Archive for SEO
Use Website Grader to Check Your SEO
Posted by: | CommentsIf you’re wondering how your website or blog stacks up against the competition when it comes to SEO, it’s time to stop wondering. Website Grader is a free tool that gives you a very comprehensive analysis of your website.
I learned about this tool from Boris Mahovac – Email Marketing Coach who left the link in his comment to my post How to Improve SEO by Getting Links. Boris will be my guest on the February 25th edition of Andrea’s More Effective Marketing Podcast.
This tool is easy to use and not only tells you your site’s page rank, inbound links and more, but it tells you what needs your attention.
For example, Website Grader told me my blog isn’t listed in the directory DMOZ. I had applied to be listed but apparently didn’t follow up to see if I actually got listed. Thanks to the report, I immediately went to DMOZ to reapply.
The report also commented on my meta tags, headings, images, the last time my site was crawled by Google and much more.
Not only can you get a report on your own site, you can get a comparison between your site and a competitor’s site. This way you’ll know where you need to improve to beat your competition.
Now this site is not perfect. The report tells me I have no inbound links. I know this isn’t true because I belong to a couple of blog carnivals who regularly have links to my blog. I also know several people have quoted me in their own blogs and included links.
In spite of this problem, I’d definitely recommend using Website Grader.
Andrea J. Stenberg
How to Improve SEO by Getting Links
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Yesterday while I was talking with head of SEO for Yahoo! Canada Darryl Peddle, he stressed how important links are to the search engine ranking of your site. The more links there are coming into your site, the higher you get ranked.
But how do you get those incoming links? It’s actually not that hard.
Online Directories
Listing your website or blog in key online directories is important. Two of the most important ones are Yahoo Directory and Dmoz. In both directories new listings are proofed by a real person to rule out spam sites so they both are considered very authoritative by search engine.
Demoz is free and may take you six months to a year to actually appear. Yahoo Directory will get you in faster but costs $299 per year. For some that’s a steep price, but the search engine ranking you’ll gain is well worth the cost.
Article directories
Submitting high quality, original articles using your important keywords to the main article directories really helps your SEO. At the bottom of each article you have a resource box which includes some info about you and your url.
How does this help? Whenever someone uses your article on their blog or website, they must include the resource box with the live link to your site. Assuming they used your article because it matches the subject of their site, these incoming links can really increase your ranking.
Darryl suggests writing 12 unique articles of 250 to 300 words and posting them to the article directories over the course of a couple of months.
Where do you submit articles? If you do nothing else, submit to ezinearticles.com. They are the most important article directory. If you have the time, you should also submit to goarticles.com, buzzle.com, articlealley.com and articledashboard.com.
Reciprocal Link Building
This suggestion by Darryl surprised me because everyone I know has been saying this is a big no-no. However, Darryl assures me this still has a positive effect, if done correctly.
You don’t want to trade links with just anyone. You must only link with people who are in your niche. If incoming and outgoing links are from sites on a related topic, the search engines see this as more authoritative. So if you are selling computers on your site, you would want to link with someone who sells computer software, not someone who sells cosmetics.
An even better way to exchange links is to trade articles or blog posts. Write an original article for the other person’s site and include a link to your own site. This is more powerful than being part of a list of links because search engines look at the total number of links on a page when calculating their worth. So a single link from a blog post is more valuable than a link on a page of fifty other links.
It’s also better from a reader point of view. A reader from the other website or blog is more likely to click the link after your article than if it’s just one link in a long line of links. And after all, getting people to your site is why you’re worried about SEO anyway.
Internal Links
Creating links within your site is also important. When you write an article, create links back to other related articles you’ve previously written. This makes it easier for the search engine spiders to crawl your site. It also makes it easier for readers to locate related content which may make them spend more time on your site.
Clearly building incoming links and therefore improving your search engine ranking is not all that hard or mysterious. It just takes a little planning and some time.
