Great SEOMoz Video About Getting Awesome Links
- Sunday, March 22, 2009
I found this video to be a nice concise explanation of how to get some good links. This also applies to small business websites.
Five Super Simple Link Baiting Steps for Mom and Pop
- Monday, March 9, 2009
I have decided to start writing some super simple and short guides for mom and pop. Mainly since the vast majority of the SEO blogs out there are addressing people in the web development & SEO business.
First, since this article is for mom and pop, let me define Link Bait. Link Bait is any content on your website that is so useful that other websites link to it. As you probably know (or maybe you don’t), links from other websites help with search engine rankings. So how does a local small business develop content that others will want to link to? Here is just one simple strategy.
1. Start a Blog (visit blogger.com for a super simple and FREE place to do this). The blog audience doesn’t always have to be your potential customers. In addition to customer focused posts, I suggest blogging about topics your colleagues might be interested in too. Maybe you are in the printing business and you write an article aimed at other printing businesses. For example, this could be a top 10 list of favorite tools. Maybe there is a printing business in another town that finds the article useful and they mention your blog post on THEIR blog and they link back to your post. That is a link. Not only is that a link. It is a link from another printing business which is even better, because it is on topic.
2. Identify Your Linkerati (audience from whom you would like a link). Let me define that term for mom and pop. Linkerati = potential linkers. So in the example mentioned in #1 the linkerati would be other printing businesses. Whoever your linkerati turns out to be, that is who you need to write for at least some of the time. Not every blog post is Link Bait. You will still write for your current customers, potential customers, the community at large and now your linkerati.
3. Join Twitter.com Start following colleagues in your industry. You can find them by going to Twellow.com which is an organized directory of twitter profiles. Hopefully they will follow you back. Have meaningful conversations with them. This can’t just be about spamming them with blog posts. Setup your blog to post to your twitter automatically using the easy and free tool offered at twitterfeed.com. There are similar tools for other social networks.
4. Join a Few Message Boards and Social Networks These would be communities where your linkerati hang out. Again the interaction here should be genuine. Some social networks allow you to feed your blog posts to your profile. For message boards you can include your blog link in your signature. Let me caution you that this can be a tremendous time waster if you are not methodical. Join just a handful of communities that you genuinely want to participate in related to your industry. Then once a day or every other day, visit and participate for a set amount of time (or else you will find yourself compulsively being there all day). Again, the goal here is not to spam them with your blog posts, but to network with others in your industry and in the process you can make them aware of your blog and any good posts that you write.
5. DIGG.com, StumbleUpon.com, Del.icio.us and Reddit.com These are all places to submit to that can potentially get your post in front of the people who might link to it. If your post is really good, it will be voted up and more people will see it. The people who see it who find it useful will talk about it in their own blogs and link back.
That’s it for now. I’m hoping to keep doing these super simple and short guides for mom and pop in the future.
Google taught my kid to read. Can I hire her now?
- Sunday, March 8, 2009
My daughter taught herself to read using Google at roughly 3.5 years of age. I noticed she would search for the few sight words she knew and then find them on the page of results. She would click through the websites shown in the results one by one until she found what she was looking for (usually pictures of dogs). She continued to improve her repertoire of sight words that way and eventually was actually reading and comprehending the content she would pull up. Later, at about 5 years of age, she started searching for information about her favorite video game, Petz 5, and read tutorials on how to download and install hacks to customize her Petz. She started using paint to draw new background scenes for the game and would browse to the appropriate program files and deploy the design. She is 7 now and has at least 10 blogs, regularly creates and edits her own videos and continues to research via Google. She's passionate about the computer much the way her father and I are.
So the question is do I continue to foster that by giving her some of my real design projects? Certainly, she can batch resize a group of photographs in Photoshop or enter new products into a shopping cart. I suppose one could look at it this way: This is our family business. She is expected to contribute to the family by doing chores whether it is washing dishes or writing a SQL stored procedure (wishful thinking!). Many kids (usually older) work in their family business. I suppose this is no different and she would love the chores assigned to her.
