My SEO tip today is about paying attention and taking action. There are about a squillion things that influence good SEO, and even more things are required to achieve great SEO. Paying attention to details can sometimes make the difference between good SEO and great SEO. Do I have your attention yet?
You are not, I repeat NOT going to get the best results that you seek from this article if you do not pay attention to detail. Good SEO has a lot to do with very fine details, and it often means paying attention to the details that the rest of your industry neglects. Today I am going to give you some thought-candy about the links which point to your website, but first, I am going to be sure that I have your full attention and that you are ready for this brain-exploding tip.
I think a lot of people try to make SEO seem a lot harder than it actually is. Really good SEO is actually quite tricky and time consuming, but there are many things that are pretty simple and tedious, but just need to be implemented properly. Knowing all of those simple and tedious tasks, and how they fit into the big picture of your search engine optimization strategy, and using them properly to receive optimal benefit is why people hire a search engine optimizer.
Squillions of people write tens of thousands of tips each day about search engine optimization. The good search engine optimizers choose their topic carefully, title it just right, tag the information well, add it to their search optimized website, and are sure to address it to the proper audience using just the right keywords. Then they emphasize the call to action, and make it clear why you found the information.
Good SEO (search engine optimizers) write their tips similar to the way they will perform SEO for their clients. In fact, you can tell a lot about them by the tips they give you (it is one of my top reasons to blog). Further, they provide the tips in the same way they expect their readers to implement their suggestions for those who try to take the do-it-yourself (DIY) SEO method.
The Great SEO will take a little additional time to do all of the things the rest of the world can only call “magic”. I do not want to let you down today, but this SEO tip is not designed to make a do-it-yourselfer a great SEO. It is just another piece in the puzzle that will help you to understand good SEO. I will say, however, that it is a pretty damn good tip that can help you move just a little closer to great. I still have to keep you reading regularly, so I cannot just give you that “SEO magic” all at once. Your head would explode, and I cannot have that on my conscience. Yes, imagine that, a search engine optimizer with a conscience … I guess there is just magic in the air today! Besides, I still want to leave you some reason to call on me when you have pulled all your hair out and get sick of letting business pass you by.
Now, on with today’s SEO tip!
Who Links to Your Site and Why Should You Care?
Links are at the front line of search engine optimization. The more high-quality links that point to your website, the easier it will be to rank for the things your site is about. The text within those links makes a huge impact on your ranking for certain topics. This is why many links to my blog include the words SEO and social media marketing. Those things are a focus of my blog, so it only makes sense that the links reflect this.
When important websites with a lot of authority start linking to my blog, I want to know it. I also want to be sure that they continue to link to my blog. I can control this in a couple ways, and the best of which is to keep producing consistently useful content. You know, the stuff people want to link to. Thanking them is not such a bad idea, either.
Another way to be sure the link-love keeps coming is to watch what received good links and write more of that. For example, a useful tip about a given topic (in this case, SEO) will often find its way into a lot of good streams of content, including both automated and manual linking. The automatic ones are pretty easy to manage, but the links created by people are a bit more tricky. You have to really blow somebody’s hair back to make them take the action of creating a link to you in their blogroll, or to submit your content to Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and etcetera. If you want them to write about it and link to you in a blog post, you practically have to reinvent electricity or come up with something so amazing that they want to print it out and rub it all over themselves. Short of that you must at least write about things that people want to read, and present it in a fashion they will keep reading.
Finding Your Best Backlinks
You should know who is linking to your website. I don’t mean just the links that are being clicked on. I mean the links that make your site more visible and valuable to search engines. Here comes a big fat juicy SEO tip for you. It is called Open Site Explorer and the information it can tell you is more than you may see on the surface. Yes, this is where you have to pay attention to the details. For example, I just looked at an Open Site Explorer report for this blog and found the interesting facts as follows:
The Technorati tag “guerrilla-marketing” has produced a link pointing to my blog article titled “Marketing Without a Budget: Guerrilla Marketing Tips“, but the new content under this tag has moved my link off the page as newer articles arrived. So it seems to me that since that link is from a valuable source page, I should probably write something about guerrilla marketing and be sure to tag it with “guerrilla-marketing”. Oh yes, this article is kind of Guerrilla Marketing related … gosh, I am glad I was paying close attention. I am going to add that tag in this blog post.
