Boston Media Domain

If you already have your own blog, or are thinking of setting one up, you’ve undoubtedly read one or more of the beginner’s guides to blogging that frequent the Internet. Blog often and provide unique, fresh, entertaining, accurate, and relevant information. That’s the content of virtually all of those articles, but this information is only going to get you so far.

The information they provide will help you drive traffic to your blog, as long as you stick at it, and some of the more in depth articles may even give you a basic shove in the right gold paved direction. However, there will come a time when you’re ready to take your blog to the next level.

Wordpress And Why We Believe It’s Essential For A Successful Blog

First off, I feel this has to be said - if you’re not using Wordpress then it’s highly likely that you’re missing out. Wordpress has the biggest collection of plugins, themes, and other features of any blogging platform and, of course, it’s free. Rather than spend money on using another blogging platform, save your dollars to pay for a custom design or get help with marketing.

What Plugins Do For You

Plugins represent the greatest time saving addition to your blog, as well as the greatest opportunity to add increased features and functions that will help you take your blog to the next level. To really succeed in blogging for money, you need to start treating your blog like any website owner treats their website. This means you have to look at it like a business.

A Small Selection Of Top Notch Plugins

Wordpress plugins offer a huge range of different functions and features that you couldn’t otherwise obtain. We’ve listed a few of what we believe to be the more important here but there are many others:

Google Sitemaps - The Google Sitemaps plugin automatically creates an XML sitemap, which can be submitted to many of the major search engines. It will also automatically inform them (ping) when you add any new posts or pages to your blog.

Firestats - There are several in-depth stat packages available as plugins but our personal favorite is the Firestats package. It is crucial that you track and act on the stats for your website. Knowing how your readers found your site can help you with promotion and improve your profit levels by giving you a clearer picture of exactly what your visitors are looking for. It’s also good to know the topics that are working out and those that aren’t.

Social Bookmarking - The social bookmarking plugin adds the links to the bottom of your posts that lets readers quickly and conveniently bookmark a post with their preferred social bookmarking site. Some of these sites can help you generate traffic and even improve your search ranking.

All In One SEO - The All In One SEO plugin enables you to add a title, description, and keywords to each of your posts. These can help improve search engine results and make your posts appear cleaner in the search results. It can also be used to ensure that visitors are highly targeted.

Related Entries - It’s important to get traffic flowing around your posts because the more of your site a person views, the more likely they will be to click affiliate links or Adsense links. If your blog is entirely related to your business, they will be more likely to buy your products or pay for your services.

Adsense Deluxe - Don’t let the name fool you. Adsense Deluxe provides a fast and efficient method of adding Adsense code to any post or page, with just a single tag, but it also does the same for Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads.

Comment Subscription - The big benefit of a blog is that you can often persuade interested visitors to keep returning to your corner of the net. The comment subscription plug in further enables them to sign up and be notified of any responses to comments they have added.

Monetizing Your Blog

If you want to make money from your blog and you have a reasonable amount of traffic then the methods of advertising you use will quickly become an important topic to you. There are a lot of different ways to monetize a blog, and it would be damaging of me to try and tell you exactly what method will work without knowing at least a little about your blog. However, there are some things we will willingly share.

Don’t Sell Out - There’s a temptation for those with more mature blogs to write a post and review an item, website, or service and get paid for doing so. Our opinion on this can be summed up in pretty much one word or two; “don’t” or “do not”. You might think that you can write a genuinely informative piece and be completely open and honest without your readers ever realizing what you are doing but it is highly unlikely that this is the case.

Sponsorship - Sponsored advertising is a great way to monetize some blogs. Generally speaking (and there are exceptions), the more specific the topic of a blog, the more likely this will prove to be a viable advertising solution and it may be easier to bag sponsored ads than you think. And, because this is Wordpress, there are plugins that help you do it too (AdServe is a good one).

