I am sure you have probably heard of Squidoo by now. It’s basically a Web 2.0 site that allows you to write mini-articles and start lenses (aka blogs) about your favorite topics. It also comes with a bunch of built-in plugins and is perfect for people who are not technical but are very good at writing and marketing. So what the heck is SEOquidoo? This is the approach that used to work brilliantly a while back when you could get real backlinks from Squidoo. You could also move to the top of search engines with the write set of titles and keywords. But then Squidoo was slapped by Google, and a lot of its pages lost rankings. 

If you are a blog owner, you know how frustrating it is to have your site disappear from the first page of Google. The funny thing is that when you argue your way back to Google’s top SERPs, you still don’t realize your previous positions. In other words, things won’t be back to normal when Google unslaps you. But Squidoo is for real my friends. I have used it to get first page rankings on decent terms before. If you are into niche marketing, and you like getting sites out about small niches, then Squidoo is a great way to go. Is it a magic solution? No. Will it guarantee you a top spot for most competitive terms? Absolutely not. Is it worth doing? You bet!

Longtailing is the process of targeting keyword phrases that are more than just a couple of words. While a lot of people can’t actually define what a long-tail keyword phrase is, a whole lot of marketers ignore going after them anyway, discounting them for getting very low traffic. What most marketers miss though is that by creating a 1000 pages that are optimized for long-tail keywords, you can potentially gain more traffic that you would from the most popular terms on the web. The reason is simple. Longtail keyword phrases are less competitive and often have a higher KEI, which means you can get ranked on the top of Google SERPs for a whole lot of long-tail phrases.

A former boss of mine used to think that longtail keywords are a waste of time and not “worth our effort.” I did explain to him that longtail keywords tend to convert better too, but I guess some people rather take the short way out. The moral of story is, if you want to really have a chance of getting decent free traffic from search engines, you should definitely try optimizing for both short and long tail keywords. There is simply no excuse for not doing so!

If you are a content publisher or you are an affiliate, you have probably had the painful experience of dealing with your sites getting added to Google’s supplementary index. In essence, the supplementary index is the more like the place between heaven and hell (if you consider main index the heaven). The supplementary index as Google described it was a secondary index that allowed users to search beyond the main index to find content. Unfortunately, the SI sites were not crawled as often as the sites on the main index. In reality, a site that was in the supplementary index was as useful as a banned site. You don’t get crawled as often, and you don’t exactly show up on the early pages of Google. Sites that were added to the SI were deemed to be irrelevant.

So how do you know if you are in the Sup Index? It’s really easy. If you type your domain on Google and search for it (e.g. xyz.com), and you don’t show up on the first couple of pages, there is a good chance that you are either banned or in the SI. You can use the command Site:Domain  to figure out if you have any pages indexed by Google. If you are indexed, then it probably means that your site has been deemed irrelevant by Google. Thin affiliate sites often end up in SI (Google actually has stopped using the term Supplementary Index). But if you are smart about it, you shouldn’t really end up there unless you do something nasty.

Here is how:

• Make sure you have your main keywords on your page. Speard them around your pages, and use proper tagging such as <strong> or <i> to highlight your most important words on each page.
• Make sure you do proper internal and external linking to let Google know why your site is relevant to your main keyword.
• Don’t over optimize your pages. Make sure you watch the keyword density. Don’t make everything bold or anything like that. Google would not like it.
• Don’t add too much content in a short period of time. Many people think that the more content they add to their site the better. While that’s true, you should do that in moderation. There are a lot of people out there who love to take shortcuts. If you add 100s of pages of content to your site, all of a sudden you become a suspect.
• Watch out for duplicate content. Duplicate content almost always gets you in trouble. Whether its ranking drop or complete site exclusion, you want to make sure you avoid putting duplicate content on your pages. Blogs often get into trouble for this issue (due to their architecture), but Google is getting good at recognizing blogs and just ignoring the duplicate issue with them.
• Use Google analytics and Google Webmasters tool to find out what’s exactly wrong with your pages, and how you can fix them. I have probably said this before, but Google tools are almost always the best friends that you can have in the SEO world.

If you provide quality content and don’t take shortcuts, there is a good chance that you won’t have to deal with the SI. But if you are ever in trouble with Google, just follow the above steps, and allow Google time to get you back in the main index. As long as you are not banned for doing something serious, you should find your way back to Google index in no time.

I  often hear people complaining about how doing search engine optimization is like flying blind. That’s simply not true. If you know you SEO basics (keyword research, tagging, link building, and …), you are not flying blind. Sometimes SEO efforts take time to show up in your results, and often you are outdone by an even more dedicated site.

