SEO or Death!

It’s Search Engine Optimization or death for your business.

If your company does not learn how to do its own SEO, your company will die. It’s a scary prospect to realize that the majority of people you can hire for SEO are not going to help your business make money. Just ask them if they’re willing to do SEO work for you in exchange for a percentage of the increase in revenue they provide to your business. Are they willing to put their money where their mouth is?

Is my business dying?

What you should be asking yourself is “Am I going to put the future of my business in the hands of somebody else? If they know how to do SEO, my company can learn how to do SEO also.” That’s what you need to be thinking right now.

Why SEO is easy for any business.

What is SEO anyway you might ask yourself that question as you watch videos of on SEO and Internet Marketing and read all the downloadable free information on how to get ahead in search engine optimization and Internet marketing. Is SEO some type of myth that only the Internet marketing guru’s know about. Maybe it’s some secret trick or some exclusive secret sauce that nobody knows except for people who can manipulate Google. Any business can write articles, create video, audio and downloadable PDF reports and eBooks.

Why is SEO so easy now?

The face of SEO has changed. People who are worried about page rank and ranking for any one particular keyword, are simply going to be spinning their wheels. It’s interesting to know, that Google has changed their algorithm and made it so complex that people who try to manipulate them end up paying the ultimate price, death of their online business. Google rewards website that create relevant content and deliver that content in the form that their website visitors enjoy.

Page rank has become IRRELEVANT!

Shocking news, page rank does not matter for SEO any longer. Page rank, well, at least the page rank that Google shows you with their tools has become completely obsolete for judging the quality of the website. SEO tools and other types of marketing tools that search the web looking for pages that have high page rank in order to get a link from them are typically full of spam links already. Do you think Google is blind to this?

Being number #1 does NOT equal revenue

Shocking news, keyword ranking no longer means everything when it comes to business revenue. Depending on where you’re at in the country, you can get different ranking results. So you might be ranking number one in Washington State and you might be ranking number 50 in Florida. Google results are being skewed based on the location of the users IP address. They track not only by IP address but also the user’s browser, the Google toolbar and especially if you’re using Google Chrome.

#1 ranking obsession can kill you mentally

Keyword ranking obsession causes business decisions to be based on pride with a fiendish desire to be number one in Google regardless of the cost. In reality it happens regardless of whether or not top ranking is the best way to make revenue for their business. Most people look at the fact that their top competitors are ranking well for given keyword as a signal that they should rank well for that keyword at all cost. It just might mean that they’re wasting their money on marketing that isn’t working which should give you an advantage if you focus your efforts on what actually produces revenue.

Keyword research + Market research = Revenue

Don’t get things twisted in your mind, keyword ranking brings revenue. The key is to rank for keywords that actually make money, bring you customers, and increase the bottom line. Many times these keywords are not in your competitors vocabulary. Many online tools that help you predict the value of being number one for particular keyword are based on the Cost Per Click and search volume provided by Google Adwords keyword tool. These numbers are heavily manipulated by Google. They are useful but you have to do independent market research as well.

New definition of SEO

SEO is market research plus intelligent content creation. You’re not relevant to users if you are not providing what they want. If you are not providing what users want Google is not going to send their users to you. It’s that simple. Make your website visitors happy. There’s no other way to be good at SEO in today’s world. Not only do you have to have massive amounts of content but you have to have multiple types of content. PDFs, audio, video, text, and various other forms of content are required in order for you to achieve good rankings in key words that actually make you money.

Why all previous SEO is harming websites

95% of SEO companies are using or have extensively used outdated, ineffective, and down right harmful tactics and techniques designed to exploit the weaknesses in search engine’s. Basing a business model on the weaknesses of search engines with massive R&D capital is a losing bet. If there’s one thing you should always remember is that search engines are getting smarter and smarter and anything you do to manipulate them will be uncovered and will harm your business. There is wisdom in the old saying “it’s better safe than sorry.”

