SEO Strategies

I just want to post something dealing with SEO Strategies.  I will be posting links to articles and forums where people talk about their SEO strategies that work for them.  Feel free to add your own.

1. SEO Strategy - Here is one I found on the Warriors Forum that I thought was pretty detailed.

Pinterest - Adding a Pin It Button To Wordpress or Blogger

Pinterest is a new player on the scene in the social network space.  The website has exploded and is becoming a huge player. 

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows users to organize and share images and video found across the web.  Users can search for and browse pinboards created by other people to discover what other people are pinning. 

The Pinterest Pin It functionality allows you to Pin anything that catches your eye: cool pictures, great articles, or fun finds!  A Pin (basically a bookmark) can be added by visiting a website by clicking a Pin It button.  The Pin It buttons are similar to a Like for Facebook or a Tweet This for Twitter.  Each pin added using the Pin It button links back to the site it came from.

WordPress Permalink Settings

When setting up a new Wordpress Blog website the default permalink setting looks something like this http://www.endthetrendnow.com/?p=123.

The problem with this structure is visitors will have a hard time remembering the actual URL since the URL contains just a number. It is also not very SEO friendly, since the actual URL will not contain the keywords you're looking to rank for.

I see a lot of Wordpress websites where the URL has dates in it.  Is this a good permalink setting?

Normally the sites that should employ this type of permalink structure would be news sites, where a date might help in organizing material.  It has also been known to lower traffic and CTR from older search results.  When people see an older date in the URL, they may not click on the link, since they think the link is old or out of date. 

Open Graph

What's all this business with Open Graph? 

The Open Graph protocol enables you to integrate your pages into the social graph. These pages gain the functionality of other graph objects including profile links and stream updates for connected users.

Ok, that's nice.  Tell me exactly what it means for me as a website owner or blog owner and why is it important for SEO.

Basically any website can implement the Open Graph protocol. It allows any web page to become a rich object in any social graph, making it easy to find what people are liking across the Web -- from a movie to a blog.

Cool SEO Tools To Help You Save Time

There a lots of SEO Tools out there that can help you save time and combine tasks.  As I find them I will be adding here.

GrabInbox is an easy way to manage multiple twitter, facebook, fan pages and linkedin accounts all in one application rather than having to log into each app/website.

• Manage multiple social networks.
• Quickly schedule messages on twitter and facebook.

Twitter - Unfollow

One of the things Twitter interface currently doesn't do well is it's search functionality and managing an account's Followers and Following.  Luckily they have allowed the public access to their API and programmers in turn have created all sorts of Twitter related applications.

Twitter Rules and Best Practices

Twitter has throttle down accounts to try to deal with people setting up accounts for spamming purposes.  They did this by limiting the number of followers a user can have.  When you first setup a Twitter account you are only allowed to Follow up to 2000 Twitter users.  In order to increase this amount you must have 2000 Twitter followers.  Once you’ve followed 2000 users, there are limits to the number of additional users you can follow: this limit is different for every user and is based on your ratio of Followers to Following. They also have other policies in place like regulating follow churn and aggressive following.

Boost your Facebook Follower Count

There are several services out there that can boost your facebook page likes.  Basically this helps Boost your reputation.  This can certainly help when trying to use your "like" count as part of your social media influence.  

Once such service is called Boostlikes.  They will even send you 100 real human likes to your Facebook fan page to get a taste of our powerful and effective services. Follow the steps below.

Boostlikes service exponentially grows your social media following to improve your reputation. Use our services to buy Facebook likes and fans, Twitter followers, and Google+ votes, all at highly competitive prices.

DownsideMany of these boosting services don't have active users promoting your website. Usually they haveaccounts setup by users who don't actively participate.  So if your goal is to receive traffic and conversions from these social metrics, you probably aren't going to succeed.

So definitely check out Boostlikes buy Facebook likes

Social Signals

Social Signals are the name of the game right now and Social Bookmarks have become a fundamental part of any serious SEO campaign. Articles and pages can up their ranking for keywords with just quality Social Bookmarks.

Right now Google loves Social Bookmarks, especially High PR, Trusted ones.

If you are serious about reaching the top of Google, you need to include a Social Bookmarking scheme as part of the equation. 

The problem with Social Bookmarks is it is really time consuming unless you have some type of automated software.

Outgoing Links For Better SEO

Outgoing Links - Why Use Them

Outgoing links from pages and posts have become increasingly important for determining a page's rank.  SEO masters know this and use outgoing links to increase their overall page ranking.

