Wasted Page Rank
Posted on | July 18, 2010 | 2 Comments
Page rank and traffic are two very valuable rewards sought after through seo. I have been kicking myself on a regular basis after wasting my page rank (small but still page rank) and traffic through neglect.
The neglect of Hybrid SEO is due to many factors that I will not bore you with, but I find it important to inform you that simply getting page rank and traffic does not mean it is time to take a well deserved break. When you are rewarded with page rank and traffic, this means you now have even more work to do. Not only do you need to maintain your current page rank and traffic rankings (hopefully grow them), but you now have the obligation to provide your visitors with what they want.
Page rank and traffic is not always easily obtained, and once you finally start to see some positive results, you should capitalize on those results. Capitalize by providing your visitors with the products, services, and/or information they want and need.
Take it from me, neglecting your site at any point can do major damage to your page rank and traffic rankings that can take a very long time to repair. Steady consistent effort applied to your website will help with your page rank, traffic, and your ability to soldier on.
Practical SEO Solutions Part 2
Posted on | May 16, 2010 | 1 Comment
After posting Practical SEO Solutions I got side tracked with some other projects and have not posted in a while. For that I do apologize. As you can see by the title of this post, I wanted to add some more details to the Practical SEO Solutions post.
Link building has more than one practical approach to achieve results. In my first Practical SEO Solutions post I provided a few suggestions that were more direct. Another approach to link building is more passive and will in most cases provide better results in the long run with higher quality links. Write remarkable content that others want to link to. That statement has nearly been over used, but still stands true. If you are not writing remarkable content that others want to link to, the aggressive link building you do will be a waste of time. Write for the reader.
Another practical seo solution mentioned was to submit your sitemap to the major search engines. There are many free tools you can take advantage of that will do all the heavy lifting for you. If for some reason you do not have access to these tools and/or you do not know where to submit your sitemaps, I am including the major locations to submit your sitemap below.
Google webmaster tools has many great services and tools to help webmasters do what they need to do including submitting their sitemaps to Google.
Yahoo Site Explorer is the Yahoos version of Google webmasters tools. You can submit urls, sitemaps, and manage domains here.
Sitemap Writer is a great place for submitting your sitemaps to all the top search engines that accept sitemaps. You can simply type in your sitemap url and submit to all search engines. Just visit: http://www.sitemapwriter.com/notify.php
For more information on sitemap submissions check out: http://www.seo-expert-services.co.uk/blog/posts/submit-sitemap-to-msn,-google-and-yahoo.html, they have a nice post on this subject.
Any solid seo solution should include proper use of your keywords and key-phrases. As mentioned in the previous post, you need to write content that flows well and includes proper use of your keywords and keyphrases. There is debate as to the proper amount of times you should repeat your keywords or phrases in a single post or page. One thing that is for sure is that you should keep your keywords or keyphrases at no more than 2. That means target 2 specific keywords or keyphrases and no more. If you try to target to many keywords or phrases on a single page or post, your frequency will be watered down and your keywords will not hold enough weight.
Be consistent. Your site should have a main subject and every post or page should revolve around that main subject. Even though the main subject is, well; your main subject, it should be considered a secondary keyword and you should use other keywords and phrases as the primary in all your pages and posts.
Example:
Site about shoes -
Page about running shoes
The page about running shoes should target 2 specific keywords or phrases about running shoes and you will be automatically using your Shoes subject as a secondary keyword while implementing your primary keywords or phrases.
Make sure to utilize your title and alt tags as well. Using your title and alt tags on images can increase your seo especially with all the new image search features coming into play lately.
Practical SEO Solutions
Posted on | April 17, 2010 | No Comments
Practical SEO. Do those two words actually belong together when discussing seo solutions? Seo solutions can be called many things, but practical seo is rarely one of them. Take a look at a few of the more popular sites about seo and you will quickly find that seo solutions are far from practical; swimming deep in the waters of complex impracticality.
Practical seo solutions, especially white hat seo solutions have been considered a myth until now. A single blog post about practical seo solutions can not cover the entire list of seo solutions, so I attempt to provide a few simple and practical seo solutions now and leave some for another post.