Affiliate Data Feeds - Most affiliate networks have some form of data feed or affiliate feed. If you intend to promote affiliate programs then make the most of these, but ensure that the feed fits with your site. Don’t just slap up a bit of code and expect it to miraculously turn your hobby blog into a multi-million dollar, award winning blog because it takes careful planning, ad placement optimization, and some trial and error to get the best results. Guess what? There are numerous plugins to use with the Amazon affiliate program and other programs so make the most of them.

Blog Networks

The final point we’re going to cover in this, now extensive, article is whether or not you should join a blog network. A blog network is, unsurprisingly, a network of blogs. The overall aim and the method that connects the blogs differs with each network. Some may be connected by having different subdomains on the same main domain. Others may simply use the same banner. Similarly, some networks are established to bring profit to bloggers and (understandably) to the network owner. Other networks want nothing more than to promote a near state of hippie euphoria over one particular topic.

To Join Or Not To Join

It seems to have become a habit but we can’t honestly tell you whether you should definitely join, or definitely not join, a blogging network. They work out for some by providing traffic, improving search rankings, and even helping out with the general blogging process. However, other blogs would fare better on their own, especially the more popular ones. Similarly, some networks are so powerful that they can generate thousands of hits to a blog instantly before you even submit a post, while your blog may carry a smaller network if you have good traffic levels.

The reason that a lot of bloggers do join a network is so that they can network with other bloggers. It provides a sense of belonging and can help develop blogging relationships. If you get invited or accepted into a particularly large network then you should consider trying it because it really can pay dividends but be warned that the large networks have pretty stringent guidelines that you must adhere to in order to be accepted.

What’s Next For Your Blog?

This article covers some of the blogging factors that you need to look at when you consider taking your blog to the next level. Simply posting good content will often help you build traffic, but that’s really all it will do. You need to monetize that traffic, and where possible, keep it returning over and over again. You should also employ some methods of further building your traffic, other than posting good posts.

There are many reasons social media can be a productive marketing channel or platform. Rather than employing it as a tactic du jour, the purpose should dictate strategy and the tactics used for reaching desired goals. A few common outcomes for social media marketing efforts include:

Gain insight into a community of interest -You can run all the customer surveys you want, but some of the most interesting and progressive market research can be found within the social communities where your customers interact, share information and make recommendations. Tapping into the streams of dialog is a great start to engagement and social participation with your brand.

Build brand visibility and authority - You’ve heard it before, “Conversations are happening online about your brand, with or without you.” You might as well participate and do so in a way that pays close attention to the interests and needs of your customers - providing them with information and interactions that further support your brand.

Influence and promotion of products/services - Providing information to educate customers about your products in the formats and media types they prefer can go a long way towards building the kind of buzz that results in new business. By promotion, I mean advertising on social media sites.

Link building for traffic and SEO - Creating linkbait and promoting it to social media news and bookmarking sites can attract a slew of links from bloggers that read them. However, sustaining high levels of promotion to the same site or with the same user accounts will quickly be outed as social media spam. Creating value for the community is not the only rule, creating value and behaving according to formal and unwritten rules is what sustains social media sourced link building.

Drive traffic for ad revenue models - Becoming a power user of several social communities involves consistently contributing quality content, rewarding those who vote positively on that content as well as growing a large base followers. That base of like-minded connections can serve as an effective distribution channel for unique and interesting content which drives traffic to ad supported blogs that host the content. The linkbait suggestion above not only attracts links, but also attracts traffic. However, many ad supported sites report that traffic from social media sites is notorious for not clicking on ads. It’s the bloggers that write about linkbait content first viewed on social media sites that drive the kind of traffic which results in ad clickthroughs.

The mechanisms for putting these strategies into action vary depending on the resources and time allocations a company can make on its own, or when working with an agency. In fact, it is most often due to internal resource constraints that companies outsource social media strategy and tactics in the first place.

