This article contains 39 images. You will find them at the very end of the article.

This article contains 4675 words.

SEO | Online Marketing Strategies

Content Builds Links

Jan 23

Must Build Links!

Link campaigns can be effective. It is possible to request links and receive them–it happens every day. But for the same amount of effort expended, you could probably write new content for your site that would attract links without you ever asking.Search Engine Guide Blog, Jan 2009

Link building is indeed very important, however there are better ways than begging others to link to your site. In fact, with all the email we get, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get the attention of webmasters to consider trading links.

Everyone loves content not just the search engines. Make your content relevant to what your market wants and they will be all too happy to link to it for reference. For example: You have a website where you sell paint supplies. Create a page about different types of painting techniques used, make a video about some simple ways your products can be used, make a page about complimentary services or vendors your customers might appreciate - you get the idea. Think of how you can be helpful to your audience and they will be very appreiative and reward you with links because your content has real value.

~ Greg

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

SEO     

Thoughts on Buying and Selling Links

Jan 22

Google, or as it is sometimes unaffectionately known, “Big Brother”, wants the Web 2.0 model to thrive. On face value, it makes sense that it should. After all, Web 2.0 is built to reward topics of interest, and most people performing a search want the results to be in line with what their peers find interesting.

But in the tangled web of e-commerce and SEO, web 2.0 is a failure of epic proportions - and Google is keenly aware of it. Most business isn’t sexy, and if something isn’t sexy, it won’t generate links of its own accord. The well known SEO’s handshake each other for links everyday, but what few are willing to admit is that they can’t get the same results for their clients (assuming they have clients and their business isn’t limited to schmoozing about SEO). Once an SEO is working on behalf of someone else, the playing field is level and all bets are off. You want links? Better be prepared to give something in return.

Google would have us believe there are multiple (we’ve all heard everything from 70 to 100 plus) factors that influence rankings, but let’s not kid ourselves. Links are unquestionably the most important factor and dwarf anything and everything else. Without links, rankings won’t be going up anytime soon.

So with all the difficulty in obtaining links, is SEO still viable? Sure, but it’s getting to be more difficult as the Web 2.0 model sets in. Google doesn’t want businesses to be able to generate links on their own as was once possible and plausible. Organic rankings take away from the bread and butter of the monopoly that is Big Brother, and that bread and butter is paid advertising. That’s fantastic for entrenched businesses who already have organic rankings and can afford to spend a hefty sum on PPC each month, but it hurts new businesses trying to find a niche within their market.

In years past, content publication was easy because venues that have since been devalued were plentiful. Well written, informative content could hang around long enough to get the merit (or lack of merit) it deserved, no matter how esoteric the subject matter (i.e “business” subject matter). Today, the few overpopulated social networking venues are chocked full of link-baiting, hollow, over-hyped crap because that’s exactly what’s necessary to get attention. In this climate, even something as simple as what time of day an excerpt is published can mean the difference between success and failure. Titling alone is a heavy-handed joke that bludgeons us like a sledgehammer as authors are promising the world just to get an audience. It’s Short Attention Span Theatre at its finest.

So…we buy links. We buy knowing full well that the chances of our purchased links losing value are slim. As big as Big Brother is, reformulated AI and a dedicated team of web-spam “lookouts” can’t cover the internet in its entirety. They simply don’t have the manpower or resources to do so. Still, risqué behavior in link buying (or selling) can produce results counterproductive to the desired.

The biggest part of the problem is with sites who sell links, but to a lesser degree, it also lies with SEO’s who don’t understand what a valuable link looks like. Few worry about the number of links on the page, the relevancy of the links to both sites, and most importantly, the on-page placement (location) of the links. Those who do understand these principles on the selling end (HINT, HINT), should be able to command a higher monthly price for their offerings and should never be short of buyers, which will force those who don’t to figure out what they’re doing wrong and fix it if they want to continue to sell. Those who understand these principles on the buying end should insist on following them, even if doing so eats away a little more at profits.