I also noticed that there was a pretty nice link from the tag “whiteboards” that pointed to my article titled “Smart Slate, Smart Airliner, and Other Interactive Slates“. Perhaps I should write a follow-up to that piece and tag it appropriately.
My point is that if you pay close attention to the things which make your website rank well, there is a lot clearer path to success. Knowing that I am in the blogroll of great blogs like the ones listed below can give me a lot of reason to want to throw back some link-love to them and also keep reading their work.
These matter to me, and certainly deserve my attention (Thanks Guys). After all, they show faith in my work by linking to me. To some people, this is just a small detail, but to me it is a really important factor.
Paying attention to the sites linking to you, both automated and manually, can make a huge difference in your success. Now the question that remains is this: What will you do with this information? Were you paying attention and will you use what I have suggested? I want to guess the answer is “yes”, but there are a lot of people who do not pay attention. I hope those are your competitors and not you!
Being ranked at the top of search listings on Google, Bing, and etcetera, for the things that make companies money is a very competitive endeavor. The SEO who can produce really fantastic results are few and far between. The demand is high, and the supply is comparatively low. SEO is a tricky business, and to find good SEO is kind of like finding a needle in a haystack. What makes it even harder to find good SEO (search engine optimization), is that the best SEO (search engine optimizers) are not seeking you.
Unless you sell fish milkshakes or garlic scented breath spray, you have probably noticed that there are a lot of others trying to attract the same customers as you. I should not need to explain all the reasons for wanting to be at the top of search listings, but I will say that being there is very valuable. I don’t just mean being there for your few “important” search phrases like your company name. I mean being there for the right search phrases, with the right marketing message, and a website that will convert lookers into buyers. I mean being listed for thousands of searches and maximizing your lateral keyword effectiveness. This is a job of the SEO, and we are paid to do the work that makes most people want to pull their hair out and scream at their computer. We do what others cannot do. In fact, maybe we are just a little more like Superman than we like to let on. You know, we try to be pretty humble (even though it is difficult).
Good SEO Are Not Salespeople
It has often been said that a good SEO does not need to seek business. If they are skilled at search engine optimization, there are many great opportunities open to them. This does not mean they do not want your business, but only that they are probably not banging down your door, ringing your phone off the hook, or filling your email inbox with offers of cheap SEO services. Now, I should explain that I don’t mean the ho-hum average SEO, but the ones who really deserve to carry the title of Search Engine Optimizer. There are a lot of fakes, but I have already explained how to tell the difference between good SEO and bad SEO. If you missed that article, you should make time to read and find out.
Why do I think that good SEO are not salepeople? Well, I think most SEO can probably sell SEO if they have to, but for most of us I think it gets pretty aggravating to answer salesy questions that people do not actually even care to know anyway. I mean, do you really think a client needs to know each detail of the work to be performed? Do they need to know everything the SEO knows? If that was the case, they would do it themselves. They just need to know that the SEO is good at what they do, and that they will receive quantifiable benefit from the work. Hell, I hate selling SEO, but I love performing the work. Go ahead and search Google for sell SEO and see if you find me there (Hint: Don’t look down). To me, proof should be all the selling I need to do. If somebody wants more than that, I guess I can take my shirt off and show them my sexy chest, because that would likely mean more to them than my in-depth SEO lesson that will go right over their head anyway.
Good SEO Are Quirky, But Entrepreneurial
As people, the best SEO (search engine optimizers) tend to be a little bit quirky, opinionated, eccentric, clever, and above all, entrepreneurial. SEO do not choose this work just because all the other jobs down at the 7-Eleven were taken. We do it because we have a passion for success, a competitive spirit, and often something to prove … call it a Napoleon complex if you like. SEO is a field filled with some truly astonishing marketing talent that is honed every day by constant studying of people, trends, facts, figures, and of course, the “secret ingredient” that we will never share with you because after all, you are not “in the club”.