Type in “social media marketing” into Google and you’ll get about as many search results (23 million) as there are social media tactics being promoted. As with any type of marketing, social media promotions center around matching content with interested audiences as well as stimulating conversation and buzz. Content can be created from scratch, mashed up or you can “borrow to build” by piggybacking on someone else’s social media success. The key is to listen and participate.

WordPress SEO Tip #20 — Don’t Block the Search Engines!

First and foremost: make sure you’re not inadvertently telling the search engines to go away! Believe it or not, some WordPress installations block the search engine bots by default.

From your admin panel, go to Options > Privacy and make sure it’s set to “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone.”

Bonus Tip #1 - Are Comments Enabled?

Some WordPress users restrict comments to registered users, or disable them entirely. While this may be appropriate in some situations, in most cases comments are a very beneficial factor, and a defining mark, of a blog.

Comments engage your readers, help you get more “fresh content” SEO brownie points, and give search engines another reason to come back frequently.

Here’s how to fully enable comments:

1. Login to the WordPress administration center
2. Click “Options” on the menu bar
3. Is “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” checked? If so, consider unchecking it.
4. Click “Discussion” on the submenu bar
5. Make sure the following are checked: “Allow people to post comments on the article” and “Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)”

WordPress SEO Tip #19 — Does Your Blog Have a Topic?

Some of us would prefer to have a blog where we talk about anything that comes to mind: cars, movies, photosynthesis, dust mites, you name it.

In and of itself, such a blogging style isn’t wrong; however, you can leave search engines clueless as to what your blog’s about and thus for what search queries your blog should appear. And some of your readers might get annoyed in the process as well.

WordPress SEO Tip #18 — Ensure URL Canonicalization

If your blog posts are accessible from more than one URL, you could end up with:

• Search engines confused as to which URL to display in the SERPs.
• PageRank split between multiple pages.
• Duplicate content penalties.

Starting with version 2.3, WordPress takes care of this and makes sure your content is accessible from only one place. So if you use an older version, either upgrade to the latest version of WordPress.

WordPress SEO Tip #17 — Check for Valid XHTML

Most code errors are minor, but the more serious ones can cause content misinterpretation by search engines, lower rankings, and rendering errors.

WordPress itself produces valid code, but errors can crop up from two other common sources:

• Poorly written plugins or themes
• User-created coding errors (in the blog posts themselves, or through theme customizations)

First check your site for errors. If an error is found, look at the surrounding content to determine the source of the error.

If a plugin is the culprit, fix it if you’re good at that sort of thing (the beauty of open source!), or send a quick email to the plugin developer and let him or her know.

WordPress SEO Tip #16 - Don’t Leech Link Juice!

One characteristic of WordPress blogs is the sidebar, which is typically present on every single page. Do you really need to be passing link juice from every single one of your pages to every single one of those links? If the answer is no, consider adding rel=”nofollow” to the less important ones.

WordPress SEO Tip #15 — Use Images in Your Posts

Not only do they increase visitor attention and retention, they give you an opportunity to use keyword-rich “alt” attributes, “title” attributes, and filenames. Plus it’ll give your blog visibility in image search engines.

WordPress SEO Tip #14 — Does Your Theme Use Header Tags Correctly?

• The blog title, or your main keyword should be in an <h1> tag.
• If your subtitle is keyword-rich, you can put it in an <h2>; otherwise I recommend putting it in a non-header tag like <div>.
• The post titles should go in <h2> tags.
• Sidebar section titles should be <h3> tag or non-header.

Unfortunately, some themes (including the WordPress Default Theme) put the sidebar section titles in <h2> tags. Although this makes sense from a strict structural point of view, it also gives irrelevant sidebar headers (”Categories,” “Archives,” “Meta,” etc.) equal weight with your SEO-important post titles.

To sum it up: Use a theme that utilizes header-tags properly, or try fixing the theme you have.

WordPress SEO Tip #13 — Use Pinging

A ping is a “this site has new content” notification that invites bots to visit your blog.

