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Effective ways of putting aside the risk of getting frozen

By on May 18th, 2012

The update of Google Penguin has been pretty effective in curbing web spamming that had hit the search engines so badly. This update has taken several websites by a storm and made their ranking in the search engine go haywire. It has been seen that there are several undeserving websites that have been ranked higher in the list with the aid of unfair SEO techniques.

Google has come up with this application to make sure that there are no black hat web spamming practices done anymore. Hence it checks the following in a website and freezes it on the following conditions:

  • Over optimization of the anchor texts. This can well be a deliberate attempt made by the SEO to draw more traffic to the website.
  • The off page content and the on page content are found to be on completely different context. This again is practiced by several SEO professionals to attract traffic in an unfair way.
  • If the keywords are over optimized and used in a wrong context.

However it is better not to panic, neither take things too lightly. One can resort to certain means that will definitely help them to make sure that their site is not being penalized for using wrong and unfair techniques. Some of these are discussed as follows:

  • Review the quality of the content – This is the foremost thing that one should focus on. Quality content is something that should be ensured to optimize the results for your website. SEO techniques are secondary. If the content is not good in the first place, scrupulous SEO techniques will hardly be able to help much. Try to make your content enticing by means of lucid and easily understandable language while you approach to your targeted customer or client. A customer should feel easy while going through it. Using too many jargons might prove to be harmful.
  • Keyword density hardly matters – As long as the keywords are apt and used in proper context it is of no harm to use them as many times you like. The problem arises when one tries to overdo them just for the sake of a better ranking. The use of keywords in the entire content should be such that it should seem natural. There are many who feel that a keyword should be rotated for ‘n’ number of times; this isn’t correct at all. Emphasis should be laid on the fact that how refined is the quality of the content.
  • Broaden the anchor texts – many are on the impression that anchor texts play a vital role in enhancing the ranks of a website; this is not true in reality. In fact over using the anchor texts can make the search engines skeptical about its motif and you well end up being penalized for that. Hence, the target should not be of ranking higher on the list but to provide a smooth content for the readers.

These are the few things tatty would help a website to be genuine and prevent it from being termed as a gray hat web spamming by the search engine and being frozen by it.

Author’s bio – Jimy Jones has a wide range of knowledge on the various Google updates. He has shared some of his knowledge regarding Google Penguin over here. For detailed information, visit

internetmarketingreports.net

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Use nofollow to rank because nofollow passes something

By on May 17th, 2012

This is crazy idea right? Well it works. Just hear me out. I have a client called soccerlocothat wants to rank for phrase soccer socks. The way we try to rank is that we submit the landing page “soccer socks” to various of social media, and social network in order to grab attention in order to drive natural links. But that doesn’t work all the time. So in addition to guest posting, we decided to buy some paid reviews, and of course we don’t want to violate Google and search engine guide lines so we asked reviewers to put nofollow on their links and also indicate that was a paid post. That way we are clear with the search engines.

Want to know the result?
We still improved our ranking even though the links had nofollow.  Yes nofollow doesn’t pass pagerank but it passes something. We don’t know what it is but nofollow links do work. Perhaps it is an indirect effect because we got more “referring traffic” that improved our organic traffic portfolio?  Or perhaps it improved our pageviews and reduced our bounce rate which seems to be nowadays a factor in SEO, or nofollow does indeed pass some authority. Our rankings improved because we bought nofollow links and since they were nofollow we were not violating any guidlines.

I recommend you do this test on your own at your own risk because it may or may not work for you. But it will be some good data to have.

About the author: Al Sefati is founder of Sefati Consulting Group which is an internet consulting company based in San Diego, California.

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How localized SEO Can Work for National Brands

By on May 16th, 2012

When you mention national brands, most people think of blue chip companies like Coca-Cola or Apple. These brands have localized product strategies, of course, but they don’t really need to perform SEO on a local scale.  They are so well known that localized SEO means nothing more than a bulk Places upload.