Why SEO Don’t Seek Your Business
So, you may still wonder why I say that “good SEO don’t seek your business”, and that is something I am here to answer. The reason is this: A good search engine optimizer can take their skills to any industry, at any time, and invest themselves in that industry and earn a fortune. This is not a myth, and a good SEO can back it up. I would say that it is even true that a “pretty good SEO” can achieve a high level of success if they put enough time, study, and patience into their work in a given industry. In my case, I earned millions of dollars selling wholesale Internet services over the past decade. That did not happen because I was passionate about selling dial-up Internet access and web hosting services to ISPs. It happened because I was passionate about SEO, and I kicked that market in the ass hard enough to amass up to 2,000 resellers. It would have been even easier if I could have just been the SEO all along and not had to work as the CEO, too.
I like Cigars Just Fine
You may wonder why, if a search engine optimizer is good, they would choose to work with clients’ projects instead of selling their own product or service. This is where some people just don’t understand the required focus of SEO work. If I wanted to sell cigars online, you can bet I would corner the cigar market. I am already well listed in Google for cigar related search terms, and I am not even a cigar retailer. I don’t want to sell cigars. I do not want the hassles of operating another business … I just want to sell other people’s cigars. That is why I am a search engine optimizer. As you may have noticed, my blog is “a Web Guy” and not “a Cigar Guy”. I want to focus on making products and services successful with better SEO, and not deal with all the operational headaches of the business.
Good SEO Seek Opportunity
The reasons freelance or agency SEO consulting is so attractive to a good search engine optimizer has a lot to do with our entrepreneurial drive, and our passion for success. In order to be a really great SEO, it takes a lot of focus and love for the work. I will speak for a group when I say that most of us love wielding our success tools and reaching the top of search results and making more business happen. We think like a Mount Everest climber. We have one overall goal in mind, and that is to reach the peak.
SEO will often turn away business for reasons that you may not understand. This is not entirely about money, either. We seek opportunity, and much of the time, the client simply does not have the opportunity we are seeking.
Another reason good SEO do not seek your business is because until you understand the value of our work enough to come to us, you would never pay us more than a small fraction of what our work is worth. Unless you understand that we pay you more in increased business and brand recognition than you will ever pay us, you are just not ready.
Consider how you would react to a qualified SEO with a track record of success and a proposal that he or she will work tirelessly over the next year to make your product or service offering more visible, with better brand recognition, higher conversion of lookers to buyers, higher profit margin, and they can back it up with real numbers. They even come to you with legitimate SEO guarantees that make sense to you. How do you answer to that? Do you say “No, I am totally happy where I am … I don’t really want more customers.” If that is the case, which sometimes really is the case, then why in the name of all things intelligent are you reading this blog? You want more business or you should be reading something a whole lot more suitable to sitting in a rocking chair or moving to Florida to play golf. No, instead, you want more business, and you want to know ways to make that happen.
Once you accept this, the only obstacle left is for you to get up off your wallet and push your marketing “Go” button. Just don’t ask a qualified SEO to start begging for your business or offering you discounts while you are getting more out of the transaction than they are.
Summary: The best SEO are the ones you find, and not the ones who found you.
SEO: It is the art and science of getting your website listed in search engine results for more search terms and listed higher than all the others. This is a pretty important factor to website success … and business success. So, it would seem tragic if you had done almost all the right things, but then you just forgot some of the basics.
Nobody is perfect. We all forget things. I want to give you a reminder of something that I frequently find overlooked by WordPress blog owners when they set up a new blog, and as the blog grows. The basic principle can apply to any website, really. The little things really do add up, and this is a quick SEO tip that you can use to improve your SEO so fast that you may wonder why you ever neglected it.
WordPress Category Descriptions
Sure, you have set up your categories, and you may add to them now and then. Blogs change over time, and so their focus changes. Categorizing your content is important, and so you probably did not forget that part. What I find that a lot of people do forget is to optimize WordPress category descriptions to match their content.
WordPress categories are a way to make it easier for people to find more information on the same topic. They also help search engines to better index your blog. It only makes good sense to have your category descriptions reflect the content of that category correctly, and keep it up to date.
The category description is where WordPress gets the page description for category pages to include in the meta description. If you do not have a description, or it is an old description that does not reflect changes to your blog and to the state of that category, your blog is missing an important element.
Using “Noindex, Follow” in WordPress Category Pages
You may say, “but I have a noindex, follow meta tag in my categories.” This is good, and I do, too. I use “All in One SEO Pack“, and I recommend it to others. It allows easy management of meta indexing directives.
