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Why Content Is Still King – Effective SEO Tactics
It was a year ago that I attended my first search engine strategies conference. It was also at this conference that I became a speaker.
Search Engine Strategies and PubCon are undoubtedly the two largest SEO/SEM conferences out there today so of course there’s huge attendance and lots of big industry names attending.
There’s also a guy there who you may have heard of. His name is Barry Schwartz and he’s from Search Engine Round Table. I bring his name up because he’s found one of the best ways to not only build an ever expanding content base up, but also a way to build quality relevant links. And it’s so simple one begins to wonder why others don’t do it.
Before I get into what he’s doing let me give you a little history. He started covering SES a few shows ago and would post summaries of the various seminars he attended at the SearchEngineWatch forum.
His posts were some of the most read posts during the conference. He soon also began posting longer summaries at his own site. Also very well read by those of us who couldn’t attend the show.
Now he’s become “the” reporter for the SES shows wherever they are. He even went into this one with a plan to cover as many of the sessions as possible, between himself and others known in the SEM industry. Some of the posts end up at the SEW forums but he also posts many on his own site.
Step one – there’s that ongoing content development.
You see, what the folks at SEO roundtable are doing is creating very long, but very detailed summaries of every seminar they attend. They then post these to their website daily or more often. Each post occupies it’s own static page, and most pages are well linked within the site.
Step two – relevant quality links and lots of them
Now here’s the great part. It is because of this coverage that people have come to realize that this site is the site to go to for SES coverage. Between this site and the SEW forums you can pretty much get your fill of SES in a very compact version. (Trust me for some of the sessions, a light summary is much better than sitting through 90 minutes of dry explanations of how ranking algorithms work 
).
And because people rely on these summaries of the show that they begin to refer others to them. Either through word of mouth or, more importantly, links.
This is where the relevant quality links kick in. What is a link to an SEM site from another SEM site worth? What would you pay to have your competitors link to you with lots of one way links, many from high authority sites? Because of this article, they even have a link from here.
Plus they get links from Searchenginewatch, in both the forums and the blog entries, not to mention other high profile industry sites. What’s link from Matt Cutt’s blog with a photo worth to this site?
You see, this site is building its online reputation the way everyone needs to – by posting relevant timely information that others want to see. Then the others link to that content in a natural way.
Let me put it to you another way – of the over 3,000 links this site has, how many do you suppose are from content? More specifically, how many are due to the site’s summaries of the various SES shows they’ve attended? Links may not be directly to the topics in question. In fact many are not.
In fact, if you scan through the top 100 links or so listed in Google you see a virtual who’s who of the SEO industry. Let me point out a few of the more notable links: Links from Yahoo Search Blog, as well as the MSDN MSN search blog. Of course there’s many from Searchenginewatch, but also from other industry sites like searchviews.com, seomoz.com and searchenginejournal.com just to name a few.
So what has the site accomplished by attending all the SES shows since late 2003? Well, they’ve built lots of good content which helps relay their authority status to engines like Google.
Further, they’ve gotten lots of quality inbound links from high profile related sites that are also considered authorities. Plus they’ve also built a reputation for being the place to go to find out about SES which means increased traffic to the site. Not to mention that they’ve now probably got a well known brand.
In other words, if someone doesn’t already know how to find the site, but they know the name of it, a the person will search on an engine like Google looking for the domain name. Even if it’s ranked #7 or 8 for the search term the site will get the click because the searcher is looking for that brand.
How’s that for building quality content and links at the same time?
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Banner Marketing and AdWords which one is for me?
In this article we will describe common differencies between BannerMarketingOnline.com and Google AdWords technologies:
1. Google Adwords is PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisement technology where you pay when someone clicks on your ad link. In some cases it’s good, but when you choose right keyword for you, you suddenly discover that you are only one of buyers of keyword and in order to get click to your link you should pay up to 70$ per click (for some keywords). With BannerMarketingOnline.com technology you only pay for owing keyword for full year and you, and only you will be shown as a result of search for your keyword.