It’s better to make a little less, play it safe and keep a client happy for the long run than to go for the easy fix and risk losing your clients altogether.

Alan

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Building Traffic To Your Site, Online Marketing - The Who, What, Where, and Why, SEO     

Website Usability – what does it mean for your revenue?

Jan 15

The true test of any marketing effort, whether online or otherwise is this: did it produce the desired outcome? Did revenue, leads, downloads or whatever your goal is increase as a direct result of this effort?

It is not enough to look at the site traffic numbers alone as they can be deceiving. It’s equally important to look at the performance of the website in terms of how your customers are reacting to many of the visual elements placed in front of them. Reaction is the first step toward interaction, which is the fundamental building block of business.

The number one flaw I see in website designs is this; way too much visual information. More information loses your audience. We are not becoming a society of scanners, we already are one. Each of us now has the attention span of a gnat , and with so many other sites to choose from, we have to find exactly what we want in the least amount of effort - therefore we scan.

In the bigger picture of marketing, the better we know our audience the better we can serve their needs. The days of doing things the sa

me ol’ way are long gone, and those that keep a “business as usual” mentality will die very quickly on the internet. Visitors coming to any website want things their way and if we are smart, we will adapt.

What can we do to adapt and learn what our visitors want? Do your homework and research. Careful analysis of your site traffic will reveal a ton of great insight, but knowing what to look for takes some practice as these numbers fail to tell the whole story.

Did the increase in number of pages viewed mean your visitors are more engaged with your site, or just lost? A high “time on page” can be positive for sales pages that require extensive copy but negative for pages designed to funnel traffic to another destination. The bottom line is that while numbers are necessary for understanding traffic patterns, they need to be examined in context.

Getting feedback from your target audience is also a great way to directly ascertain the effectiveness of site, page and navigational presentation. Survey your site visitors by enticing them with free downloads, subscriptions, or anything else in exchange for their opinion. Remember, you are asking them to take their time, which to most of us is a very valuable commodity these days. There are a number of panel groups who, for a fee, will make your site available to their members who get paid to visit and evaluate sites. This kind of feedback is very valuable if the visitors are representative of your market, however even if they are not your target audience you can still get some good insight on improvements.

Finally, you can try split testing or other forms of trial and error to test various layouts or ideas for improvement in achieving your goals. This method takes longer, but will teach you a valuable lesson as you come to understand how very subtle changes can produce significant results.

Understanding how visitors react to your site and making improvements accordingly is maximizing the potential of your existing traffic. For many businesses, this strategy can do far more for the bottom line than spending money on new traffic sources or increased exposure.

We welcome your thoughts on this topic – please share them so all may benefit.

Cheers –

Greg

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Building Traffic To Your Site, Online Marketing - The Who, What, Where, and Why, SEO, Website Considerations     

BlogRush Owes Me!

Nov 01

I logged into my account today and realized blogrush owes me over 20k in traffic. With all the talk of how fast the blogrush widget has spread, I am still in the red. When will I get my traffic? I don’t think I am the only one. Are you seeing traffic from blogrush and how much are you owed? I’d love to get a tally going.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

SEO     

The “Web Guy”

Sep 25

Everyday it seems we have to contend with the limited knowledge of some “jack of all trades, master of none” hack with an outdated understanding of how SEO works. This person is known around our office as the “Web Guy”.

“My web guy suggested we do 301 redirects on every page”

Did he now?

“My web guy said we should dump these PR 7 URL’s because they have a question mark in them”

Hmmm, no kidding?

“My web guy wants to check your work and make sure your not doing anything that will hurt our existing rankings”

You mean the poor rankings you just hired us to raise?

