The Profitshere

Are you confused about SEO? Not sure who or what to believe? Can’t afford to spend a fortune and you just want to know how to get the best results for your website? When I started working with improving my search engine rankings for my websites a few years ago now they were exactly the issues I faced. Thankfully one of the first guys I came across in the industry that I related to was Justin Brooke. Justin is a no BS kind of guy. And he shares actionable content. There is a lot of SEO mumbo jumbo out there. And a lot of stuff that people say is important, but is it really that important?

I would like to alert you to an opportunity to get inside Justin’s head, and learn the real truth about SEO from someone with the runs on the board. I have been working with SEO now for a few years and have lots of PRO level tools, but I find that it really still comes back to the absolute truths that I learnt from Justin when I first started.

Now, every now and then Justin does something a little crazy!! Why? Not to sure. This guy makes a lot of money on the internet, and he can charge a lot of money for his services. I know that he has worked with and for some on the biggest companies involved in search marketing. And now he is basically giving away his book ‘SEO Lies’. He is not quite giving it away. It will cost you $1. And there is a no strings guarantee, so if you don’t like it you can get your $1 back.

If you are even remotely serious about improving your search rankings then you need to grab a copy of Justin’s book. My guess is that if your website is not currently on the first page of search results, you are getting little to no free traffic to your website. Research says that the number one search listing gets 40-45% of the traffic for that search term. How much would that be worth to you right now?

So, now you have a choice. You can spend $1 and risk it, or you can not. The choice is entirely yours. At least head on over to SEO Lies and check it out.

For most things that I do in life, I like to have a few hard and fast rules, some things I am careful off, and I like to keep things pretty simple and not over complicate them too much. I treat link building in the same fashion, and so there are a few things that I try and avoid and a couple of rules that I follow. The first and only major thing to avoid is to SPAM. And the major rule I try to follow is to be natural.

Obviously there are a lot of spammers out there on the internet. They might be black hat SEO’s or they might just have too much time on their hands, or they might be link builders. What is a spammer? For me, a spammer is someone whose sole aim is to build a link, without adding any value to the other website. A blog comment like ‘great post’ with a link, or maybe a forum signature that has lots of links in it without adding any value to the forum itself.

If this is your link building strategy then you may have some initial success. But be prepared that many of your links will be deleted. Forum and blog owners usually take some pride in their websites and resent people using their website for personal gain without giving anything back.

Don’t get me wrong, forums and blogs can be a great source of links and a useful part of a link building strategy. But don’t deface someone else’s website with your link. Add value to their website and I am sure they will be more than happy for you to add a link.

The second rule I follow after DON’T SPAM, is be natural. What is natural? Now, just suppose for a minute that I am a search engine. And I see a website that has lots of links. And for a minute I think that this site might be important. Then I see that the site has all of the links with optimised anchor text. These are the words that form your link – like ‘Click here’. Then I see that all of the links point at the home page of the website. And then I see that all of the links are ‘do follow’ links. Maybe, just maybe by now I am starting to get a little bit suspicious.

Is it possible to over optimise your website? Ask someone that has had their website removed from the search engines all together and they will probably say yes. Search engines don’t want you to manipulate their results, and they exact severe punishment for people that are seen trying to manipulate their results. And for most people, if your site is removed from the results, the best thing to do is to start again. Sure you can apply to be re-instated, and plead your case, but if the big G decides you have been doing the wrong thing then you might just have to start again.

So, when you are looking at a link and it is ‘no follow’ – take it. And if a webmaster won’t give you the anchor text you want – no problem. And where is the line when it comes to link bulding? Well you won’t really know until you are on the wrong side of it – and then it is too late.

That’s it. My two rules for link building. Where you looking for something more complicated than that? Sorry about that. In the words of Zig Ziglar the famous American motivational speaker – ‘If you give enough other people what they want, you will get what you want.’ Website owners want quality content to add to their sites and members that will create intelligent informed discussion. And link builders want links. If the link builders meet the website owners somewhere in the middle then everyone is happy.

Remember Rule number one is Don’t Spam. And rule number two is be natural.

If you have a website for your business and you have had any kind of exposure to SEO (search engine optimisation) you will have no doubt heard about how important it is to have other websites linking to your website. But are all links the same? Or do you just go and find any website that will link to you and create as many links as you possibly can.

There are some important factors to consider when planning a link building strategy for your website. And there are some other factors that are thrown around the internet as being really important, that seem to have little or no importance at all. So, I am going to talk about the factors that I have found to be most important, and some of the other factors that are talked about as being very important but don’t really seem to be that important.