WordPress pings one website called Ping-o-matic by default, which in turn pings others. You can also add additional services by going to Options > Writing in the admin panel. (For example, the pinging URL for Google Blog Search is http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2)

Another Bonus Tip: Once a post is published, WordPress issues pings whenever the post is edited. Try to cut down on after-publishing edits to avoid being considered a ping spammer.

WordPress SEO Tip #12 — Install the Google XML Sitemaps Generator Plugin

XML Sitemaps are search-engine-friendly directories of your blog’s posts and other pages intended to help search engines spider your site. Though pioneered by Google, they’re supported by Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com as well.

The Google XML Sitemaps Generator for WordPress makes creation of these sitemaps easy and automatic. It also lets the engines know when you post new content.

WordPress SEO Tip #11 — Avoid Sponsored Themes

There was a debate in the WordPress community not too long ago on the topic of sponsered themes. These themes include paid links (usually in the footer) than can suck PageRank and possibly result in a Google paid links penalty.

Stick with WordPress theme directories that don’t include sponsored themes, like the WordPress Theme Viewer.

Bonus Tip #2 — Write Right Post Titles

SEO isn’t everything: once you’re high in the SERPs, you need action words to prompt clickthroughs.

Put keywords in your title if at all possible, but not if it’ll compromise the click-trigger action title.

WordPress SEO Tip #10 — Use Traditional SEO Techniques

A WordPress blog is a website too, so the traditional SEO techniques still apply:

• Use important keywords in the title and throughout the post, but don’t overdo it.
• Bold your keywords when it makes sense.
• Develop links to your blog.

WordPress SEO Tip #9 — Use the Power of the Slug

Ever wondered what the “Post Slug” on the “Write” page was? It’s the text that goes in the URL when you have “Pretty Permalinks” enabled (see tip #2).

By default the slug is a “sanitized” version of the post title. However, if your title is overly long or keyword-sparse, you can change the slug through the Post Slug box.

Yet Another Bonus Tip: The SEO Slugs plugin can take out common words like “you,” “is,” etc. out of the slug for you automatically.

WordPress SEO Tip #8 — Use Timestamping to Stagger Fresh Content

Search engines and visitors love fresh blog content on a steady, regular basis. But for a lot of us, creativity comes irregularly: 10 post ideas one week, none the next.

Enter timestamping. When writing a post, click the plus sign next to “Post Timestamp.” Set a date and time, and the post will publish by itself whenever you specify.

Search engines will keep coming back, and visitors won’t be inundated with a ton of new posts all at once.

Hint: If you’ve timestamped a post, don’t click the Publish button, since that’ll publish your post immediately regardless of your timestamp. Instead, select “Published” under “Post Status” and click the Save button.

WordPress SEO Tip #7 — Use Tags for Free Keyword Boosts

WordPress 2.3 and above include a tags feature that lets you assign keywords to your blog posts. Once you start using them, then since each tag gets its own webpage, you’ll be generating a ton of your own themed, keyword-oriented internal backlink pages.

WordPress SEO Tip #6 — Integrate Social Media

Adding social media links/buttons like the ones above makes it easy for visitors to promote your quality content (hint, hint). Social media is a great way to build links naturally as well as drive targeted site traffic.

• Share This is a very popular “social media all-in-one” plugin.
• If you’re a FeedBurner user, you can use FeedFlare to add action links, including social media ones, to the bottom of your posts.

Lots of social media sites provide code you can use to generate buttons like those above. Grab your own code from:

• Digg
• Sphinn
• StumbleUpon
• Mixx
• Scoop

WordPress SEO Tip #5 — Implement Deep-Linking

Here are several great ways to implement deep-linking on your WordPress blog:

• Within your posts, link to other posts on your blog and use important keywords in the anchor text.
• Install the Similar Posts plugin, which inserts a list of related posts you’ve written to the bottom of each of your blog posts. This process will create aged deep links and increase visitor retention.
• Display your most popular posts in your sidebar using the Popularity Contest plugin. Gives your most popular posts tons of internal links, and helps your visitors find your best content.