We absolutely love the Web Guy because we can almost always pinpoint his attitude toward outside entities within 5 minutes of our initial meeting. The Web Guy thinks we’re pissing in his territory. The Web Guy knows barely enough to be dangerous and wants us to know that he knows what he knows as he thinks his knowledge stretches a lot further than it actually does (Whew! That was a mouthful). The Web Guy likes to question us on every point and wants definitive proof of why we do things the way we do. In short, the web guy is the sort of fellow that puts his arm around his girlfriend in the presence of other people…not because he genuinely wants to, but because he feels the need to “let everyone know that what’s mine is mine”. We’re not sure if the Web Guy is a designer, coder, programmer, network administrator or what, but we’re sure he’d have no qualms about putting all those down on his resume. We’re also fairly certain that he rubs vasaline on his chest, pats it down with coffee grounds and tops it off with a gold medallion prior to an open shirted night at the club, but that’s only speculation at this point.

Now, of course, this is a bit of a generalization. Not all web guys are “Web Guys”, and many have been quite helpful and pleasant. Some are just genuinely inquisitive and many ask if we can impart some details on what we’re doing so they can understand for future reference. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that and we love talking shop with anyone who isn’t combative about our company being brought in. But every once in a while, we do run across a “Web Guy” who genuinely works against his own best interests and is a serious pain in the ass in the process.

And when that happens, we’re lucky enough to have our own in-house foil, who we affectionately refer to as “Accounting Guy”.

“What? You got an additional charge on your monthly bill for all the excess hours we had to spend dealing with your Web Guy? Oh…right…well, that’s just our Accounting Guy. He keeps track of the consulting hours and bills according to our contract. Yeah…he’s a real stickler for noting the time spent dealing with Web Guy, but what can I tell ya…he pays for himself.”

Accounting Guy doesn’t come into play with most clients, and he never comes into play without a warning, but if called upon, he’ll be at every phone call with calculator in hand, an eye on the clock and a smile on his face. Accounting Guy loves to charge Web Guy for completely wasting our time at length, and he keeps detailed records of all of Web Guy’s long winded Q & A sessions in case there are any issues with the bill. Best of all, Accounting Guy never misses an opportunity to point out when Web Guy is working in a contradictory fashion to his employer’s wishes. Like Beyonce’ Knowles, Accounting Guy can be counted on to show up everywhere to point of nausea.

Once the employer understands how much Web Guy is costing them, they usually keep him on a leash and we simply drop the fees. If you experience the same situation, it’s important to introduce your Accounting Guy to the employer sooner rather than later. Don’t waste more of your time than is necessary explaining what you are doing instead of doing the actual work itself. It’s also not fair to the unknowing employer to present them with a bill for the excessive time you’ve been forced to waste on their Web Guy when a much earlier phone call from Accounting Guy would have likely solved the problem to everyone’s satisfaction.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Building Traffic To Your Site, Online Marketing - The Who, What, Where, and Why, Website Considerations     

Google Stole My Money!

Aug 28

I have had a Google adsense account for YEARS! One day I noticed I couldn’t login. I tried to contact Google several times with no response. I am small potatoes when it comes to making money on Google. I am not a spammer, so why would they do this?

They didn’t try to contact to tell there was a problem. They of course are still letting ads show on my sites so that THEY can continue to make revenue. Man… how low can Google go? Taking from the poor to give to the rich?

Anyone have any ideas? Has this happened to you? I guess when you’re as big as Google you can do whatever you want and get away with it.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Google     

New Mr-SEO.com

Aug 19

Hello,

A lot has happened behind the scenes here at Mr-Seo.com. You may have noticed that there has not been much input from us, and for that we apologize. What have we been up to? Well, for starters, Joe and Alan decided to turn the business over to someone new, and that person is me. My name is Greg Gaskill, and I have been working with Joe and Alan for some time now migrating everything over to my ownership and management.

What does this mean for you? First, the things that won’t change - the commitment to bring the truth to the market of what SEO & SEM are and what they are not! As you know, there is a tremendous amount of disinformation floating around the internet. The one size fits all, or get your site in the top ten for $100 crap advice screws things up for website owners, and makes the real job of doing quality, sustainable work harder because we have to undo a lot of widely publicized but incorrect beliefs in order to establish trust with our clients. The cornerstone of Mr-Seo has been truth, and that will not change.