2. In Google Adwords campaign you have to compete with other companies and raise price for your keywords. Sometimes your ROI can be negative and you should be high professional to get positive results. With BannerMarketingOnline.com you just need to set url for keyword and get ready for getting traffic to your website.
3. Your advertisement budget can slightly vary in Google Adwords, depending on keywords and number of impressions that you choose. BannerMarketingOnline.com has fixed flat price for any keywords that you choose. Only traffic will vary, so only thing that you have to worry is to choose right keywords for your business.
4. When someone searches phrase that you own, BannerMarketingOnline.com already displays your website in IFRAME so it means that people already can see your website, without clicking on ad link (not many people like clicking on ad links).
5. Finally, Google Adwords works only with Google Search Engine, when BannerMarketingOnline.com works on All Major Search Engines, plus hundreeds of other partner websites with search features!
I’m using both technologies, cause I think they’re both good in their way, but you can decide which model is best for you.
SEO Secrets 2.0 Reveals Every Inside Secret I Know to Get to Number 1 on Google
If there was one week I would advise as containing THE MOST IMPORTANT knowledge you might gain throughout the enter SEO Secrets 2.0 , this would be it. Do you remember what I have already said several times and you will hear it again and again because it is so fundamental to the search engines that I want it ingrained in your mind?
Keywords tell the search engines what your page is about. Inbound links tell the search engines how important your page is. By knowing what your page is about, let’s them put your page in the proper index. How many and the quality of your links is what they use to determine where it should be placed in the index.
Of course this is an oversimplification of the search engine’s algorithm but provides you with a core concept upon which they are designed. Without a doubt, they all consider a myriad of factors – each proprietary in nature to the given search engine whether it be Google, Yahoo, Live Search, MSN, Ask or any of the others. The essential thing to takeaway is that both of these concepts are critical to all of your SEO efforts going forward.
In SEO Secrets 2.0 I can’t overemphasize the importance of taking the time to carefully research and choose your specifically targeted and strategically placed keywords. It’s not uncommon for the average user to spend a month or more systematically researching all the possible keyword variations.
Big business has spent billions on keyword research and selection and billions more are on tap as the marketplace becomes even more crowded as globalization infiltrates every industry in the modern world.
One of the primary factors affecting whether or not a search engine spider will crawl an index page is determined by the number and quality of incoming links pointing to a given page. Learning how to acquire quality one-way inbound links is also without a doubt, the MOST critical skill to master.
If you’ve got a page with no incoming links coming to it, the search engine may think its not even worth indexing. That’s why you want to have both an internal linking strategy as well as an external link strategy.
Not only do you need an external linking strategy – how the search engines will find and index your pages, but you must also have a well-crafted internal linking strategy. When you’re first getting started, it is likely these will be your only links.
The best keywords in the world alone will do you absolutely no good unless – you also have inbound links. I have devoted two chapters in SEO Secrets 2.0 to link building because although it will be the most challenging task you must master, but it will also be the most rewarding. Ideally, keep your pages under 100k (excluding images).
Now there is a limit to the number links you put on ANY page. No web page should contain more than 100 links as a rule of thumb. You may have run across pages that violate this rule and put thousands of links on a single page; that is a mistake for several reasons I won’t go into here.
Just as other pages should not be more than 100k, your site map must also adhere to that rule of thumb. Put your sitemap in the root of your site along with a ‘robots.txt’ file to tell the spiders where you do NOT want them to go.
Learn SEO Secrets 2.0 and enable the search engine spider to reach your site map within one link from your homepage and another link to every other page on your site from the site map. I think this is self-evident that a spider will not get lost or confused in such a simple structure.
SEO Tips for Optimizing Online Videos – Video SEO 101
Online video and video search is HOT! You have surely seen all the buzz on the internet about sites like youtube, blinkx, etc… With this, bloggers have been writing posts about how to shoot video, how to upload videos to these sites, etc… However, few have provided information on how to get these videos seen and discovered. Here enters Video SEO.