WordPress SEO Tip #4 — Make Scrapers Work to Your Advantage

Most of us would probably be upset if someone used scraping (automated content stealing) to publish our laboriously-written posts as his or her own.

But with a little work, you can make the scrapers work for you, not against you.

Here’s how to do it, courtesy of EarnersBlog.com:

If you use Wordpress it’s very easy to take full advantage of these sites linking to you, all you need to do is create links back to your content within your feed.

What you’ll need for this:

• Cave Monkey’s Full Text Feed Plugin
• Solo Technologies Add Related Posts to your Feed Plugin

These plugins simply show your entire post in your feed & also add some related posts in your feed only (which will also increase the amount of people in your feed reading more than 1 post).
Now, everytime anyone scrapes your blog via your RSS feed & republishes it they’ll be deep linking to 5 or more of your existing posts. Bingo.

WordPress SEO Tip #3 — Install the All-in-One SEO Plugin

Like the name implies, this plugin covers a lot of the bases.

• Puts the blog name after the post title, giving your keyword-rich titles more prominence.
• Allows you to override title and meta tags on your homepage as well as your individual posts.
• Lets you add “noindex” to your category and/or tag pages to avoid duplicate content.
• And more.

A must-have for serious WordPress SEO.

WordPress SEO Tip #2 — Use “Pretty Permalinks”

Sure, you may already use Pretty Permalinks, but are you using the best possible permalink structure?

For those of who don’t use Pretty Permalinks, it’s a must-do for WordPress SEO. Permalinks, in essence, are the URLs of your WordPress blog posts. “Pretty Permalinks” put slugs (which should contain keywords — see tip #9) in your URLs instead of the default numbers.

To enable or change them, first login, then go to Options > Permalinks.

The two options you do not want are “Default” and “Numeric.” Here are my suggestions for picking a “pretty” permalink structure:

• Date and Name Based: The problem with this is that your posts are several extra directories deep, which can decrease relevence in some search engines. However, such a permalink structure can nevertheless be desireable if your blog is news-oriented or date-sensitive.
• Post Name Only: If your blog covers one topic that has no subtopics (which, though possible, is unlikely), select “Custom” and type /%postname%/
• Category Based: If your blog covers multiple topics, implement category-based URLs. (You have to look into the Codex to find information on category-based URLs, so many WordPress users probably don’t realize that this option exists!) To implement it, select “Custom” and type /%category%/%postname%/

WordPress SEO Tip #1 — WordPress Secret: Use Category-Based Permalinks for SEO Siloing

Here’s the big finale. Problem is, this tip is so important (and lengthy) that it really merits its own post.

Here’s a teaser: it entails implementing the powerful siloing technique on your WordPress blog through a combination of plugins, settings, and strategies.

Conclusion

Okay, so it was actually more like 23+ tips instead of 20. I certainly hope you gleaned a useful strategy or two in your quest for WordPress search engine optimization. If you enjoyed this post, please social it, email it, link it, or leave a comment!

Ok, so check it.  I am scanning webmaster radio and I hear the guy that started the website “cool site of the day” offering free consultations for the first bunch of folk that contact him.   I email him and sure enough he sends back his contact information to catch up with him on the tele, good to his word.  The first positive sign!

My issues have been as follows as I described to him, I own lots of domains and do not have a lot of time to build them out  maximizing their potential.  Additionally, I keep buying more domains, so as you can see it becomes and exponential problem trying to buy and build at the same time. So many url’s so little time;-)

Parking the domains has not been an ideal revenue generator and the affiliate space has frankly left me cold. Twenty five cents for a lead isn’t even worth getting out of bed in the morning for as a domainer friend of mine spewed.  And folks, he is correct. I have summarily cut out any affiliate program that was getting more from me than I was from them.