I do not want search engines to index my categories, but I want them to know exactly what the categories are about and then follow the category page links to my article pages. It makes sense that I should give them a good meta description.
It may seem trivial, but when you consider it, many of the things we do to optimize our websites for search engine ranking really are just little pieces. Those little pieces add up to be one big picture, and until you get them all together, the puzzle is still not complete.
Managing WordPress Category Descriptions
Just to be sure I did not give you a great idea and motivate you to take action, but not follow through with a “how to”, I will tell you a couple of tips on where to go and do this, and also what to include.
First, for anybody unfamiliar with where to edit WordPress categories. Depending on the version of WordPress you are using, you will find it in your blog administration either under “Posts” and then “Categories” or under “Manage” and then “Categories”. From there, you will see all of your categories listed. Simply click on a category name and add or modify the description. I would not suggest changing the “slug”, because it would change the URL and upset your internal link structure and search engines would have to learn it all over again.
Editing Word Press Categories is Simple
Now that you are ready to edit your blog categories, try to create a description that reflects the emphasis of the category, and how it relates to the overall content of the site. As an example, my “Internet Marketing” category description reads as follows:
“Internet marketing has many sub-categories and this information focuses on marketing content creation, SEO, and social media marketing.”.
As you can see here, it reflects the blog category, but it also reflects how it relates to the overall subject of the blog.
I hope you have found this to be useful. It is sometimes easy to forget the little steps, but they all matter.
For more useful WordPress-specific tips and tricks, I recommend my friend, Ruhani Rabin‘s blog. Here is a link directly to his WordPress category where he has a lot of useful articles about tweaking WordPress blogs.
In every industry there is a list to be on. You know, an industry “A” list. TopRank Online Marketing Blog works hard to maintain such a list in the online marketing industry. It is called the BIGLIST, and it is an A-Z list of search engine marketing and search engine optimization blogs. I agree with much of the list, but I found 26 different places where it was lacking. I will share my findings, but first, I will explain some things about my industry. The World Loves Fruit Stripe
Links Rule SEO
Links are something that make or break SEO efforts. Anybody with a website should know this by now. Good SEO are particularly skilled at creating incoming links to websites, and rely on compelling content that people want to link to. Most SEO fail at linkbuilding, but the good ones have something special. Great SEO are some of the best hookers, because they “hook” you into reading what they have to say, and “hook” you into linking to it because you want to share it with others.
Any SEO blogger worth their weight in Fruit Stripe gum will write some sort of “link candy” now and then. You know, that stuff that you just cannot resist linking to or sharing to others because the SEO whipped out a Jedi mind trick or because his sexy eyes just compelled you undo an extra button.
Of course, when these linktacular search engine optimizers are looking for incoming links or to rank tidily for some given search term, it is best for them to be relatively covert about it. Nobody wants to be fooled by some SEO guy’s trickery and clever tactic of doing something that will improve his own lot in life. It is why guys like Chris Brogan announce that each affiliate link is an affiliate link and that he may benefit if you go and buy something. It is perceived as if he was hurting you by making a dollar for helping you to find the offering. So in the order of transparency, I will tell you that I want you to link to my blog like a junkie wants another hit of smack. There should be no shame in respectfully asking for assistance, and a link is not a con job or a threat to global well-being.
Sure, we marketing people are always supposed to operate under the guise of being truly altruistic and never doing anything for our own gain. After all, that is what people respond to the best. If some Murnahan fella in Topeka, Kansas tries to get a leg up and hop on a list of popular search engine optimizers who are known for killing grizzly bears with a rubber band and a toothpick, he had better be kind of hush hush about it.
Oh, for crying out loud! Did you really think I would do something that resembles conformity? Heck no, I want on that damn list, and I will fart sunshine if it will convince you to share my blog with everybody you know and ever hope to know (and their unborn children, too). Sure, I want links … I want a squillion links, but I want them for the right reasons and I am not taking food off your table to get them. I am not conning anybody for a link to my work. I am sharing information and providing value to my readers. I may even cause you to chuckle now and then, and on a good day I can make you shoot a good load of steamy coffee from your nose. Other days I may piss you off, but if I don’t get a death threat now and then, I just didn’t reach enough people. I have learned that you cannot make butter if you don’t stir the milk and polarize your audience now and then.