SEO is now Content Creation

The new phrase for SEO or search engine optimization, should be “content creation.” If you don’t train your business to become good at content creation it could mean the death of your business. Businesses that have ignored Internet marketing are now closing. There is a reason for that. People want to buy their products and services online. If you’re not online or your products are not online or your services are not online customers will not find you online. It’s a very logical conclusion that you need to be in the location of your users or your customers. They shop at brick-and-mortar stores and they like to shop online. To be visible online all businesses need SEO and automated content delivery systems. Make sure you subscribe if you want to be first in line for explaination of these systems.

Using the Lynx Browser: How to see what Google sees

Wouldn’t it be nice to see your page just as Google sees it? Is that a pipe dream, you ask? Google is a massive network of computers running algorithms that no mere mortal could understand, and yet…

It is possible to see your site as Google sees it.

How does Google see your site?

First, we have to remember exactly what it is that a web page is. It’s a document, with images, videos or music, but more importantly, text. Every single website is a complex text document, and when it comes down to it, you could do away with all of the other things, but without text, you have nothing.

There is no magical, mysterious voodoo that Google is performing when they hit your site. (That comes later, when your site is PROCESSED.) When a Googlebot hits your page, do you know what it is scanning?

Text.

The content text, the text that says what the video is, the text that says what the images are, the text that tells you what links you have.

Text. And only text.

Enter the Lynx browser

If Google is only looking at text, it would do you well to do the same when you examine your site.

That’s why the Lynx browser is your friend, since that’s all it does.

No javascript, no images, no flash, no CSS, nothing but glorious text as far as your terminal will reach. Did I say terminal? Yes, yes I did.

Lynx is a text only, command line browser that closely matches what the Googlebot sees when it comes to visit your site. Is your site image heavy? You’d better hope your <alt> tags are present and well written, because that’s all you’re getting. That’s the main reason why alt tags are essential for SEO. Google can’t see the image itself, it sees only what you describe it as in the context of the image, the image name itself, and the alt text for the link.

You will also start to understand the purpose behind the <noscript>, <label>, and heading tags, because their use is far more important to a text only presentation than they are when you rely upon visuals to convey your meaning.

Optimize text, optimize for Lynx

So, how do we apply this to optimization? As previously mentioned, taking proper care of our images is one major step we can take to convey the proper information about the image to Google, and to our users.

Using the Lynx browser, you will clearly see the importance of source ordering your page’s content. If you have a thousand links to traverse before you even get to any content, you will quickly grow tired of the page. Obviously, in the mind of a Lynx user and by extension, Google, the content is less important than the links. Make sure to get the important content in your page to its proper place—at the top.

By stripping away the presentational aspects of our website, and bringing it all the way down to the very basics, you can start to catch a glimpse of what your page is lacking. For instance, you might have a wonderful page that you really love, but is ranking very low. After checking it in Lynx, you’ll discover that it’s no wonder Google doesn’t love that page. because there’s no content! The pictures are named “picture1.jpg”, etc., and have no <alt> tags to describe their content.

Where to get it

Lynx is available on all operating systems, and newer versions can even handle SSL.

• If you happen to be a Linux user, odds are that it might already be built in. If not, check your package manager for more info.
• For the Mac OSX user, there is a handy little tool called Lynxlet that makes it very easy to install and use. Or you can use the Macports package manager to compile it from source.
• For Windows users, your best bet is to get it straight from the source at lynx.isc.org, either in source code or as pre-compiled binaries (which means a .exe application for you non-techie folk out there…)

Optimize for Lynx, optimize for Google

As was stated, your website is a large collection of texts. It only makes sense, then, to maximize the textual value of your website so that the searchbots have plenty to look at and categorize.

By using the Lynx browser as part of your standard repertoire, you will not only catch errors before they come back to haunt you, you will also make your website more accessible and more importantly, searchable and indexable.

Page Hierarchy: The importance of telling Google what is important

Page hierarchy is simple, right?

You have a header, a main content area, a sidebar and a footer, right? You have headings and subheadings.