If you are considering link building for your website, then the questions that you are probably asking yourself are how many links do I need to build to get the coveted number one position on Google, and how long is it going to take to get there? The short answer to that is ‘it depends’. It depends on the strength of your competition, and it depends on how long it will take for Google to find your links. Obviously in very competitive environments it takes more work and a longer time to improve search engine rankings. And, maybe just maybe your competitor’s are also doing some SEO work to their websites as well.

One of the first things I look at for a website’s backlink profile is the number of websites that are linking to them, not the number of links. Your website might have 500 links all from the same website. As opposed to another site that has 500 links from 500 different sites. Which is the stronger backlink profile? I would much rather have 500 links from 500 sites, than all from the same site. That doesn’t mean that if I can get 500 links from one website that I won’t take them, but I count it more like 1 link than 500.

I am going to talk a little bit about PageRank, but not because it has anything to do with search engine rankings. PageRank (PR) is an indication of how important Google sees a website, or how much authority it has. I take a site with a high PageRank as having more importance in Google’s eyes, than a site with a low PR. So, I count a link from a site with a high PR as being more important than a link from a low PR site. That does not mean that I only look for links from sites with a high PR, as they are often much harder to get.

The final thing I am concerned about is ‘Does the link stick?’. If I build this link now is it going to be there in 12 months time? Often times, forum links or blog comments will have their links deleted because the blog owner or moderator sees it as spam. It is very easy to post a whole lot of links across different forums and blogs, but do the links stick? Do they get past moderation?

Forum links and blog comments are often seen as an easy way to build links to a website, but they can often involve a lot of work for not much return if all of your links get deleted as spam. Effective forum and blog linking will often involve building a relationship, by demonstrating that you are a valuable member of the community first, and then you will get your links to stick.

There are a couple of things that seem to float around the internet as being really important when it comes to link building, but are they really that important? The first of these is the ‘no follow’ link. Whilst each of the search engines treat ‘no follow’ tags a little differently, it is basically supposed to mean that the robots will not follow the link, and the link does not pass any value to your site. Firstly not all of the links to your website will be ‘do follow’ links no matter how hard you try. And secondly personal experience tells me that these links do seem to count as I have had websites move rankings when the only links that have been added to the profile have been ‘no follow’ and nothing else has changed. If you can have a no follow link or no link at all I would take the link every day of the week.

Relevance is another factor that is given great importance but is it really that important. Common sense tells me that it could be somewhat difficult for a search engine robot to determine relevance to any great degree. For example, what is a site like Wikipedia or CNN relevant to? I would take a link from Wikipedia every day of the week even though it might be from a page that has no relevance to my website at all. Relevance is great for building relationships with people in your industry, or related industries, and if this helps you build more links to your website then that is great. But don’t focus too much on relevance as a criteria for link building or you will be missing many great link building opportunities.

Later in the week I am going to deal with things to avoid with link building, and also where you can find great links for your website. Link building can be a tedious exercise, but it is an exercise that is critical for your search engine rankings, and something you must give due consideration to.

Happy Link Building

Let me just say upfront that I don’t work for Google – never have, and probably never will.

And as far as the mythical Google Algorithm goes, I don’t know what it is, and I probably never will.

Is SEO just supposition and hypothesis?

Much of what is surmised as being important about search engine rankings is hypothesis and supposition and experience. Test, Analyse, Repeat. Test, Analayse, Repeat.

And that is what makes it hard if you are new to SEO, or you are responsible for your company website and you don’t know anything about SEO.

So what I would like to do is break it down into simple terms and apply a dose of common sense and help you come up with an action plan to improve your Search Engine rankings and maybe even get you to that magical number one ranking.

What factors really matter in SEO?

It is my experience that there are really only 2 factors that matter when it comes to rankings – RELEVANCE and AUTHORITY.

Now the trick really is, is how do the search engines decide what is relevant and how do they decide what has authority?

STEP 1: SEO is about having relevant content

Content that is relevant to what?

Keywords

Content that is relevant to what your likely customers would type into the search box when they are looking for you or your product. In SEO terms these are keywords. Alot of my clients that have had existing websites have suffered in their search engine rankings because their content is only vaguely relevant to what searchers are looking for.

The biggest hurdle to overcome with content is to take the content that is relevant to your business or product, and make it relevant to what searchers are looking for?

Where do you put the Content?

Lets just say for a moment that I am a search engine robot and I am crawling your page to find out what search terms it might be relevant for?

The first thing I might look at is the url (page address). And I find that this is www.yoursite.com/07908699070.html. ‘yoursite’ might give me a clue as to what is relevant, but all those numbers don’t really relate to anything that a searcher types into a search box. However if I was to find www.yoursite.com/thebestwidgetsintheworld.html, now I might have a better idea what your site is about.