I like earning a living, and I am not afraid to say it. I work very hard making money for my clients as a search engine optimizer and social media marketing guy, and I have three kids to feed. The killer instinct is alive and well in Mr. Mark Aaron Murnahan, and the great news is that I am one of those toothpick-wielding grizzly bear hunting SEOs who truly does care about doing things well. I have been in my industry since the mid-1990’s and I have been behind the curtain as many clients’ great Wizard (I live in Kansas, so Wizard of Oz references are dear to me).
OK, so on with my disappointment from TopRank BIGLIST of SEM and SEO Blogs. I want to share 26 things I think TopRank has missed, and ideas to make it better. Oh, and by the way, you may also get some benefit from these useful links to blogs by other search engine optimizers. You see, there I go being useful again … I cannot help it, even when I am pushing another piece of link candy and serving my own agenda.
Listings Missing from TopRank’s BIGLIST of SEM and SEO Blogs
I found a full 26 places (one for each letter of the alphabet) that TopRank missed the mark on that BIGLIST of theirs, and I am going to share them with you. Since it is an alphabetical list of top SEOs, I will go through the 26 missed opportunities to improve their list in alphabetical order. I will include the listings immediately before and after the “oversight”, so it will be easier to reference when you look at the TopRank BIGLIST on their site.
Aussie Internet Marketing Blog – Sean Rasmussen writes “down under” about practical tips on a variety of online marketing topics including SEO, blogging, social media and general web 2.0.
Insert “aWebGuy.com SEO and Social Media Marketing Blog by Murnahan” Here
B2B Online Marketing Blog – The folks at Business.com have put together a fine resource for B2B businesses and marketers with a problem/solution format that includes case studies, conference coverage and insights on search, social media and a few Business.com product posts from time to time.
Beanstalk SEO Blog – Dave Davies blogs about news in the search engine and online marketing industry.
Insert “Bear-Killing SEO Blog by Murnahan” Here
Being Peter Kim – Previously with Forrester Research, Peter Kim now works with an Austin based strategic consulting practice that is developing an enterprise class Social Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) suite. He continues to blog about social computing, social media marketing and insights of high value to internet marketers and business leaders.
Charlene Li’s Blog – Previously a Forrester Analyst, this blog that also covers social computing and digital marketing topics.
Insert “Clever Linkbaiting That Nobody Will Notice by Murnahan” Here
ClickEquations Blog – Craig Danuloff writes this insightful paid search product blog from Commerce 360 on PPC, analytics, and internet marketing in general.
Daily SEO Tip – Search Marketing blog guru Loren Baker and SEO smartie, Ann Smarty have partnered to deliver practical, usefuland often creative SEO tips that are good for new pracitioners as well as experienced online marketers.
Insert “Damn Linkable Stuff by Murnahan” Here
Dan Zarrella – Dan is a self described, “Social Media and Viral Marketing Scientst”, and a web developer who blogs about the social media, viral marketing and SEO focused research he does and tools he’s created like the Link Attraction Factors tools and the recent Tweetbacks blog plugin.
Epiphany Digital Marketing Blog – This UK agency offers a mix of internet marketing posts from agency staffers on search, social and industry topics. Many of the posts go into detail about insights, testing and general observations from solving digital marketing problems.
Insert “Eternally Grateful Linkbaiter by Murnahan” Here
Everett Sizemore – Aka @balibones is the SEO at Gaiam and recently launched this blog dedicated to SEO. Gotta love the tag line because it’s keyword rich AND creative: “SEO Consultant – Organic Farmer of Keywords and Tomatoes”.
Flyte Blog – Rich Brooks writes about web marketing for small business.
Insert “Forever Linkbaiting by Murnahan” Here
Forrester Blog for Interactive Marketing – Excellent group blog from Forrester on various aspects of interactive marketing from B2B social media to search marketing to research and industry news.
Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog – The team at Vancouver BC based Elastic Path, an ecommerce platform, blog all angles of conducting tansactional business online ranging from general marketing to usability to social media. There’s are also a series of podcasts from last summer worth checking out.
Insert “Getting a Toothache from Sweet Link Candy by Murnahan” Here
Holistic Search Blog – UK based Peter Young blogs mostly about internet marketing topics with an emphasis on tips, commentary and insights related to SEO, PPC and online marketing.
