The Word on The Web - Search Engine Optimization

Announce Your Presence.

nospam@example.com (Lisa A. Campbell) — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 08:24:20 -0700

In order to announce your presence to the web and start to build your site's popularity, the single most important SEO strategy is building links to your site.

This can be accomplished in a number of ways;

Natural link building is what the search engines like. People see your site and like it or want to reference it because it's related to their site and they link to you voluntarily and in most cases, without even telling you. When you have great original content this happens frequently.

The problem is, how do other webmasters get to see your site? Most would find it in search engines but if you don't have any links to you, it's hard to get found in the searches so it creates a catch 22 situation.

Search engines don't like manipulated engine optimization like link trades and purchases but webmasters don't build sites so that no one will visit so most will resort to some form of manipulated backlinking strategy.

If you are going to go that route then one way to get reasonably good links is to look for directory with a good Page Rank Score with Google or a word cloud site such as Whos4you.com that offers very reasonable placement on a PR5 site. Your site is shown on the front page in an order based on your bid for the placement. But, even once your site has drifted off the front page, it's still visible on the past links page providing you a permanent backlink. A lot of bang for a little buck.

Toronto SEO Company offering free SEO evaluations

nospam@example.com (Lisa A. Campbell) — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 00:43:12 -0700

I dabble in SEO. That is to say that I do my own SEO for my own websites. It's hard. I entered an SEO contest earlier this year figuring if I finished in the top 10, it would be a good advertisement for my SEO services. Well, I finished 4th after spending 3 months in the top 3, pretty darned good for an novice SEO dabbler, but it taught me a lot. I know what good SEO is and I know what to look for and I know that I don't want to do it - at least not full time. I much prefer to stick to my web design and logos. So now I give out a little free advice now and again, help people once and a while when the spirit moves me but SEO is nit picky, it's stressful, and it's time consuming - I have to admire anyone who has the stamina to take it on.

Someone who has that stamina is JP Richards who owns and runs Toronto SEO Company. I recently met JP and asked him about his SEO evaluation offer.

JP offers a free SEO site evaluation. That in itself attracted my interest. SEO evaluation isn't an easy process so I wondered how complete this analysis actually was. Have a question - ask. I asked JP what kind of information was included in his evaluation and this is what I learned;

For your hard earned nothing (read free) you get...

An evaluation and list of Existing Incoming Links as well as an analysis of the corresponding anchor text,
Existing Meta Tag Overview and keyword analysis including a Top 3 Keyword Competitive Analysis.
You also get an 8 point "on page ranking check",
a list of concerns, target keyword research and suggestions, on page and off page suggestions and more.

The SEO evaluation I read was complete, nothing left to the imagination, no stone left unturned. JP Richards is a Google™ Qualified Adwords Professional & Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Consultant and it shows.

If you're looking for a SEO service, I'd recommend contacting JP, visiting his SEO Company and looking into his services. If nothing else, do the site evaluation - I guarantee that once you see it, you'll be impressed.

Getting in a Big Tangle

nospam@example.com (Lisa A. Campbell) — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 18:08:51 -0700

Starting and improving an online business is not easy without some basic knowledge of how the internet works. Trying to understand what it is that makes one site rank higher than another in the search engine results, and how you can do as well as your competitors, are the constant challenges for a webmaster.

At what is SEO?, the blog at the bigtangle.com free directory, you will find answers to many of the questions that a newcomer to the business faces, in clear and easy to follow language.

From link development to starting your own blog, and from search engine rankings to free directories submissions, there is all the information you need to get up and running as quickly and successfully as possible on the internet.

There are also links to many of the more useful tools that you can use to assess your competitors; lists of free directories; and other indispensable tools that can literally make the difference between success and failure for your online business.

Submitting To Directories

nospam@example.com (Lisa A. Campbell) — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 22:59:05 -0700

Submitting your site to Directories

One common SEO step is to submit your site to directories.