To ensure that your video gets seen and discovered on these search engines, it is important to first learn some of the technical aspects that are important to online video as well as search.
There is misconception that, keyword research for video content is same as standard organic search or other search verticals. This is not true and moreover, till now there aren’t keyword research tools to determine and measure video search results. Before you begin with your actual video search optimization, put together your keyword list. The list can be based on standard search results; however, they should be supplemented with results from news search engine results pages for more appropriate content. At this early phase of online video revolution, video searches at this point tend to be shorter keywords as opposed to “long tail” searches. More than any other piece of advice, make sure you include the word “video” in your keyword list. Examples – car videos, car video, racing video, automotive videos, etc….
So, after you have completed your keyword research, I would also suggest that you take an inventory of the various video search websites. In other words, take note of which sites have the highest traffic, which channels and categories are the most popular, etc… You will likely want to submit your video to as many sites as you can but it will certainly be important to get your video on the more popular search engines as well.
As a side note, pay attention to the audience that is already searching for the terms that you identified in your keyword research. Are there closely related terms that you did not include? Take a look at videos that are similar in terms of the keywords that you are targeting and view the comments and feedback from users to find related terms.
You will want to encourage readers to submit feedback as studies show that users who provide feedback tend to be more active and easier to convert. In other words, those users that provide feedback, typically are more likely to call, email, visit your site, etc…
If you can do this, it is always better to pick a video theme that is not saturated in terms of competition out there. As an example, a video about Tom Cruise will likely be very hard to optimize for as there are thousands of results for that search.
Studies have shown as well that users who watch videos are less interested in watching videos that are more than a few minutes in length. Try to target your videos to be less than 3 minutes in total length. If you have a very long video, perhaps try to create multiple segments or clips from the video targeting videos with 1-3 minutes in duration.
You can even put the actual branding inside the video, such as text or domain name or specific URL as a graphic in the video. Of course, getting users back to your website or business is one great result for doing video SEO in the first place.
So if you wish to succeed in search engine optimization’s mad frenzy race, video search engine optimization is an incredible new way to get exposure, and you have the opportunity right now, to get in the ground floor.
Backlinks – What They Are and How to Get Them
Sometimes called inbound links, backlinks are the lifeblood of Search Engine Positioning. In order for a website to be on the top of search engines like Google without the webmaster having to pay big money for advertising, the website has to have a large number of backlinks. Backlinks are links on one website that lead back to another website. The more established, high quality, and high Page Rank the website that contains the link has, the more power it has to help the linked website with its search engine position. If the website that is getting backlinks gets many High Quality and High Page Rank backlinks, the better the chance it has of being in a high position on the Search Engines.
How does a webmaster go about getting high quality backlinks to his or her website? There are many ways this can be done. Some people advocate writing and submitting articles, posting on forums, making comments on blogs. Others talk about submitting their website to various Internet directories. One directory that has an excellent reputation is called DMOZ, or the “Open Directory”. This directory is probably the most respected directory online today. The websites it contains have all been placed there by human editors; there is no “automation” to this directory. The only drawback that’s been discussed about this directory is that it takes so long to have a website included.
Another way that many people build backlinks for their website is to use Social Bookmarking websites. A “Social Bookmark” is a website that usually has a very popular ‘community’ aspect to it. Users sign up and create profiles on the sites that contain photos and information about themselves. They then can save “bookmarks” of favorite websites which can be itemized by ‘tags’, which are one or two word descriptions of what the sites contain, and these bookmarks can be saved to a list that’s private or can be listed publicly, so that everybody can see it.
With the advent of what is known as Web 2.0, gaining backlinks is easier now than in any time in the history of the internet. Most sites now have an “interactive” quality to them nowadays. Readers can often sign in and create profiles. They then are often allowed to post comments on the stories or articles on the website or blog. In many cases, the website or blog owner responds to these comments; thus making this section of the website or blog a conversation.
Backlinking strategies can be easy and fun and the website owner who is working on getting more backlinks for his website can learn new things, meet new people, and have a tremendous amount of fun doing something that was once a chore: building backlinks.