Now you maybe thinking to yourself, why do I want to give away backlinks for free by linking out?  It seems to be a contradiction when trying to attract website visitors by then sending them away.  As it turns out, providing links creates what is known as a hub site.  A great example of this is the Drudge Report,where the home page is mostly backlinks to other news sources and stories.  Complete websites are designed around the outgoing links concept.  Yahoo, where the concept of a hub site was

Long Tail Keywords

A “Long Tail Keyword” is a set of keywords grouped together to form a phrase.  The opposite of these long tailed keywords are Head Terms, which are short, phases such as "Weight Lifting" or "Hula Hooping". 

In general, Long Tail Keywords consist of between three to five words and should be relevant to your site or the article being written. The advantage of using a Long Tailed Keyword approach is there isn't as much competition, thus it is easier to rank for.  When coming up with these longer keywords, make sure they are relevant to your website and niche.

Since Long Tail Keywords are highly specific, and draw less traffic, they tend to draw more quality hits to an article or page, which leads in more conversions if products are being sold.

How To Integrate with Google+ and Create a Rich Snippet

Last night I was determined to figure out how to integrate my EndTheTrendNow.com website with Google+.  It took me a little bit to figure out the correct procedure, but in the end I got it.  So to save you loads of time I thought I would share How To Integrate With Google+

History

But before I begin, a little background on what Google Calls Rich Snippets.  Google tries to present users with the most useful and informative search results. The more information a search result snippet can provide, the easier it is for users to decide whether that page is relevant to their search. With Google+ and rich snippets, you can now provide a picture of your Google+ account to go along with an entry.  Now it is still up to Google as to whether the Rich Snippet gets displayed.

Google needs 2 pieces if information to connect a website to a Google+ Account
1. Your Website or Blog must be listed as part of your Google+ Contributor's links and must be public.
2. You must add your Google+ Author account information to the website

Setting Up a Google+ Contributor link

Great SEO Blogs

If you are looking to learn a lot about SEO, nothing will help more than learning from the experts.  Here are some of my favorite SEO Blogs/Websites on the net today.

BlogStorm
Digital Points
iBlogZone
Jim's Blog
Search Engine Land
SEOBook
SEO Desk
SEOMoz
SEOPtimise
Yoast

Cool Google Search Tricks

Google Search Tricks

link: SiteName.com Provides a random list of sites that link to the SiteName.com website.  The search will certainly not bring up all backlinks, but it is a quick way to check to see who is actually linking to you at a high level.

intitle:Keyword site:SiteName.com will return results from a given website where the keyword is in the title.

site:SiteName.com Keyword will return results where the Keyword is on the page, title or anchor text.

Finding Your Google+ Id

Trying to find your Google+ or Google Plus ID might seem like looking for a needle in a haystack until you really know your way around the Google+ interface.  For what ever reason Google hasn't made it abundantly clear where it is or how to find it.

Finding Your Google+ id

1. Log into your Google+ account
2. Click the profile tab on the left
3. Check the Address Bar at the top

Your Google+ id is in the address bar and should look something like my Google+ id https://plus.google.com/u/0/102231285956381340743/posts

The long numeric string "102231285956381340743", yours will be different, is your Google+ id

site:domain.com Google Keyword Trick

There is a little not so known trick that can be used when you want to figure out what Google is indexing for your website based on a set of keywords.

In the Google Search Bar enter "site:Your Domain Name.com" + the keyword or keywords

Example
site:EndTheTrendNow.com "Medicine Ball Workouts"

In the Example above Google would return all the relevant pages for "Medicine Ball Workouts" for the website EndTheTrendNow.com

Overcoming Google's "Not Provided"

Recently I learned via the Warrior's Forum how to semi-overcome the problem with Google Analytic's new "Not Provided" issue.  Now of course this isn't the ultimate fix, but it sure helps tell you where the "Not Provided" traffic is going.

Steps to track "Not Provided"

1. Open Google Analytics and Select the Website in Question
2. Select Traffic Sources --> Sources --> Search --> Organic
3. Add a second dimension by clicking the [second dimension] button
4. Select Traffic Sources --> Landing Page
5. Add the search Not Provided in the search box and click return (this will filter all the other keywords)

You should now see the "Not Provided" with the accompanying landing page.   You still don't have the actual keyword used, but this will at least give you a better understanding of where people are going.

Google Analytics Not Provided

Keywords Be Gone!