Now (in my robot role) I am going to scan through the content on your page. Oops, I can’t read any of it. It is all images and javascript and flash and I can’t see any of that. Sorry but I can’t really help you with that. And I have lots of other sites to visit so I’ll come back later.

Oh, hang on there is text and html code here and I can read that. So in terms of important things, page headings are pretty important, bold text is pretty important, text that links out to other pages is important, and finally general content is important. These are the places that you want your keywords.

STEP 2 : AUTHORITY

OK, so there are lots of theories as to how a website gets authority, but let me ask you another question.

In real life, how do you decide if someone has some authority?

If you knew they had a large amount of knowledge in a particular area that would give them authority.
If you knew they had a large amount of general knowledge that would give them authority.
If they were wearing a uniform that would give them authority.
If they were recommended by a large number of other people.
If they were recommended by someone you thought was important.
If they had lots of experience (age) in a particular area that would give them authority.

In my experience it is not much different as to how a search engines decides which sites have the most authority.

Does this site have a lot of relevant content that relates to this search?
Does this site have a lot of content, some of which relates to this search?
Is this site recommended (linked to) by alot of other websites?
Is this site recommended by anyone important?
Is this site older? (more experienced)

So, in terms of authority the best ways to make your site more authoritative in the search engines eyes are to get more links to it (expecially from important websites) and to create more content for your site.

Action Plan for Search Engine Rankings

Here is my action plan for dummies to improve your search engine rankings -

1. Research what is relevant to searchers and decide on your keywords.
2. Create content around these keywords
3. Incorporate the keywords and content into the important parts of your website
4. Make sure the robots can read your content
5. Get more links to your website
6. Create more content around your keywords.
7. Rinse and repeat.

Have you ever wondered how Google really works?

If you have an online business that relies on search engine traffic, then I am sure there has been more than once that you might have cursed Google for a change in your rankings for no apparent reason.

Many businesses and internet marketers spend a large proportion of their day trying to ‘beat’ Google. Is this you? If only you could get to the top of the rankings then all of your problems would be solved!!

Well, unless you know someone that works at Google, then what you know about Google is probably the summation of what you have read from others and your own personal experience. Anyone out there with any inside information?? lol

This is one of the best visual representations I have found as to the mechanics of what Google does. Maybe this just might help you to take your online business efforts up a notch or two.

Infographic by PPC Blog

Any good SEO will tell you that content is king.

And that is absolutely true. You need to base your website on great content.

But what do you base your great content on?

KEYWORDS.

Keywords are what your customers are typing into the Google search box when they are looking to buy your products or services.

And you should know that not all keywords are created equal.

Some keywords will bring you alot of traffic, but not many sales.

Some keywords will bring you sales but not much traffic.

And some keywords are just too plain competitive to worry about, unless you have got a bottomless budget.

The Foundation of Great Keywords

There are a number of factors that you should consider when you think about selecting the keywords to base your content and website around.

1. Search Volume – if there is no search volume then there is no point. That said, alot of web searches involve long tail keywords (4 to 10 word search phrases). However if you target the three and four word search terms with good traffic volume you will find that you pick up long tail searches as a result.

I often use the Google Search Keyword Tool to get a measure of search volume for a group of keywords. I also use a commercial software program called Market Samurai which measures search volume and other important keyword benchmarks.

2. Commercial Intent – is your traffic going to buy? Are you bringing a bunch of tyre kickers to your website, or are people coming to buy? It is important that your keywords will bring you traffic, and it is vital that your visitors have some intention of buying something.

Microsoft have a very useful tool for measuring Online Commercial Intention.

One of the other ways that you can get a measure of commercial intention is to type your keywords into Google. Now look at the right hand side of the page to see how many Google Adwords ads there are. If there are no ads then the commercial value of the search term will be low. If there are at least a page of ads then the search term has a much higher commercial value. (or there are alot of mugs that are buying ads and not making any money.!!)

3. Competition. The final factor I take into account when I assess a group of keywords is the competitiveness of each phrase. You can do a quick assessment of this by typing each term into Google and seeing how many results are returned. Are you competing with a few thousand websites or are you competing with millions of websites.

You can then use a tool like Site Explorer to examine the top ranking websites for your search terms to see how strong the competition is.

The 3 Factors that determine Great Keywords

So, the three basic factors that I measure to determine what keywords to target are Search Volume, Commercial Intent and Competition.

From there, you can then make a decision about what keywords you are going to base your great content around.