On to Virus247.com and the progress I have made with this new program. Although the results are still not in I feel bullish the direction this guy gave me is the right path and the company, when I called them, was very forth coming in their intent and possible domains to try and test. they recommended some affiliate sites to sign up with and described what was actually generating results in their on-board tests. Choosing  Virus247.com as my first test in the affiliate space for software I researched over 11 categories and 5000 keywords for everything involving spam, spyware and virus protection.

Now comes the kicker, getting it all set up. As usual with the affiliate programs I am on hold till I get approved by the vendor for their program. Although I do have access to other affiliate programs similar to the one they described I really want to try what they recommended and see if it works like they say, given enough time for the search engines to parse and post about a 60 day window.

The part of the program that I liked is you get 10 sub domains you can put up to 500 keywords into.  If you do the quick math, you get 11 domains including the primary, times 500 keywords, which can max you out at 5500 keywords per domain Virus247.com, and sub-domains total that the engines will be parsing against. Nice!! gotta work right? I’ll let you know the results in 60 some odd days. stay tuned!!

If you are like most people, you will spend countless hours trying to build traffic to your website. Did you know that over 80% of website traffic is the result of search engines? If you want to increase the number of visitors to your website it is crucial that you have a top search engine position. As you already know, getting a good search engine ranking is next to impossible without optimization. Just submitting your website to the search engines will not get you a top search engine ranking. You also need to properly optimize your website in order to increase your search engine ranking. Once you have achieved a good search engine position only then will you start to see thousands of  people visiting your website each and every day.

We make it easy to optimize your website for search engine rankings.

What you should not do. . . (spamming the search engines) There are several things, considered “spamming”, that you can do to try to get your page listed higher on a search engine results page. Basically, you should never try to trick a search engine in any way, or you risk being blacklisted by them. Since the majority of your traffic will come from search engines the risk far outweighs the benefits in the long run. Below is a list of the more common things we recommend that you never do when trying
to achieve better listings.

Are you spamming the search engines?

It’s easy to spam an engine by accident — especially since the rules are constantly changing.

Easily make sure all of your pages are spam free with the Submit It! spider. It’ll check each page of your site and let you know if it finds any problems.

Get spam help!

Do not: Do anything to trick the search engines into listing your site better. If what you are doing is not listed as one of our search engine tips the search engines will likely view it as spam and penalize you. List keywords anywhere except in your keywords meta tag. By “list” we mean something like - keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3, keyword 4, etc. There are very few legitimate reasons that a list of keywords would actually appear on a web page or within the page’s HTML code and the search engines know this. While you may have a legitimate reason for doing this we would recommend avoiding it so that you do not risk being penalized by the search engines. Use the same color text on your page as the page’s background color. This has often been used to keyword stuff a web page. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam. Use multiple instances of the same tag. For example, using more than one title tag. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam. Submit identical pages. For example, do not duplicate a page of your site, give the copies different file names, and submit each one. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam. Submit the same page to any engine more than once within 24hrs. Use any keywords in your keywords meta tag that do not directly relate to the content of your page.

Over the last two weeks we have been talking about Google every other day. This time it is the Page Rank. Google Juice, Google flux, Back links, all have been jumping around a lot lately. Changes both in Page Rank and back links count numbers have been extremely noticeable.And this morning I wake up and see some of my sites with increased PR. BostonMediaDomain went from a PR0 to a PR2.

I tried to check on Google’s data centers but most of them are behaving strangely (reporting a PR0 even for established websites). One tool that appears to be working is this one.

This is either a new Page Rank push to the Tool bar or it is still some data fluctuations of the old PageRank push.

No one was expecting such an early PageRank update in 2008. The last one, as you probably can remember, happened late in October and it created a lot of buzz due to a new policy that Google decided to adopt towards websites that were selling text links without the nofollow tag.

Some people are arguing that since the PR drop is not generalized, it must be a slap from Google due to practices that conflict with its guidelines. Andy Beard suggested that the sites that got penalized were either selling links or exchanging them inside large blog networks. This is a feasible explanation given that most of the Weblogs, Inc blogs (Engadget above all) were penalized, and they do not sell paid links either.

