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  • SEO Factor Blog

    October 9, 2006 I promise I will write something good and original today. But first, I wanted to give props to Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall of SEO Book for an incredible list of 101 Ways To Build Link Popularity In 2006. This list is a bit to get through, but I found things that I had never thought of. Very useful.

    Link building is a very important aspect of SEO that, unfortunately, can not be ignored. It is also one of the most hated because of it’s time consumption and work required. This post At SEO Book should help out a lot.

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  • SEO Factor Blog

    October 9, 2006 Often times we get so caught up in marketing our site and making it aesthetically pleasing, we forget one of, if not THE most important part of SEO. Content. The search engines can not see pictures, so the only way to tell them what your site is all about is to provide that information to them via text. But why is it so difficult to put text on our sites? During the creation of a site, we often care more about how it looks than how it functions. Flash, in my opinion, can be used to create some of the most beautiful sites out there. We get so drawn into making nice layouts with neat animations, we completely neglect the fact that we are building a site for the world, not just us. The content on your site should actually be the first thing you think of when optimizing it. You need to convey to the search engines that your site is worthy of ranking, and that you are here to offer something to the masses. I often give this advice to customers, and get a great deal of fearful feedback. I hear a lot of “I don’t even know what to write.” Well, your site is an extension of your business/service/whatever, and as such you are likely to be well versed in that area. But I think people get caught up in the idea that the text is going to be placed on the site, promoting the attention to variables such as what font to use, what color, how it will look, etc. The best advice that I can give in reference to thinking of text, is to close your site, use notepad (not Word. This creates problems when deciding to copy and paste), or a pen and paper (these do exist you know), and just put your thoughts to reality. Just write. Write about your business, yourself, your products, the history of your company, whatever. Just write. Before you know it, you will have well over 800 words of cryptic information all about your industry. As I write this, I am not thinking about my blog or my site, but only what I am trying to convey to you, the reader. Once you have all that information, organize it. Make it mean something, and make sense. Given enough thought, it will not be too difficult to come up with at least 500 words, which is a good amount of text to be placed on a website. Once the content is on the site, you can obviously tweak it here and there to make proper use of your search terms (this will most likely happen anyway. You are writing on or about the same subject as your site, right?). And once that is done, you can then figure out what the layout, spacing, font, and all the other wonderful cosmetics the online world can offer will be.

    As with all things online, this is easier written than done. But try this method out and see if it helps. To me, writing is my very weakest point, and this helps a great deal. Content is so very important to search engine optimization, and should be treated as such.

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  • SEO Factor Blog

    October 7, 2006 In the creation of a site, many people make use of frames. Frames are a way of making one page that will stay static, but a chunk of which will be used to call information from other pages. The use of frames is often because it is a person’s first site, or their relative made it after graduating a website design program or just picked up a book. This isn’t really a bad thing because most website design/HTML books don’t even go into SEO, and the use of frames is one of the very first subjects covered. It can be a neat little method of keeping a common look throughout the site before learning CSS. More on creating frames can be found here at my favorite online tutorial, Tizag.

    The problem with frames is that some browsers don’t play well with them, and the information on the page is often within a frame that can not be seen. Here is a way to get around this problem, posted on Search Engine Watch, while still making use of the frames method. Keep in mind that most methods of using frames and making them SEO friendly, will only help so much. And it’s not really that much.

    But maybe you have talking to someone that doesn’t want to give up the frames no matter what you say. One good method is the creation of landing pages. (note: not doorway pages or anything that is a “trick.”) You can create a few pages that have the same look and feel as the framed pages, and place the bulk of relevant text on those pages. They will be the first set of pages on the site, (that means replacing the homepage) and will link to the framed pages. Then these pages can be submitted to the search engines. I also think that this is a cheap and ‘shortcutty’ method. It leaves a void when a surfer is moving from framed to unframed pages, and decreases the amount of acceptable information that the search engines can see.

    In my opinion it’s probably best to make good use of CSS if you want a common feel on the pages of your site. This will give the desired effects, and work very well with a surfer and search engine alike. Keep in mind my opinion on design should be taken lightly. I’m very analytical, so “pretty” is not a word I implement often. I am very lucky to be involved with people that have an incredible eye for design and a comparable understanding of SEO. The make the site, I make the site work. Now that’s a partnership.

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  • SEO Factor Blog

    October 9, 2006 So you have an optimized site, have started and continue a good link building campaign, your site is on your business cards, and you tell all your friends about it, but for some reason, it just feels like your site needs a little…push. What ever will you do? One of the best next steps is a press release. Basically, an article will be written on your site/business/product or whatever, and distributed to many online press sources. This will provide your story to many eyes, which can lead to other article written by other syndications like newspapers, radio shows, and, the really big one, some sort of mention on television.