Andrea J. Stenberg
If you found these tips helpful, you really should listen to the rest of the interview. Darryl gave some great tips and advice around SEO, at least one of which is completely new to me and one I plan to implement ASAP. You can get the free recording of my interview with Darryl by registering for Andrea’s More Effective Marketing Podcast.
Free Search Engine Optimization Course
Posted by: | CommentsWhen deciding whether you should take the time to learn Search Engine Optimization (SEO) you may want to know a few statistics.
According to the NPD Group, 92% of online consumers use search engines to shop and/or purchase online. When using search engines like Google, users are 20x more likely to click on search listings rather than banners, titles or other paid listings.
Clearly, if you want to succeed online, you need to find a way to get to the top of the search engine rankings for your important keywords.
If you’re just an average person who’s not a technology expert, can you do this without paying large fees to an SEO expert? Yes you can.
One way to learn is to sign up for the free SEO Training by GNC Web Creations. J. Cricket Walker is the mastermind behind this online training course. Using Yahoo Groups to deliver material, this course will walk you through the basics of learning SEO.
Go to the SEO Training sign up page and you’ll be ready to begin. A new session starts tomorrow so this is a great time to start. I’m currently taking the course so if you decide to join you may see me there.
Beware, signing up for the course does you no good if you don’t actually do the work. However, the course is designed to be done at your own pace. So just schedule a couple of hours a week for SEO and you’ll be through it in no time.
However, if you’ve been wanting to learn SEO but have been scared by it, this is an affordable (free) way to do it.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Five Reasons to Learn About SEO and Use it On Your Site
Posted by: | CommentsYesterday I spend an amazing day at Hick Tech – a technology conference here in Owen Sound. Starting at 7:30 am and finishing at 6:30 pm, I was exhausted by the end of the day.
But I learned a ton, particularly in the workshop on SEO by Yahoo! Canada’s Darryl Peddle.Darryl made SEO sound simple. Today I’ll share his five reasons you need to learn about SEO.
1. SEO = More Traffic
Putting search engine optimization (SEO) to good use on your site will increase your ranking in search engines leading to an increase in traffic. Well duh!
2. Good SEO = Better Traffic
The better you are at SEO, the better quality of traffic you have. Particularly if you can optimize your site for long tail searches your customers and prospects are actually using.
What’s a long tail search? A search of a very specific keyword or phrase. Not as many people are searching these keywords, but the people who do will be highly targeted. For example: the long tail search of the phrase “cheap flowers for Mother’s Day” is much more effective for a flower shop than optimizing for “flowers”.
First of all, the competition is much higher – more people are using that word in their website. Second, the keyword “flowers” may also get gardeners, poetry lovers wanting poems about flowers, and students researching a paper on the reproductive cycle of a flower.
3. Better SEO = Increased Sales
All selling is a numbers game. More traffic and better quality traffic will always lead to more sales, even if the copy on your site is less than stellar. You wouldn’t be in business if you didn’t want more sales.
4. Good SEO Protects You
Nobody’s perfect and nobody can please everyone all the time. It could be you dropped the ball on customer service or it could be the customer hates the colour of your eyes. It doesn’t matter why, but occasionally anyone can get a client who has a hate-on for them.
The crazed ex-customer may spend an inordinate amount of time on the web bashing you. If you aren’t paying attention to SEO around your name, you could have potential customers doing a Google search and discovering the first five listings are for www.yourcompanysucks.com.
5. Good SEO Leads to a Snowball Effect
If you score in the top three of the search engines, you’ll be seen as an expert. Bloggers and journalists will start calling you and writing about you – they don’t have time to look lower on the list. The just want the best people they can get to quickly. If you’re on the top of the list, that’s you.
The more people are writing about you, and linking to your site, the better search engine ranking you have. The better search engine ranking you have, the more people will write about you …
Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing more of what I learned about SEO.
Andrea J. Stenberg
