a new domain and redirect your old one to the new one, your best bet is to use your existing domain/website if at all possible. If you're redesigning or starting from scratch and you have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, you can expect at least somewhat of a loss in search engine traffic. It could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months or more.
2. Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines. This may sound counterintuitive, but hear me out. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into their little search box. If those "someones" are typing in search words that relate to what your site offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience. You need to optimize your site to meet *their* needs. If you don't know who your target audience is, then you need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online that might provide demographic information, and visit other sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research, and copywriting.
3. Research your keyword phrases extensively. The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect. To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use research tools such asKeywordDiscovery, Wordtracker or Google's Keyword Tool. Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page. Never shoot for general keywords such as "travel" or "vacation," as they are rarely (if ever) indicative of what your site is really about.
4. Design and categorize your site architecture and navigation based on your keyword research. Your research may uncover undiscovered areas of interest or ways of categorizing your products/services that you may wish to add to your site. For instance, let's say your site sells toys. There are numerous ways you could categorize and lay out your site so that people will find the toys they're looking for. Are people looking for toys to fit their child's stage of development? (Look for keyword phrases such as "preschool toys.") Or are they more likely to be seeking specific brands of toys? Most likely, your keyword research will show you that people are looking for toys in many different ways. Your job is to make sure that your site's navigation showcases the various ways of searching. Make sure you have links to specific-brand pages as well as specific age ranges, specific types of toys, etc.
5. Program your site to be "crawler-friendly." The search engines can't fill out forms, can't search your site, can't read JavaScript links and menus, and can't interpret graphics and Flash. This doesn't mean that you can't use these things on your site; you most certainly can! However, you do need to provide alternate means of navigating your site as necessary. If you have only a drop-down sequence of menus to choose a category or a brand of something, the search engine crawlers will never find those resulting pages. You'll need to make sure that you always have some form of HTML links in the main navigation on every page which link to the top-level pages of your site. From those pages, you'll need to have further HTML links to the individual product/service pages. (Please note that HTML links do NOT have to be text-only links. There's nothing wrong with graphical image navigation that is wrapped in standard <a href> tags, as the search engines can follow image links just fine.)
6. Label your internal text links and clickable image alt attributes (aka alt tags) as clearly and descriptively as possible. Your site visitors and the search engines look at the clickable portion of your links (aka the anchor text) to help them understand what they're going to find once they click through. Don't make them guess what's at the other end with links that say "click here" or other non-descriptive words. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. The cool thing about writing your anchor text and alt attributes to be descriptive is that you can almost always describe the page you're pointing to by using its main keyword phrase.
7. Write compelling copy for the key pages of your site based on your chosen keyword phrases and your target market's needs, and make sure it's copy that the search engines can "see." This is a crucial component to having a successful website. The search engines need to read keyword-rich copy on your pages so they can understand how to classify your site. This copy shouldn't be buried in graphics or hidden in Flash. Write your copy based on your most relevant keyword phrases while also making an emotional connection with your site visitor. (This is where that target audience analysis comes in handy!) Understand that there is no magical number of words per page or number of times to use your phrases in your copy. The important thing is to use your keyword phrases only when and where it makes sense to do so for the real people reading your pages. Simply sticking keyword phrases at the top of the page for no apparent reason isn't going to cut it, and it just looks silly. (Purchase and read our Copywriting Combo for exact tips on how to implement this correctly.)
8. Incorporate your keyword phrases into each page's unique Title tag.Title tags are critical because they're given a lot of weight with every search engine. Whatever keyword phrases you've written your copy around should also be used in your Title tag. Remember that the information that you place in this tag is what will show up as the clickable link to your site at the search engines. Make sure that it accurately reflects the content of the page it's on, while also using the keyword phrases people might be using at a search engine to find your stuff.
9. Make sure your site is "link-worthy." Other sites linking to yours is a critical component of a successful search engine optimization campaign, as all of the major search engines place a good deal of emphasis on your site's overall link popularity. You can go out and request hundreds or thousands of links, but if your site stinks, why would anyone want to link to it? On the other hand, if your site is full of wonderful, useful information, other sites will naturally link to it without your even asking. It's fine to trade links; just make sure you are providing your site visitors with only the highest quality of related sites. When you link to lousy sites, keep in mind what this says to your site visitors as well as to the search engines.
10. Don't be married to any one keyword phrase or worried too much about rankings. If you've done the above 9 things correctly, you will start to see an increase in targeted search engine visitors to your site fairly quickly. Forget about where you rank for any specific keyword phrase and instead measure your results in increased traffic, sales, and conversions. (You can sign up for a Google Analytics for free, which easily tracks and measures those things that truly matter.) It certainly won't hurt to add new content to your site if it will really make your site more useful, but don't simply add a load of fluff just for the sake of adding something. It really is okay to have a business site that is just a business site and not a diatribe on the history of your products. Neither your site visitors nor the engines really give a hoot!