    There are many services out there that provide a written article, promote the article, or both. One that comes to mind the most is PRWeb. They allow you to write the article and do the promoting, or write and promote it for you.

    My next post will touch more on the specifics of writing and promoting an article, but for now just know that it is a really good way to promote your business.

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  • SEO Factor Blog

    October 9, 2006 The online community is a fast one. So marketing online requires that you make use of new and creative avenues on a very mobile basis. One of the coolest thing I like about blogs is that you open your information up to anyone and everyone, giving a good opportunity for visibility. Because of our access to so much information conveniently, we want everything we want and we want it now. And that’s not an unacceptable request. This being the way of the Internet, there are easily hundreds of blog, forums, and newsgroups on which one can post in order to be heard and answered.

    One of the coolest of these avenues is Digg.com. Here is a community that allows for a member to read submissions from other members, and decide on whether the submission is spread worthy. These submissions are not necessarily provided by the member, but said member is more or less referring to a story, post, or some form of information from somewhere else on the Internet. That was confusing. Let’s say it like this.

    I go to my favorite news site. I read a story that I really liked and felt that it should be shared by all. I go to Digg, (because I’m a member) and I write a blurb like: “This is a really cool post about some guy who won a million dollars and spent the entire earnings on hot-air balloons and slingshots.” I would then link to the original story, and publish it on the Digg site in an appropriate category. Being that the story in our example deals with hot air, it would obviously be in a politics category (lol…seriously though. It would). This will give other members of Digg to check out the story, and decide on whether or not others should read it. They can ignore it, letting the story slip further into the abyss of nothingness, or they can click on a link that says “Digg.” The more “Diggs” a story gets, the more visibility it will receive. Now, this is obviously a great way to get exposure online from a large amount of people from many different areas of interests. In essence, you could post something on your blog or site, and write a blurb yourself for Digg in an attempt to drive traffic. I don’t necessarily disagree with this method of marketing, in fact I sometimes make use of it, but I really don’t like shameless posts for the sole reason of traffic building. I firmly believe there is plenty of useless stuff on the Internet already, and we don’t need anymore. If you choose this method, please be mindful of your fellow surfers. Like your site, any posts you make on forums or whatever other method you use, should be done so in an attempt to educate or share. Putting a link to your site is fine, but please don’t just run around yelling “Click On ME!!!” So check out Digg. When I post something that I believe should really be shared by all, I will post it there. Suffice to say, that’s not too often as I like to be respectful.

    Ya know, I think I’m gonna post this one on Digg with a blurb saying that this is a good post on telling others why they shouldn’t shamelessly post on Digg for self gratification…lol. Yeah. I’m gonna do that.

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  • SEO Factor Blog

    October 9, 2006 I’m getting an increasingly large amount of questions about Google’s Adsense and whether or not they should be implemented on a site. First, let me talk about what Adsense is.

    We are all familiar on Google’s Adwords. If not, I will post something on this blog a little later, but to suffice, Adwords is Google’s Pay-Per-Click service. this allows you to place a bid on a word or term, and your site’s link will be placed on a sponsored listing section in Google. Every time someone clicks on your link, you are charged a fee.

    These sponsored listings can also appear on other websites that take part in Adsense. This allows for me as a webmaster, to place a piece of code on my site, that will show advertisements for other relevant businesses. When someone clicks on the advertisement from my site, I am given a small compensation. There are sites out there that don’t offer anything more than Adsense, and make a very good amount of money doing so. If you are getting 500,000 hits to your site a month, imagine how many people might click on the ad and in turn put money in your pocket. There is an unnamed site that ranks very very well in Google for various dating terms. They are nothing more than Adsense and links to other dating services and forums. I know personally that they make an average of $30,000 a month. Not bad. But… If I have to get to a site by going through another site, why am I at that site in the first place. Why would I want to waste precious clicking time, navigating more than one site to get to what I want or need? This is a sentiment shared by the majority of the online community, and search engines. I place Adsense on most of my sites, but only in the idea that these advertisements may indeed help my visitors. Of the cuff, I don’t offer an SEO service, but information. There are some good companies out there that do, and I don’t mind sending someone there. But there are a few things to consider when using Adsense. First, it should view well with your site. Try to match color schemes and layout so that it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb. Also, Try not to place them all over the place or where there should be pertinent information. People are at YOUR site, not someone else’s. Treat visitors as such and the rewards will be better.

    Note: Sometimes you will see a banner at the top of my blog for SEO Book. I really like this guy so don’t click on the banner to get to him if interested. It charges him obviously. Click on the link on my sidebar. Goes to the same place.

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