But many national brands actually have to compete locally to see success. A good example is car rental agencies. They’re almost exclusively national brands, but (believe it or not) they optimize for and track such organic keywords as “car rental Waxahachie.” Organic search can be the only venue that a national brand can compete in, especially if they do not have brick and mortar stores that help them compete with Google Places.

Here at SpareFoot.com, we’re tracking keywords in the top 2000 cities in the US. Everything from “storage in NYC” to “storage in Cottonwood Heights, UT” is on our radar. What we’ve found is that the organic local SEO game for a national competitor is a four step process: choose keyword sets, choose geographies, attack sets of geographies with varied linkbuilding and on-page tactics, and then measure those results (and then rinse and repeat).

Choosing your keyword sets                                          

This aspect of a national-local campaign is similar to choosing head term keywords. What combination of [city name] + [head term] is most valuable to you? Is there a niche that has some measurable search volume but is less competitive?

Research these keyword combinations with a list of top geographies in your area (for example, the list of top 100 cities in the US) to determine what you’re going to track and target with optimization and link building. Choose 3-10 keywords that, in combination with city names, are related to your niche and have measurable search volume.

Choosing your geographies

You’re not going to be able to target all 100 cities at once, except with sweeping on-page optimizations (for instance, including key terms in all title tags for all cities). For linkbuilding purposes, you should choose cities where the top 10 results are sites that you feel you can compete with.

Use search volume as an indicator for demand, and strength of top 10 results as an indicator for competitiveness. Use a backlink analysis tool like OpenSiteExplorer to see what kind of links help those highly-ranking sites do so well. Are these links that you can hope to acquire? If so, start making lists of linkbuilding tactics that your strongest competitors are using for the next step.

Attacking geographies with varied tactics

Set up rank tracking (and make sure you have a good way to measure traffic and conversions for each city) before you start with this step. Use the list of various linkbuilding tactics you created in the last step to assign a set of tactics for each geography. That way, you can effectively test which ones work and which ones do not. Eventually, you’ll want to combine the efforts that work for you on all of your cities moving forward; but when you’re starting out, take the opportunity to test these efforts on different cities.

For instance, we determined in the storage space that press releases, directories, guest blog posts, and blog ads seemed to work well for our competitors. We try press releases and directories for our Tulsa page and guest blog posting and blog ads for our San Diego page. We found that guest blogging and blog ads seemed to work, so we split those up among two different cities on the next batch. At the end of this test phase, we found that guest blogging and localized directory listings were the most effective links for us. We also tested different types of on-page tactics across other cities (unique general text about the city vs. unique text about storage in the city vs. boilerplate text).

The sheer number of cities you’ll have to work with is very conducive to testing, so hammer down what strategies work before you scale up.

Measuring results and doing it all over again

Keep track of rankings, traffic, and conversions for each city as a way to measure progress. When you find a strategy that works, it’s time to rinse and repeat. If you find a strategy that really works (as in, you can consistently achieve a positive ROI on linking efforts), it’s time to scale that approach up to target more cities at once.

Of course, you’ll always get the most dramatic results from sitewide on-page optimizations that affect all of your individual city pages. But, like all on-page changes, there is a limit to their effect. Eventually, you see a diminishing return on your effort for on-site changes, and that’s when a focus on individual city linkbuilding comes into play.

This article was written by Matt Schexnayder. Matt is on the SpareFoot marketing team and writes for the SpareFoot blog. SpareFoot is the largest online marketplace for self-storage that offers consumers the most complete comparison shopping experience in the storage industry.

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Tips to Boost Brand Awareness with Guest Posting

By on May 15th, 2012

Tip 1: Find the right website

Before you even start writing an article, it’s important to find the right blog or website where you can host it. It’s pointless in writing an extraordinary article if you don’t have a right website to host it. It’s no point if you post your article on a website which has no or less visibility and no comments. No matter how well you have worked upon your article, it all go waste. Before choosing the right website you should check when the last post was made. The more recent, the better. You should check the number of comments made per post. Check if there’s any subscriber, check if it has the facility of archiving the posts, check for its page rank. You can do this with the help of any simple online tool. Check if the website is attractive or not and how well it is maintained.