Insert “Honest Marketing Ideas by Murnahan” Here
Hubspot Marketing Blog – The team at HubSpot writes about internet marketing and online lead generation for small business.
I – Com Blog – Searched, designed and developed. That about sums up this Manchester based internet marketing agency blog that covers design, development, copywriting and search marketing.
Insert “I Think This May Pass as Linkbait by Murnahan” Here
Ignite Social Media – Ignite is a social media consultancy with the company web site running as a blog. Topics logically emphasize social media with some optimization flavorings. More information on the post authors and a fix to the 404 on the job openings page would be nice.
Junta42 Blog – Joe Pulizzi takes his own advice and provides great tips and advice on marketing and retaining customers with content which is really spot on if you subscribe to the “give to get” principles of social media marketing.
Insert “Just a Bit More Link Baiting by Murnahan” Here
Justin Freid – As Traffic and Lead Delivery Optimization Manager at Petersons.com, Justin Freid posts his personal insights and tips on SEO, PPC and Social Media on this very new and very well designed blog.
Keyword Driven – This is Acronym Media’s agency blog (55th floor of the Empire State Building) which has a variety of posts on SEO topics, tools and observations from a mix of staff. Although, with just 2 posts in December and only 1 in January, blogging isn’t a high priority at the moment.
Insert “Kids … Did I Mention I Have Kids? by Murnahan” Here
KoMarketing Associates SEM Blog – A group/company blog covering SEO, PPC, events, industry news/trends, tips and a lot of personal insight. These folks are clearly involved in, and have an opinion on, what goes on in the industry.
Local SEO Guide – With Andrew Shotland it’s all about local internet marketing and he blogs it well.
Insert “Look! Another SEO Blog by Murnahan” Here
LyndiT blog gets our attention for great design and user experience in this BIGLIST update. Lyndi Thompson is a Social Media and Online Marketing Specialist and like me, is addicted to peanut M&Ms. Besides writing about a mix of social media, SEO, web design and online marketing topics, you might be interested to know Lyndi lives on a mini farm, owns several animals including a donkey and supports some great causes in the Northwest.
Mannix Marketing Blog – This agency blog focuses mostly on SEO, web design & Internet marketing as well as agency news and involvement with industry events.
Insert “Mark is Just Short for Marketing by Murnahan” Here
Marketer Insight – This is an agency blog from the team at WebSiteBiz covering “current thinking and strategies related to improving online marketing” with search, social media and analytics focused posts from Eric Dudley, Kyle Bumgardner and Tom Dressler.
Insert “No Good Reason to Overlook aWebGuy.com by Murnahan” Here
North South Media Blog – This Scotland based agency blog offers tips, news, interviews and an interesting “Top SEO Companies” feature each month that ranks regional, national and international SEO agencies by keyword rankings.
Online Marketing Blog – Lee Odden and TopRank team members blog about search marketing, social media as well as interviews, reader polls, SEO blog reviews, marketing tips, guest posts from industry leaders and SEM conference coverage.
Insert “Only One BIGLIST Listing is OK by Murnahan” Here
Optimized! – Mary Bowling is an experienced online marketer who writes for a Local Search Marketing column for ClickZ. She’s also blogged her observations and insights about a range of SEO topics and of course, local SEM since December 2007.
Practical Blogging – Adsense, affiliate advertising & general blogging help from Robyn Tippins.
Insert “Pretty Hard to Miss This SEO by Murnahan” Here
Proactive Report – Sally Falkow blogs about online PR and social media
Insert “Quite Interesting Blog by Murnahan” Here – The only “Q” blog on BIGLIST.
Read/WriteWeb – Next generation web technology from Richard MacManus.
Insert “Really Similar to Read/WriteWeb if You Squint Hard Enough by Murnahan” Here
Receptional – Added on November 2007, we’re happy to see this UK based blog re-added to BIGLIST. Dixon Jones and the team at UK internet marketing agency Receptional blog the gamut of web marketing topics including affiliate and search marketing, usability, analytics and social media.
SEO and Tech Daily – The Daily Scoop on SEO, SEM, PPC Trends, Analytics, Web 2.0 start-ups and more!