There is also the question of balance. Lately hubby and I have made it our mission to get our entire family outdoors more and to enjoy low-tech activities such as camping. My daughter enjoyed a short stint taking dance classes, but found it wasn't her thing. She is also enjoying girl scouts. Maybe she is on the computer enough and needs to broaden her horizons. It is really a tough call. I don’t want to squelch her natural passion for technology, but I want her to learn balance.
Conversation with a Client About Social Networking
- Thursday, February 19, 2009
I have a client that I am working on search engine optimization for their website. They will not participate in any way, shape or form. They just want me to "do some stuff" and get them number one. So I am left writing some content (on a topic which I am not an expert), posting some stuff on their blog and trying to get some decent links into the site. I've done pretty well with this, but now they are asking me if I can do more on the social networking sites to promote them. Here is where I stand on that. For their project I have used social networking sites for the purpose of getting links where I know the no-follow tag is not being used. My mission there was not to promote them, but to get a link, plain and simple. If they truly want to use social media to promote themselves, I have tried to explain, it is not sufficient for me to hop on and "post some stuff" every once in a while. Social Networking is about relationships, not about posting and running. I feel like anything I'd post for them would be superficial anyway, which is fine if all you care about is getting a link, but not fine if you want to interact with real people. You can't fake it!
Salesperson or Teacher?
- Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Many of my clients are local small businesses that need an affordable website. They don't have the budget to hire separate firms to do web development, web marketing, PR etc. They look to me, the generalist, to educate them on things like usability, copywriting, SEO and the like. So for years I have either done it for them AFFORDABLY or taught them how to do it themselves. I have a heart of teacher anyway so it works out great. Most of my sales calls turn into a lesson. I have always said I am not a good salesperson. However I do close a high percentage of deals and I believe it is because I am willing to share my knowledge with anyone (sometimes until their eyes glaze over). I am also honest to a fault and one thing I could never do is take someone's money and build a website that I know in my heart will fail. I do everything in my power to give clients the tools they need to succeed.
What was the point of this post? I have no idea. I am just rambling I think. Maybe it is a public service announcement for all the used car salesman types out there to say "You don't have to be a pushy salesguy to do well. Just be honest and genuinely want to help people. Ummkay?".
Promoting your local business on the web
- Tuesday, February 10, 2009
One thing I have noticed is that small businesses sell themselves short when it comes to using the internet to its fullest potential. Most know that they should have a website, but beyond that they do not know how to make it actually work for them.
Here are some ideas for promoting your small business on the web inexpensively:
First of all, I encourage you to read my post here about making your website search engine friendly.
Local Search Sites Be sure to add your business to the various map and local search sites. Search Engine Watch has a great list of places to add your business listing. Google for example displays these local map listings at the top of many of the search results pages.
Also some of these local sites allow reviews to be added to the listing. If you have many happy customers, encourage them to post a review on your behalf.
Social Media Myspace is for teenagers right? Well, yeah LOL. I agree there. However there are many other social networks that ARE appropriate for marketing your business.
LinkedIn.com - This is a professional social network. You can connect with other business people you know. The link shows up in search engines.
Facebook.com - Connect with friends old and new, business associates and acquaintances. Once you are a member you can add a page for your business and become a fan. Ask other friends to become a fan too and their friends will see it. You can also announce events to those you are connected to.
Twitter.com - Set up a profile on Twitter and "tweet" updates about yourself and your business. Then look for other local people to "follow". They might follow you back. Make a habit of regularly finding new local people to follow. If they follow you back they will begin seeing your updates. Also Naples Daily News and the Fort Myers News Press both have twitter accounts. If you follow them they will follow you back. Once sentence press release anyone?
YouTube.com - Add videos about your business. Post them to your other social network profiles. Local people may find them on YouTube directly or within video search results on the search engines.
Squidoo.com - Setup Squidoo lenses about your products. Sometimes these show up in search engine results. Link to your website from any lense you create.
Ten Ways to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings
- Sunday, February 1, 2009
I thought it would be a good idea to give some VERY BASIC pointers on improving your search engine rankings. It is important to note that there is no exact science to improving your rankings. There are only steps you can take to make your website “optimal” for search engine success. They call this search engine optimization or SEO for short.