There is also some activity going on the Digital Point Google forum, which indicate that some change is indeed happening right now.

Keep in mind that we are talking about the toolbar PageRank, that one that you are able to see with your browser. Real PageRanks get updated continuously.

I tried to use some of the prediction and cross datacenters tools to see if the change was trackable from them, but most are not working anymore.

Have you noticed any changes?

Here’s how we work:

We examine your business. This is not a laborious inspection that takes days or weeks to accomplish, but a top-level brain-picking session through which we learn what your business is about, who your customers are, why they buy, who your competitors are, what differentiates you from others in the minds of customers / prospects, and what your unique competencies are. We also want to know where you’re going - where you plan for your company to be a few years from now. (To help you get there, we must know where you want to go.) We routinely sign nondisclosure agreements (NDA’s) , of course.

We create a web strategy. Our strategy leverages your market advantages while simultaneously pushing key customer hot buttons. We appeal to what customers want and need and position you as the company to meet their needs and help them achieve their objectives - quickly, easily, and at reasonable cost. We can also handle all your collateral and PR needs through Boston Media Domain, being a seasoned provider of strategic marketing communications and PR programs to clients worldwide.

We create copy & site design. Once you’ve bought into our strategy, we get to work. Generally within six weeks of project launch, you have first-draft website copy. With your approval, we then deliver a full design that reflects your objectives and is consistent with your corporate culture. We include client-supplied photography and site executions of your logo. Once you approve the design, any final touches are completed and the site goes live. (We can recommend a company to host your site, too.)

We optimize the “live” site and submit it to search engines. Our site optimization specialist looks at how customers access web-based information from businesses similar to yours, and uses what she learns to “optimize” your site for the best possible results in key search engines. She “codes” the site, submits it, and usually within a few weeks, you begin to see the results.

Follow-up. Websites are not static; they are living things that grow and change over time, just like your company. As your company’s needs change, we’ll be available to help you update your site to accommodate the changing face of your business.

There will always be do it yourselfers succeeding at web promotion and search engine optimization. Many established businesses offering web services today came from humble beginnings. The Web evolves as the result of the innovation and experimentation of individuals. The sharing of knowledge. The do it yourself attitude.

As text link brokers and mass link networking decrease in value and use in social media increases, it becomes more important for companies to have an internal approach and awareness of search engine marketing. Outsourcing to SEO firms is still a smart option. Making the most out of Web 2.0 usually requires some level of cooperation between SEO firm and site owner. You don’t need to be an expert to know the basics of good SEO practices, and that added knowledge will be a great advantage whether you’re working along side an SEO team, or promoting your own site in your spare time.

So if you’re on a “need to know” basis with SEO, the following points should show what a plan should include:

1. Create Original Search Engine Friendly Content

Original web content is your most valuable asset, and ensuring search engines can read it is very important. Text embedded in images or Flash cannot be read, so make sure you use important keywords, headings, and hyperlinks in plain text form. Instead of using images as navigation links, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) makes it easy to format those links to look more like ‘buttons’, thus creating powerful anchor text as well as making it visually appealing. Use heading tags properly and don’t try to hide keywords or text by making it the same color as the page background or shrinking it so it can’t be seen. Make sure the keywords you wish to rank high for are used frequently in the page copy but within reason.

Copy and paste a page’s URL into a search engine to see if it has been indexed. If you’ve just created the page, it may take a few days (weeks) to show up. Aside from age, many factors can lead to web pages not being indexed by search engines, such as duplicate content (ie. a printer-friendly version of a page might be indexed and the normal version not, or vice versa); links generated by JavaScript instead of HTML; poor site architecture (ie. using too many sub-directories); lengthy, dynamically generated URLs using special characters; and orphaned pages.