Insert “SEO and Social Media Marketing Blog by Murnahan” Here
Seoaware Blog – Freelance writer and web designer Melissa Fach blogs about her thoughts on search marketing and points to many articles of interest.
The Leading Edge– PR and social media guru Sally Falkow has her own blog on this list already, but also shares her insights on trends in PR technology for popular PR industry publication Bulldog Reporter. Sally’s advice includes online PR, social media and search marketing.
Insert “The Least Obvious Linkbait Ever by Murnahan” Here
The Search Insider – Not to be confused with MediaPost’s “Search Insider”, this blog from Wpromote’s Mike Mothner provides insight into pay per click and the business of search marketing.
Trail of the Fire Horse – Another excellent Canada based search and social media marketing blog comes this time from the very smart/savvy Dave Harry aka “the Gypsy”.
Vertical Measures Blog – This Phoenix, AZ agency blog focuses on SEO, link building, agency events and industry observations, Posts are written mostly by Social Media Architect, Kaila Strong.
Insert “Very Underestimated SEO by Murnahan” Here
VIZION Blog – Search Engine Watch columnist Mark Jackson and his team at VIZION blog about a wide range of SEO topics, worth subscribing to for sure.
WebConnoisseur – Dustin Woodard’s thoughts on search, web analytics and the web in general.
Insert “Web Guys Don’t Linkbait by Murnahan” Here
Web Ink Now – David Meerman Scott helps innovative marketers use digital information effectively.
Insert “X Should Be SEO’d Too by Murnahan” Here
Yoast Tweaking Web sites – This blog from Joost de Valk covers web design and SEO from the Netherlands.
Insert “Yoast Who? I’ll Show You Yoast by Murnahan” Here
This concludes my list of 26 Ways to Improve TopRank’s BIGLIST of SEO. Now, I know I am not supposed to do this, because people don’t like to see other people get ahead. However, if you want to share this with others who may find it to be interesting, I will tip my big white SEO hat to you.
When I think of all the things I do to improve client’s search engine ranking, it is enough to make a non-SEO and non-geek’s head spin. It all gets so complicated and geeky that there should be no wonder why many SEO will not shake your hand unless there is money in it.
Today I want to offer you a fast, free, and easy to understand list of actions you can take right now to improve your search engine ranking in under one hour. I don’t mean an hour per day, an hour per week, or an hour per month … one hour, and that’s it. Then you can go back to doing things you enjoy. I even broke these steps down for you in maximum increments of ten to twenty minutes, but none of them should take you that long to complete. That is, unless you don’t want to take my word for it and you need to do a whole bunch of extra research to see if I just made this all up to trick you.
This is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of SEO tricks and tips to put the SEO industry out of business (I still want to earn a living, after all). This is just sixty minutes we are talking about here. Sixty minutes that will count! So, here it is … a list of six ways to improve your search engine ranking in under one hour. Better yet, it will only take you a few minutes to read this.
Add a link to your website on LinkedIn. LinkedIn can provide valuable link relevance for your website that search engines will recognize. If you do not have a LinkedIn profile, set one up right now. It will take less than ten minutes, and it will be worth it. It is simple, and even if a squillion people do not see it, search engines will, and they will follow the link to your website, thus improving your authority with search engines. This goes for many other social networking sites as well, but the clock is ticking and we only have an hour to get through this list.
If you already have a LinkedIn profile and you have your link on your profile, that is great. You are not off the hook, though. Update your LinkedIn status with a link to a compelling page of your website that others maybe have not already seen, and that search engines may not have not already seen. You can automate this process with a service such as Ping.fm or others, which offer updating of multiple services. Update each of your social networks with the latest content from your website, unless you are ashamed of it and you want to keep it a secret.
Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 11-20: Google Profile Links
Add a link to your website from your Google Profile. If you do not already have one, it is very simple to set up, and the value of the links on a Google Profile are fantastic. They may not look very fancy, but Google Profiles are a good place to be sure your links are present. You may add multiple links, and I suggest adding some of your top priority links that you want people or search engines to notice.
In case you are not familiar, here is my Google Profile and you can create your Google Profile here. If you do not already have a Google account, the setup is simple, and it offers many other tools, but we are keeping this under one hour.
Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 21-30: Link to Social Media Profiles
Create links to your social media profiles from your website. This not only allows others to communicate with you more closely, it will add link relevance to your social media profiles, which already link back to you. You may think that social media profiles all come pre-built with link authority, but it is not entirely true. Some seem to be valuable almost from the beginning, but others can use a little help. Linking to them will boost their link relevance (which you should want anyway), and when they link back to you the wonderful circle is complete. Don’t worry, it does not need to be as elaborate as my list of social networks, but your website should link to some of your most used social networks.
Your social media profiles already receive link relevance from outside sources, and you probably already made certain that your profiles are relevant to your business. Whether your business appears in searches by way of a social network or to your site directly, you still win. You win even bigger if they are cross-linked, sharing and boosting authority for the same topics. This is making sense now, right?
Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 31-50: XML Sitemaps
Create or update your XML sitemap. Since I want to keep non-geeks from going googley-eyed and falling asleep, I want to explain that this is easier than it sounds, and is important to help search engines index the contents of your website. XML sitemaps are not the kind of sitemap that people use to find their way on your site. They are a kind of sitemap which is used only by search engines.
If you have a WordPress blog (as many millions of people do), simply add the massively popular Google XML Sitemaps plugin to your blog. It is a free plugin, but it is definitely worth a donation to Arne Brachhold for his efforts and your time saved. Roughly 3.8 million people have downloaded this plugin, so don’t be silly and say that it is way too hard to use.
If you do not have an XML sitemap because your antiquated website does not generate sitemaps automatically for you, then use an online sitemap generator to crawl your site and create one for you. Once it is created, simply upload it to your website and then add it to your Google Webmaster Tools. Yes, you already have this, because you have a Google account. You were paying attention to minutes 11-20 above, right? Great, then you already have a Google account, and you can follow the simple directions from Google about creating and submitting XML sitemaps.
I gave you 20 minutes for this one, just in case you need it. The clock it ticking, and you can do this!
This assumes that you have an existing RSS feed, but even if you do not, you can create RSS feeds and still get a lot done within this hour. Create a Feedburner Feed, and do not skip this part, because it is a big one. It will only take a tiny little bit of your time, but it is extremely valuable. You can create a Feedburner feed here. Just look for “Burn a feed right this instant” and enter the link to your feed (usually something like http://awebguy.com/feed).
The links from a Feedburner feed are quite valuable, and since it is suggested that you link to your RSS feed from every page anyway, it only makes sense that you should link to a feed with all the SEO usefulness of Feedburner. Plus, if you have great information to share, odds are good that you will also benefit by having people subscribe to your feed, which is the more obvious reason for Feedburner. See my Feedburner feed for aWebGuy.com to see what the feed looks like. It allows users to subscribe by email or RSS, and there are many Feedburner options that you may tweak later. In fact, the email subscription forms on my blog are Feedburner subscription forms. We are going to keep this under an hour, so for now let’s just be excited that you will have those awesome links pointing back to your website from Feedburner.
Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 56-60: Blog Comments
You now have just four minutes left, so let’s make these count in a big way! I want to preface this by saying that you should never, under any circumstances spam a blog comment form. It is a huge point of contention among bloggers and it is very rude to the blog owner. At the same time, it is not only very acceptable, but also very appreciated by bloggers (me included) when readers leave their productive or considerate comments. It does not have to be a perfectly crafted work of art, but it should be relevant to the article.
You may be shocked to know the value of your comments on a reputable and popular blog. When you add your URL (web address) where it is asked for in a blog comment form, it creates a link. Somehow between absurd rumors that “nofollow” links do not provide great value in search engines and people’s hurry-up, scan-and-click way of Internet life, the tremendous link value of a blog comment is often overlooked.
Although I would discourage focusing on blog commenting as a cornerstone tactic in your SEO efforts, adding your comment to a blog post can greatly increase your website link authority over time. Doubt me if you like, but you read this far, and there is surely a good reason you found this article. This blog has significant link authority (see SEOmoz mozRank), and if you comment with courtesy to my blog and my readers, your link will be right here for search engines and people alike to follow.
If you finished the list early, the next big step would be to create some website content that is worth sharing with others on social media and social bookmarking sites. When people share a link to your website because you provided something useful to them or that they think will be useful to others, it is extremely valuable to your search engine ranking. (Hint: Something like this article. ;-))
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