As a small business in Naples, Florida you are probably feeling the crunch right now. So I believe now is a great time to find inexpensive ways to promote your business and your website. Performing SEO on your website is a great place to start.
So let’s get started with some basic search engine optimization tips!
Figure out what people are searching for. You can probably guess what your potential customers are searching for right? Not necessarily. You need to do some keyword research. Start by thinking about who your customers are. What words and phrases do they use to describe your products? They won’t necessarily know your industry lingo.
Brainstorm an initial list of phrases that you think your customers are using to find you. Then use free tools to research them further. Google has a great keyword tool found here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Write good copy. What is good SEO copy? Good SEO copy makes sense to humans and search engines. Write copy that explains your product, engages your site visitors and compels them to buy, but use your keyword phrases in the process. Don’t repeat your keyword phrases to the point where it sounds unnatural, but use them where it makes sense.
Help search engines find your pages. Create a site map. Think of this as a table of contents for your website. It can be helpful for human beings and search engines that become lost. List all the pages of your site as links with a description of what that page is.It is also a smart idea to have good internal link structure within your website. Utilize text navigation in your footer. Search engines might have trouble following fancy flash or javascript navigation, but if you include alternate text navigation then they can still find your other pages.
Compose good title tags. Most search engines will use your title tag and a few sentences from your page copy for display in the search results. They also look for keyword phrases in your title tags. The idea is to compose a title tag that is going to compel a searcher to click your listing and help your search engine rankings.
Our title tag is: Naples Web Design from $699 – Integrity Networx
We have used our keyword phrase “naples web design” and by mentioning $699 users might be intrigued enough to click through to our website.
Get some links. Search engines like to see other websites linking to yours. A website linking to yours is “casting a vote” for your website.
Therefore it is a good idea to have others link to you. Start with organizations you belong to. Do they have a member directory on their website? Make sure your link is there. Are there industry specific directories that you can be listed in online? Submit to those. You can submit your website to general directories. Some are free and others charge a fee. You can also exchange links with businesses that you partner with. For example: Realtors might exchange links with mortgage brokers, home inspectors and title companies. If you exchange links, make sure you do it with a reputable website that is truly going to be a helpful resource to your visitors.
Link building is a very broad topic and I have only briefly touched upon it in this post. So stay tuned for more link building discussions in later posts.
Optimize your links. Now that you are working on links, it is important that you know that search engines read the “anchor text” within a link. Anchor text is the text that appears in the underlined portion of a link. If your website is about “Naples Real Estate” and that is a phrase that you are targeting, then some of your inbound links (from other websites) should contain that phrase anchor text.
Search engines also read anchor text within your website. Let’s say you have a page featuring Naples condos and you have optimized that page for the phrase. On your home page you might mention that you specialize in Naples condos and then link to your condo page from within your page copy.
Start a blog. Blogs add useful content to your website and that will attract visitors and search engine spiders. Updating your blog regularly will bring search engine spiders back to your site frequently. Search engines love fresh content. Links from within your blog posts to other pages of your site can help the rankings of those pages as well. You can also optimize these links as described in item #6. Also, if other people find your blog posts useful, they will come back regularly to read your blog through an RSS feed (we’ll touch on that in a later post). Lastly, useful blog posts, can become viral (that’s a good thing). What that means is people will comment on their own blogs about your post, forward your post to friends and link to it. All of this will help your search engine rankings.
Submit an XML sitemap to the search engines. Submitting an XML sitemap will insure that the search engines know about your site and know about all the pages on your site and are able to index them. Once you’ve created your XML sitemap you will need to upload the file and submit to Google and Yahoo.
Beware of bad linking. With all of the talk about the importance of inbound links, you might be tempted to go out and indiscriminately get as many links as you can. If you decide to exchange links with a website, make sure that the website you will be linking to is something that will be a good resource for your website visitors. Additionally, make sure the page where your link will be placed is not filled with hundreds of other links that have nothing at all in common with your site. If you see links for questionable products (i.e. Viagra) then do not exchange links with the site. Also do not participate in linking schemes where you are promised hundreds or thousands of backlinks overnight. The search engines may penalize your website for this. The best practice for obtaining backlinks, is to slowly and steadily acquire high quality links from authoritative sources. See item 5 for more information.