Tip 2: Get a feel for the content

Before posting your articles, go through the websites and blogs properly. Notice what kinds of posts gain much popularity. Read through a few of the posts and try to adapt your style of writing to suit. Try to be creative in your own style. Always try to think about topics which aren’t included previously. By doing this your blogger or your webmaster will automatically get to know that you have taken time to read their site, rather than sending them a generic spam or a begging email.

Tip 3: Try to make a contact with the blogger or the webmaster

Be sure to make your opening email personal when you contact your webmaster or the blogger for the first time. Address them by their first name. Suggest a post and see if they would like to host it for you. Always compliment their website. Be grateful to them for taking the time to read your email. They should be made aware that you are willing to write according to their requirement.

Tip 4: Try to personalize your article as much as you can

If you get a green signal from your webmaster or your blogger, then make sure your article is personalized for your business. Let your audience understand what your writing is all about through your personality and expertise. Always include two to three keywords that are often searched for. When it comes to buying your product, for sure this will make your company at the forefront of their minds.

Tip 5: Offer your reader something useful

Always offer something useful in your post, rather than a generic sales article. Tips, advice, and guides are always welcomed. And these things are more likely to be shared through social media. Readers will start to relate to your post. They will start to comment and share it with their friends. This will lead to greater traffic. Your webmaster or your blogger will value your contribution more. Later he might even invite you to write guest posts in future.

About the author: Claudia is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on luxury and technology. She recently read an article on bornrich that attracted her attention. These days she is busy in her research work for ecofriend.com


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Search Marketing Post

By on May 13th, 2012

Just bringing up this post again. Search Marketing Post is for sale or licensing as I indicated in a couple of posts ago (here is the post).

Much of my time is being spent on my consulting time serving my bigger clients such as soccerloco. In fact I am so busy there that they might bring me on full time. That is yet to happen there is a huge possibility but even if that doesn’t happen, I will have a plenty of things to do.

Anyway check out that post if you are interested in owning or running search marketing post. The site is rather new but it is fast growing in both domain authority and search rankings and it also have a great name so if you want to have your own online magazine in search marketing and domain marketing arena and make some money, this would be a good domain to own.

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Marketing People Are Not Normal – Infographic

By on May 12th, 2012

Interesting new study show about people who love advertising and social media and their social behavior


Source

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5 Reasons Why Content Marketing Is Good For Your Website

By on May 11th, 2012

content marketing strategy

Image by 14clicksNick via Flickr

These are troubling times for many internet marketing professionals as we struggle to come to terms with how Google is changing the rules of the game through their Panda and Penguin algorithm updates. It has become an uphill battle to keep up with all the different changes in SEO which each alogrithm change requires, and for many websites, each new update can cost a lot of money during the time that it takes to recover lost rankings. The question is then: are there other solutions which can supplement your SEO work, and help you rank better in Google as well? One answer could be content marketing and below are 5 reasons why it could be of tremendous benefit for your website:

1. It create’s visitor loyalty

Adding valued content to your website is a great way of building a community which is long lasting. Providing insightful, interesting and thought provoking content is far better than focusing on SEO rich content. One of biggest lessons coming from Panda and Penguin is to create content for users rather than search engines.

2. Add quality content in line with Google’s own guidelines

Read Webmaster Central’s blog here and find out the most important elements for content creation. Trusted/authoritative/interesting and original blog posts, articles, reports, videos and PDFs are where your focus should be lying to better optimize your website.

3. Building social links

Unlike SEO articles, content utilized for content marketing is far more likely to be shared on Facebook and retweeted on Twitter. The social links created from such sharing now play a very important role in Google’s search engine algorithm.

4. Adding videos, PDFs and Slideshare report

These types of content can be very effective for ranking well in organic search results. They are types of content which give long term value and highly ranked because they generally offer information which is very helpful and offers some extremely good insight. You can repurpose some of your blog posts and articles which have been popular into such forms to make the most out of the content  at your disposal.