But is that it? Wouldn’t it be nice to know what the most important thing on the page is? How about the second most important thing? The third, the fourth, and so on?

If YOU would like to answer the question, “What is the point?”, you’re not alone. As it turns out, that is one of Google’s highest priorities when they index your page, and your search rankings will be effected by what they find.

Use headings appropriately

This is easily one of the most neglected pieces of on-site optimization, and is an easy fix if you know what you’re looking for.

On most sites, the site name gets a great big <h1> tag. Why? Because it’s the first thing on a page, and it’s usually the biggest. But is that optimal?

According to the W3C:

A heading element briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces. …

There are six levels of headings in HTML with H1 as the most important and H6 as the least.

You notice that first phrase? “Briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces”. That’s important. Let me illustrate:

Example usage of the H1 element

Lets say you sell widgets, and your website is Widgets-R-Us.com. Here’s what your typical structure will be:

Example heading structure

	<h1>Widgets-R-Us</h1>
	<h2>We sell red, blue, and green widgets of all sizes</h2>

Now, ask yourself, Which phrase “briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces”? Is your page about “Widgets-R-Us” the website, or is it about selling widgets of all sorts?

The answer is, it’s about selling widgets. That’s what your company does, and that’s what your website is built to do. That means that the typical heading structure shown above isn’t optimal.

Here’s one solution to fix this:

Optimal heading structure

	<span id="site_title">Widgets-R-Us</span>
	<h1>We sell red, blue, and green widgets of all sizes/h1>

But wait, you say! Now the first line will look tiny, and the second line will look huge!

That’s the beauty of semantics. You mark up things according to what they are, rather than what they should look like. This is where Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) come into play.

By styling the <span> element via it’s #ID selector in your stylesheets, and styling your <h1> elements appropriately, you can then match the look of the original code, but retain the better hierarchical structure that we’ve just created.

But don’t stop at the H1 element!

If you apply the same approach to the rest of your page, you will soon come to the realization that most designs are flawed when it comes to proper use of its heading tags.

For instance, many blogs us <h2> elements for marking up their sidebars. Do you really want your “Categories” heading in your sidebar to be considered one of the second most important items on your page?

I sure wouldn’t.

(A heading IS appropriate, however, since again a heading should “briefly describe the topic of the section it introduces”, and it’s hard to have a list of categories without some description that says “Categories”.)

The importance of telling Google what is important

Just be sure that whatever you choose for your heading structure, you keep in mind what your main objectives are. Headings allow you to tell your users exactly what is most important to your page, but just as importantly, they allow you to tell the search engines what you feel are the most important elements on your page.

Keeping these principles in mind, along with the important principles of keyword placement, you should soon be on your way to a fully optimized site that the search engines will thank you for.

Is Search Engine Optimization Outdated and Obsolete?

Anyone who thinks that the search engines should be ignored hasn’t payed attention to the statistics of how people buy. Whether on accident or on purpose they are finding products and services to buy online.

Google is not stupid

Google pays close attention to all your marketing efforts no matter where they come from as long as it drives traffic, back links, or discussion about your site. If you have a million people a day go to your site and it shows in your traffic analytics as “direct traffic” then you can bet Google knows you did some type of marketing campaign that drove direct traffic to your site.

Search engines track all marketing

Search Engines pay close attention to how you get visitors, what other sites are saying about yours,  and who is linking to your site, etc. Every great marketing activity you can think of is SEO. Don’t let your idea of SEO be too specific. Some just look at “On Page SEO” like keywords and code structure as optimization. Others pigeon hole into just a linking strategy with “Off Page Optimization.” All marketing is SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO is simply giving the people what they are looking for and making sure you are not shooting yourself in the foot by doing something that repels search engines, like invisible content or code that causes the spiders to flee your site. No one is wise to ignore SEO because it encompasses most all forms of marketing that connect to the internet in any way.