2. Choose Keywords Wisely

One of the first steps of SEO, this needs to be done properly the first time or all your future efforts and promotion could end up being wasted. Start by writing down general terms that describe your products, services or web content. Use keyword research services to investigate word and phrase variations. Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery, and the Google AdWords suggestion tool are good starting points. The goal is to find those niche phrases that your target market uses to find sites just like yours and optimize your site for them. If the phrases do not get enough use by searchers, your profits from ranking for them will be low. At the same time, stay away from general terms that are tougher to rank for (ie. like “Apartments”, “Computers”, “Business”, etc.) as a great portion of the traffic will be irrelevant and you’ll break the bank attaining such competitive phrases.

3. Get Others to Link to Your Site

In theory there are countless ways, some traditional and some quite innovative, to get other web sites to link to yours. In practice, it can be easier said than done. Google defines a link as it pertains to rankings and SEO as a “vote” from one site to another. The more quality votes your site receives, the greater chance you have of rankings well. If a well established site links to yours, that link carries more weight than one would less reputable page.

If your site has useful content and is doing something unique, you’re already ahead of much of the competition. People need a reason to link to your site, as very few will do it out of the goodness of their heart. Trading links can work, but link exchange networks have decreased in value and won’t be of much use in competitive fields. Buying links, if you haven’t heard, is a big Google no-no. While entire articles could be written on this topic, here are a few popular methods of acquiring incoming links:

- issuing company press releases with a link back to your site
- submitting to reputable business directories such as Yahoo! and Business.com
- be active on related blogs by commenting and exchanging ideas
- if you have clients with web sites, ask if they would mind adding your link in a “partners” section
- participate in relevant forums and discussion boards with a link in your signature
- write and submit original articles to web publications in your field with a link in your bio
- get involved in social media and bookmarking

4. Social Media Revolution

The collaboration between Internet users and the development of online communities is at an all-time high. Social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Furl, Reddit, and Technorati offer users a way to store their favorite pages and media online, and share it with others. These services also provide a way to promote your own content or create a buzz over a product or service. Creating a Myspace page or Squidoo “lens” is also a way to network and share information.

However, if your goal is to generate sales then you must offer something without the promotional hype. The reality of social media is that popularity is based almost entirely on public interest. If your information or media isn’t unique or of interest to anyone, you cannot force success using social media communities.

The key to using social media and bookmarking sites to your advantage is to not be shy. Network with other users, bookmark and share useful content, create eye-catching titles for your entries, and tell your friends and co-workers to vote on content you have on these sites.

These four points are a general guideline to follow for SEO. Search engine optimization experts and firms are a good outsourcing option in competitive markets, while the DIY attitude can yield great results for web site owners with smaller marketing budgets. If you’re in the latter group, hopefully this helps get you started.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a critical component in having a successful website! No matter how great your website looks, if it can’t be found on search engines like Google and Yahoo, then its value weakens. Optimization allows your site to be found through specific keyword phrases (META tags) and can raise your website’s ranking to higher positions on top search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) and will greatly increase web traffic exposed to your site. All SEO packages, except the Basic SEO, include monthly maintenance. This is important because people’s search phrase patterns change, the search engine firms’ ranking algorithms evolve, plus all of the major search engines take 30 to 90 days to “crawl/spider” your site to check for updates and optimization changes and if your site hasn’t changed between crawls your ranking will fall; therefore it takes some time to see a significant rise in your website’s ranking. We can also work to build inbound links from other relevant but non-competing sites. The search engines are continually changing their search algorithms and changing the rules on what constitutes ’spamming’. Many cheaper SEO firms use automated submission and optimization techniques, while faster, the major search engines are aware of this and will penalize your site (with low rankings) if these unethical methods are used. We only use Organic SEO techniques, otherwise known as Natural search engine optimization, that guarantee you won’t get penalized while achieving the high search engine ranking your business deserves.Other terms for Search Engine Optimization are:

* SEO
* Organic Search Engine Optimization - Organic SEO
* Natural Search Engine Optimization - Natural SEO
* Search Engine Positioning
* Search Engine Marketing - SEM
* Sear