There are a multitude of directories on the web. Many directories are free, more often than not, a free listing requires a reciprocal link back to the directory. Some directories charge a one time fee for a permanent listing, others charge a monthly fee or a slightly higher fee for a featured listing.

What I see emerging is a presence of niche directories. These directories either have a theme, such as web designer directories or adult link directory. Some have an extra purpose such as one that I found, the Biz-Giant Link Exchange Directory, which offers their subscribers a link exchange service with a subscription.

I'm seeing a lot of directories show the page rank of the listed site beside the listing or a thumbnail view of the site along with the listing or even both. I like the thumbnail feature, it gives you a bit of a preview of what you're going to see if and when you click on the link. However, in most cases, the picture is a little small to be of any great value.

A couple of directories that I've found, and like are;

The Sleek Directory http://www.sleekdirectory.com/: A listing in this directory gives you more than your standard amount of information. Featured links and top hits give you the thumbnail image, regular listings show the page rank of the site but more than that, you can "read more" on any listing and find the number of hits the site has received as well as the alexa rank of the site.

Biz King Directory http://www.biz-king.com/: This directory is clean and simple and has the same features as the above Sleek Directory.

No matter what directories you choose to submit to, you want to pick ones like these that are either focused on your niche or give high exposure to your site.

SEO from two perspectives

nospam@example.com (Lisa A. Campbell) — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 02:15:05 -0700

SEO Contests vs Day to Day SEO
By Lisa Campbell

Search engine optimization or SEO as it is widely known as to those in the internet marketing business, is the art of making a web site attractive to search engines. The result of having a site that is attractive to search engines is having the web site rank well for a given key word or key phrase.

In an SEO Contest, the execution of the art becomes slightly skewed. For instance, the first rule of SEO should be to build your site for the people and not for the search engines. However, the contest environment is vastly different. For one thing, SEO Contests are short lived. You are aiming for short term results quickly, the tactics you might use could end up getting you penalized by engines such as Google in the long term but can be beneficial for a contest lasting only a few months.

One such tactic is keyword stuffing. For instance, in the ambatchdotcom seocontest the top 3 contestants average keyword density is 50% of the title, 3% of the body, 8% in H tags, 15% in links. On the other hand, the top ranking site in Google for the key phrase "SEO Strategy" has 0% in the title, .2% in the body, 0% in H tags and 2.3% in links.

Clearly keyword density does not matter much in the long run but to achieve quick results, it is one of the tactics used in contests.

Obtaining links from other websites (backlinks) is THE first line tactic used to rank your website high in the search results. Typically one would attempt to obtain links from related web sites using a variety of anchor texts with target keywords. It is also desirable to "deep link" to internal pages and not just links to your main page.

In an SEO contest, participants are more likely to stick to using only the target keyphrase for their anchor text and they are also more likely to link solely to the main page of the site as well. In the long term, sites with better and more varied backlinks would quickly over take these contest sites in the search engine results.

Finally, in the backlink equation is relevancy. It's not very difficult in normal circumstances to find a site that is related to your target keyword. If your content is valuable, over time you will obtain organic links, that is, other webmasters will voluntarily link to your site as a resource. You can also trade links with sites sharing your theme and even buy links on related sites. In an SEO contest, finding a related site is difficult because the keyword or key phrase doesn't typically exist therefore relevancy is non existent.

So in SEO contests it becomes a matter of quantity and quality rather than relevance of the links. Participants in the ambatchdotcom seocontest have backlinks from every imaginable type of site and as long as Google doesn't catch up with the contest, and make it's determination of what is relevant, it's likely that relevancy wont be an issue.

In conclusion, while the same strategies exist for day to day SEO and SEO contests, some strategies weigh more heavily and that is due to the duration of the contest. Web sites should be built for people first and then fine tuned for search engines. Webmasters must never loose sight of this all important fact. The bottom line is that no matter how high your site ranks in the search engine results, if it doesn't attract a visitor and does not contain content worth reading then your visitors will not stay and they will not return. That is real world SEO.

Lisa Campbell
www.kaediem.com

ambatch-dotcom-seocontest.com

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