Practical SEO Solutions – The short list -
- Simple link building – Link building is rarely simple, but you don’t need to build a thousand links per day. Try some variety. A few in the low level free directories. Contribute to a few blogs and forums. When I say contribute, that means actually add quality to the discussion and don’t post just to get a link. Use some ethics and earn your links. If you are a blogger, try out some new themes and leave your comments about your experience with the theme on the developers site.
- Submit your sitemap – If you are a blogger, then there is most likely a quality plugin for generating sitemaps. If you operate a static site, there are several services free and paid that will generate a sitemap for you. If you are so inclined, you can write your own sitemap if you like and it is fairly simple, but the more pages you have, the longer it will take. Submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo, MSN, and ASK.
- Keyword and Key-Phrase – Write content that flows comfortably with your keywords and key-phrases. This post is a poor example considering my key words are; Practical SEO and SEO Solutions. You must learn keyword prominence and frequency.
- Be consistent – Aside from submitting your sitemap, you need to be consistent with your link building and writing content that is rich in keywords. There are literally hundreds of seo solutions that can increase your rankings, but learning the practical seo solutions and applying them will be a better use of your time allowing you to focus on your specific website topic.
Practical seo solutions do exist, but you must be willing to learn them and implement them into your regular schedule. Once you have used them for a short time, they will become a standard practice in your everyday routine. What practical seo solutions can you implement today?
SEO Link Building
Posted on | April 12, 2010 | No Comments
Link building is known by nearly every webmaster as one of the golden rules of seo. But link building can actually hurt your seo efforts if done incorrectly.
Your seo efforts should include link building practices, but before you go out and acquire a boat load of new one way links, consider the seo impact those links will have. It is no secret that link building has a major impact on your seo, but there are many variables to consider.
The site that is linking to you should have a good reputation. While link building is almost always a good idea for your seo, having backlinks from a site with a poor reputation could harm your seo efforts. When I say good reputation I mean a site that is in good standing with the search engines as well as the internet community.
Link building in large numbers over a relatively short period of time could also harm your seo efforts. If you run a mid or low level site with moderate to low activity and acquire a large number of links in a relatively short period of time, some search engines could raise some flags and apply filters to your incoming links. You may see no seo benefit from your link building, and you could even see a negative seo impact from this type of link building.
Even when your link building efforts are 100% legit, search engines might view a large number of new links as a sign that your seo and link building tactics might be less than legitimate.
When you are performing your seo and link building efforts try to keep everything on the same level. If you are going to be building links, then you also need to be building content as well as gaining more attention to your site. Certain media and/or social attention can help even out your seo efforts.
Just remember, link building and seo are perpetual practices that should be steady and continuous and large fluctuations in new incoming links can trigger warning flags in some search engines.
SEO Resources
Posted on | March 21, 2010 | No Comments
SEO resources can be found by performing a simple search on Google for the term seo. Of course, seo resources are not all you will find, and the search term seo is only one example. Having a quality list of various seo resources that you can refer to is a valuable asset for any seo project.
I have compiled a partial list of seo resources below in no specific order. Most of the seo resources contain valuable and free seo information, and some will have premium seo services for a fee.
SEO Resources List:
- www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291 – Google is your friend when it comes to learning more about seo. Not only can you search Google for seo resources, but Google also provides some valuable seo information.
- www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp – Along with the link above, Google has a webmaster channel on YouTube that has some useful videos answering some great seo questions.
- knol.google.com/k/seo-basics# – This is a Knol by Aaron Wall creator of SEO Book. Even though Aaron does not reveal all, there is a great deal of useful seo information to be learned from this Knol.
- www.seochat.com/ – SEO Chat is one of the top seo resources available on the internet with its vast array of information and tools, it is highly recommended to visit this site often.
- www.seobook.com/ – SEO Book is a very popular seo resource that provides a wide variety of free seo resources, seo information, and seo tools. SEO Book also has a paid membership program that is rather expensive, but according to testimonials well worth the cost.
- www.seomoz.org/ - seomoz is another top seo resource providing both free and paid seo resources. seomoz is a very valuable seo resource for anyone wanting to learn more about seo.
- www.seocompany.ca/ - SEO Company may not be as well know as some of the above mentioned sites, but they have some great seo resources and seo goodies to feed on. SEO Company is another great place to visit for free and paid seo resources.
The seo resources list above is just a small sample of the seo resources available online. I recommend absorbing as much free seo information as you can from every seo resource you can find.