Social network marketing is SEO

You many not even know that all the social networking you are doing is driving traffic from the search engines. When you post on blogger, youtube, squidoo, hupages, etc. your post is usually being found by “internal” search engines. This is not to mention that those pages sometimes rank well for regular search results and you actually recieved traffic from search engines via you social pages.

Everyone relies on search engines

Unless you find things on the web and never ever use an internal or external search engine than the assumption that SEO is irrelevant can be valid. Likely though you now see how ridiculous it would be to assume you can market online without making sure your content, network, marketing, and all other advertising campaigns are compliant with search engine standards.

Local companies are regretting not using SEO

You can’t drive to store to buy groceries without an engine in your vehicle. If you want to rely solely on local foot traffic then you can be like many local companies and assume because they have achieved a measure of off line success than SEO is worthless. It is a shame that all those companies who had some off line success are in the toilets due to the econmony. Those who had a strong internet marketing plan are faring much better than otherwise would.

How To Get Free Websites, Hosting and Domains from Microsoft

Everyone has heard of the “free website” scams and also the legitimate but crappy websites. Many times it is just a glorified profile page or sub-domain. Either way it totally stinks for optimization. The alleged free websites are usually so full of extra code your site gets what is called “code bloat.” Besides that you usually have to pay for a domain name and they have you point it at a sub-domain. This is not good for SEO.

Real website, real domain, and free hosting

The best way to run your own site is always to pay for your own hosting, domain and install a free version of Wordpress. If you need to do everything for free we have a plan you can follow and still obtain success.

Why is it free?

Microsoft is very aggressive in trying to get businesses to use their service. They are so aggressive that they will give you a free website and a free domain, (both real) and also free hosting. They offer a free guide to get your website started here.

Content management system that is SEO friendly

Anyone can get this service for free except you do have to register with a credit or debit card. If you cancel your account within one year you will have to pay for it. I have had a site with a Page Rank of 2/10 hosted there for over two years for free. They have full featured contact list managers, email newsletter software and blog. The site is easy to use and easy to manage. Most content management systems perform poorly for optimization but this system Microsoft set up is great. You can control your page titles and meta description and keywords.

Office Live and Office Spaces work together

You get a live website where you can pick a domain if you wish. We did not pick one for this demonstration but just left it as a sub-domain. Click to see Optimization Tutor’s Office Live web page. Here we just i-framed this website as a demonstration. The blog for these websites is on spaces.live.com. Click here to see Optimization Tutors Spaces Live set up. You can embed your blog posts from spaces.live.com to your office.live.com account even if you chose to have a custom domain. Remember that the domains are free and they work like a real website and not a forwarding domain.

Microsoft provides exceptional resources

Microsoft provides a 5 step process for making your website look great. Click here to see it. They also have a list of pages every website should have and why. Click here to see it. They also have a fanominal resource page designed not just to help you build a site but how to run an online business. See it here. We found their help items very informative. Many times they have instructional videos also that help you with your step by step instructions.

Not just free website but whole business solutions

The important thing we want to emphasize is that Microsoft isn’t just offering a free website. They are offering an applications platform that provides everything you need to run an entire business. They have spreadsheets, doc files, reports, and everything else you would need to run an online business. Their contact manager, email newseltter manager and document manager are rivaled only by Google’s internet business applications. They both have their pros and cons. We love Google also and will discuss their offers later. For right now they do not offer free domains and Google.Pages is being fazed out.

Microsoft helps bring you customers

They have website analytics built in which includes pay per click tracking if you chose to go that route. The nice thing is their are so many other MSN.com, Live.com and Microsoft websites that easily drive traffic and customers to your site. If you answer questions in the public Q&A rooms they show up in your spaces.live.com blog which then is incorporated into your website. It works like Yahoo Answers and Linkedin Answers. Business owners and customers search in Google, Yahoo and MSN to get answers and these social Q&A pages rank well when someone else had already asked that same question. If you answers are there and especially when your answer is voted the best, then you stand a good chance of obtaining business.

Next Page »