Ok, so what is new? A new website to Web 2.0 standards. Our blog, Podcasts and Discussion Board are now all served by our host, rather than somewhere else. With one login, in one place you can access all of our resources.

We also now offer our Complete Website SEO Evaluation Report - with a Better Than Free Special Offer. This report covers a ton of key areas which are critical to getting top ten listing in Google and other search engines. We give you the good, the bad, and the dirt on your competition, all in one in-depth report. The best part is that when you buy this report for $495, we give you $600 of our services free. We figured it was a great way to help companies find out what they needed to be doing, and then offer a great deal to have us do all the work - everybody wins.

We put in place a News Brief - Surviving Online, SEO and SEM trends. This News Brief is just that, brief - for the simple reason, we all are busy and really don’t pay that much attention to newsletters anyway. Why not just send you the stuff that is important, and forget the hype?

We put in place a simple questionnaire at registration for any of our services so we can better understand who you - our visitors are, and what you would like us to address on our website or in our News Brief. In addition, we will be emailing a questionnaire, and would really appreciate your taking a moment to help us understand who you are, and what you would like to get from us. Also feel free to post ideas and suggestions on our Blog, or Discussion Board. We strongly believe in supporting you, our audience and customers.

We are now monitoring and posting often to the Discussion Board and Blog. After all, these are only valuable if they are used regularly, so it is our commitment to you to maintain them with active participation.

In the near future, we will add some E-courses for SEO and SEM which you can opt-in to on our website, and in an email in which we will announce it to you.  The purpose of these mini courses, will be to bring awareness to various applications of SEO and SEM in addressing various business issues. We hope you find these courses helpful.

Finally, I would like you all to know that I stand committed to deliver quality services in a fair and ethical manner. It is my commitment to work with each customer to ensure that they receive the best we have to give them. We will be up-front about what we can, and can not deliver, what we can, and can not control, and in some cases we may need to advise potential clients that we can not help them. There is far too many con artists out there promising the world, and under-delivering, and I refuse to be one of them.

Best wishes to all for now,

Greg

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Building Traffic To Your Site, Online Marketing - The Who, What, Where, and Why, Search Trends & News, Website Considerations     

In Response to, In Response to, In Response to….

Aug 13

I’d like to thank Pandia for responding to my initial post on Indian SEO, as open dialogue is one of the things that makes the internet the exceptional resource that it is.

First and foremost, I want to state that I do not hold a person’s linguistic abilities against them, regardless of their ethnicity, race or country of origin. That doesn’t mean I would hire someone underqualified for an English speaking (or writing) position, simply that I don’t discriminate outside of the qualifications necessary for the work at hand. Furthermore, I failed to point out in my previous post (and in fact, did make a sweeping generalization to the contrary) that I’m sure there are some Indian SEO firms who do exceptional work. I have yet to run across one, but nevertheless…

read all »

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Building Traffic To Your Site, Online Marketing - The Who, What, Where, and Why, Website Considerations     

Why your wordpress blog doesn’t rank.

Oct 22

One of the most common reasons why people hire me is to find out why their site or blog isn’t ranking. In some cases the site owner has launched a new wordpress blog. One thing about wordpress is, by default they restrict your site from the engines.

So, how do you correct this problem? Just login to your account and head over to the privacy tab. By default there will be a radio button marked

I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors

Choose the option above this one and you’re set.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

SEO     

Is Google PR on the way out?

Oct 20

I have been slammed with emails about what I think is going on and why Google has not updated the toolbar as of yet. Who’s to say Google isn’t getting ready to 86 the whole toolbar idea? What good is it? People buy and sell links based on PR and we know Google wants that to stop.

read all »

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Google     

« Previous Entries