5. Increase Site awareness

The proliferation of your site’s content on social media sites, as well as the long term value of the videos, reports and PDFs you provide will mean that people will become aware of your site well beyond your targeted keywords and phrases. It is important to remember that the best way to impove your website’s visibility is to make as many avenue’s available as possible for visitors to find their way to you.

These are only some of the benefits which content marketing can provide you, and if you are still merely producing endless amounts of SEO content, I would implore you to change course. Your website’s future really depends on relevant, quality content as Google is only going to tighten the noose on many old SEO techniques which it believes manipulate its rankings.

David Tully has written many articles on content marketing and SEO. He is currently a regular contributor to Bright Authority, a content marketing strategy website.

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Search Marketing Post is for Sale or Licensing

By on May 4th, 2012

Search Marketing Post started last year aiming to be a new unique blog covering news, tutorials, and etc for SEO, PPC, and other aspects of search engine marketing I have been very busy running my own busienss Sefati Consulting Group and have had very little time to pay attention to it. I think this is a good domain and if anyone out there interested in taking over, we can work things out.

There are three options available:

1. Buy the domain: You will only buy the domain, I will own all the content and put them elsewhere. Some of our posts are very quality while others aren’t.

2. Buy the website: You will own both the domain and the website content. Once you buy it, you can do whatever you would like with the content, website design, etc.

3. Buy Website License: We can sign an agreement where I can license you the website for a period of time and you will take over and do whatever you would like to do with it. For that period of time, you will have right to redesign the website, do whatever you would wish with its content, and you will keep all the website revenue. You will also handle all operation and technical costs as well. It will be like you are leasing the website from me. Licensing is a great idea because it will give you a chance to see if you can do anything with the website before you do anything with it.

If interested, contact me and we can go over the details or you can bid online here.

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Infographic a link building tool

By on May 2nd, 2012

Professional white hat link builders can understand the true value of infographics. They can be used in order to bait for free natural links.

Champions League Final by the Number Infographic
Champions League Gear & Soccer Jerseys

How It Works
Usually when you submit your infographic and put it in front of bloggers and website owners, those who are interested in it will pick it up and put it on their blogs and that is a good way to get some free links. All you need to do is to host the infographic on your website, but provide an embed code where bloggers and webmasters can insert the code in their blogs and that way you can target the keywords you want to rank for in the embed code.

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Dashes In Domain and Ranking

By on April 30th, 2012

If you have a keyword you want to rank work, the best way is for you to create content relevant to that keyword on your website, do some link building for it, and as time passes by and the authority of your website improves, are you done.

But the problem is time and authority as I stated. And most SEOs and most companies are impatient when it comes to those stuff so they want to rank fast for a keyword. Not going any black hat direction, there are other white hat ways where you can rank for a keyword and that is to start satellite sites exact match of those keywords in your URL.

For example if you want to rank well for Nike Soccer Balls, then you can start a website called NikeSoccerBalls.com and then write a few articles about Nike Soccer balls, and some like building with Nike Soccer Balls in its anchor text then you are good.

But post Panda update, Google has been careful about this tactic so the most important tip I recommend if you are following that route is to write some good quality content so Google will take your site more seriously.

After writing good content, you want to promote it via social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google +1 and after that you want to do some link building. The better the links ,the faster you will rank.

Tips on picking domains
Lets take Nike Soccer Balls as an example. If you are trying to rank for that keyword, then nikesoccerballs.com is a good domain. However chances of that being available these days is not likely so you want to drop a dash in there. A good example will be Nike-soccerballs.com. And and if that is not available, then you can do Nike-Soccer-Balls.com.

Keep in mind that the more dashes you have the longer it will take for you to rank. For example Nikesoccerballs.com will rank for “Nike Soccer Balls” faster than Nike-soccerballs.com. And Nike-soccer-balls will even take longer to rank.