Google in it's infinite wisdom decided to block organic keyword information from being displayed aka "Not Provided" in Google Analytics. 

Last year Google began encrypting search queries with SSL - Secure Sockets Layer as the default for users who are logged into their Google products like Gmail, Google Analytics, Google AdWords, Google+...

Google estimated that this would be under 10% of Organic searches.  This has resulted much more keyword data being omitted from displayed in Google Analytics.

Well I can tell you that at least for me it is already at 20% and climbing.  If Google+ grabs hold and people really start using it, that number will grow drastically.

Here is a great video on Google+ that discusses what Google+ is and what it is not.

Social Media Influencers

Do you know who are the top social media influencers are?  In today's world a big name influencer can have the same reach and pull as large media outlets. 

There are a few websites out there that let you get a view of how connected people are.


https://www.peekanalytics.com
http://knowem.com

SEO Forums

In the ongoing search for SEO information I have stumbled across some great forums.  These forums allow you to get answers to your SEO questions as well as provide a wealth of information.

http://www.warriorforum.com
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/

Google Penguin

Penguin update went live on April 24, 2012.  Google's aim with this release is to decrease search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using non-White-hat SEO techniques.

Rather than write a lengthy article on the subject, check out this one instead on Search Engine Watch. It goes in some detail about the Penguin update.

Creating Good Quality Pages

How To Get Pages To Rank

The following rules apply for upping your chances to have good ranking pages:

• It goes without saying that to rank high you should always strive to write high quality unique content.

• The page should have the keyword in the title and the URL.

• The keyword should be in the first and last paragraph and the one in the first paragraph should be in bold.

• Keyword density around 1 – 2%

• LSI keywords, try and use between 5 – 10 LSI terms in your posts. For more information on LSI check out my other post LSI - Latent Semantic Indexing.

• Add the LSI keywords as part of your tags.

LSI Latent Semantic Indexing

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing and its a way for a search engine to determine what a web page contains without specifically matching the actual term being searched.  A web page about Fitness  will likely have related words such as Exercise or Health on it.

In effect by placing additional weight on related words in a webpage's content, LSI will lower the value of a page that only matches a specific term and doesn't contain other related terms.

One easy way to do a LSI search is to use the ~ symbol when searching in Google.  Using the above term "~Fitness" resulted in seeing words bolded such as "Exercise", "Health" and so on.

The best way to optimize a website for Latent Semantic Indexing is to create what are known as silos. The top level page would pertain to a particular keyword or phrase and then linking pages would fall under it with relating keywords of the same theme.

Here is a good tool for finding LSI related words
http://lsikeywords.com/

There are a few websites out there that allow you to understand your competition and who is linking to them.  This is often referred to as backlink information. 

Backlinks are hyperlinks on other website or blogs that point to your website. Search Engines like Google use backlink data as part of their equation for ranking websites and pages. 

http://www.Ahrefs.com
http://www.SEOSpyglass
http://www.Majesticseo.com

Want to make sure that search engines know about your website and will start crawling it.  Pinging it through the free services below is one way to achieve this.

Here are 3 pinging services that are free and can help your Blog or website get noticed quicker.

• http://pingomatic.com/
• http://www.pingoat.com
• http://www.pingler.com

Finding Your Competition In Google - Competing Pages

Have you ever wondered how to find the number of competing pages for a particular keyword or phrase.  The answer is really quite simple, yet might not seem as obvious as you think.

When you do a search in Google for a given phrase or keyword, for example "Medicine Ball Workouts" Google will return a list of results and a line above them that will look something like "About 1,290,000 results (0.31 seconds)"

In this example it means that there are roughly 1,290,000 pages that have those keywords somewhere on the page.

If you refine your search, this time by adding double quote (“) symbols around your keyword or phrase ..  you will notice a significant reduction in results returned.

To reduce this amount even further you can perform an advanced search and change the "terms appearing" dropdown to "In The Title Of The Page" or "In The URL Of The Page"

Google Trends, Search Volume Index

The term Search Volume Index is a pretty tricky term and I am not exactly sure I have a full handle on it.  

Google Trends (Another Google Product) analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results – our Search Volume Index graph.

Here is a great article that discusses the Google Trends platform.

WordPress Sitemaps

For Wordpress you need 4 different links to submit to Google Webmaster Tools.

• Your Domain/post-sitemap.xml 
• Your Domain/page-sitemap.xml 
• Your Domain/category-sitemap.xml 
• Your Domain/post_tag-sitemap.xml