All hope is not lost though. There are tools out there that can help you gain competitive edge and stay atop of your market. One underrated tool that you can use to help you figure out whether you are on the right track is Google Adwords Keyword tool. I often hear people talk about how they subscribe to WordTracker or KeywordDiscovery to do better keyword research, but you should never ignore the tool that is offered by Google itself. Google Keyword tool is an excellent tool to find out what Google thinks of your website.

Google Adwords allows you to find out two key important items about your SEO campaing. By generating keyword ideas based on description, you can figure out the top keywords that you can target in your market. Not only that, you can also check to see whether you have enough relevant content on your site to keep Google happy as far as LSI is concerned.

The 2nd option is absolutely powerful. So you create a site, and you think it is optimized for the word “SEO.” But how can you be sure? That’s where the second option comes into place. You can check your own site with the keyword tool to see what Google thinks of your site (keyword-wise). It’s amazing that many don’t even notice these options. But I guess we all want to believe that a paid tool is much more powerful than a free tool. Don’t get me wrong. WordTracker is a must have, but when combined with Google keyword tool, you can take your game to a whole other level.

It’s amazing how on-page optimization techniques get no love from SEO experts and marketing gurus. Of course, it all comes down to who you call and expert and guru really. It’s true that on-page tactics have been abused and abused more by search engine gamers in the past but there are still a few techniques that you should implement on your site regardless of what “SEO gods” tell you:

1. Title Tags Matter: title tags matter big time. Put your most important keyword first and go from there. Put you brand last if you can. Don’t try to make the title more than it should be. As long as your title is not a collection of random words, then you are fine but don’t forget your keywords.

2. Header Tags Matter: It absolutely does. I have tested a few sites and have seen significant results by using <h1> and <h2> tags on my site. I was actually moved from position 5 on page 2 for a highly competitive keyword to position 9 page 1. It may sound like a very small improvement but can’t beat being on page 1.

3. Bold, Italic Tags Matter: They do. You can give search engines cues about what is important on your page and what’s not. Use <strong> and <i> tags when you can (actually using <strong> is more effective than <b> for some reason).

4. Keyword and Description Tags matter: The so called “big picture” marketing gurus might disagree with me, but keywords and description tags absolutely do matter. I have personally seen results by implementing them (not just moving up the rankings but also higher conversion rates). Don’t ignore them.

5. Sitemaps Matter: creating a sitemap is not really that hard so it baffles me when SEO professionals claim that it shouldn’t be done as it’s not worth it. Why not?! Folks, it literally takes a minute to create a sitemap and you will have something that search engines love. Why not do it? Yes. You can use the time to focus on FaceBook, but if you spend 1 minute a day on your FaceBook strategy, then you are in deep trouble.

Remember that search engine optimization is not an exact science. Nobody really knows what works. We know what doesn’t work thanks to Google (Black Hat techniques definitely won’t work for long). But other than that, there is no book or article from Google that claims you shouldn’t do META tags. It’s tough and boring but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.

Yahoo! Directory is one of the most expensive directories that are out there. Directories or fossilized search engines used to be a great way to give credibility to a site and get ranked higher on Google and other engines. But over the years most directories have either lost their glamor or become less of a factor as Google has updated its factors. So, can one justify paying Yahoo! $299 a year per listing in Yahoo! directory?

I have tested Yahoo! directory a few times, and I believe it is still worth it to try Yahoo! directory for your site. With my tests, Yahoo directory has worked like a charm getting me higher on Google on terms that are not super competitive (but competitive enough to matter). I’d like to think of Yahoo! directory as a tie-breaker as this point really. If you and your competitors are doing everything right, then Yahoo! can break the tie. However, if your site is completely unoptimized, then you may not get value from Yahoo! directory. Also, don’t forget that Yahoo! does not guarantee you a spot in the directory so you can be out of $299 if your site is terrible.

What to do?

I would try Yahoo! directory for a year (especially if your competitors are using it as well). I wouldn’t expect a huge increase in traffic for being listed there, but if it helps you get a bit higher in search engine rankings, then it’s probably worth it. If it does nothing for your business, toss it after a year. It’s not as if it significantly matters.

Blogging is very hot these days. Almost everyone I know has a blog and of course has something to say about something. There are of course multiple blog platforms that offer different features and use different coding structures. It is true that search engines love blogs and forms due to the freshness of content on these items, but also due to SE-friendly struture of some of these blogging web application packages.

While Blogger, ExpressionEngine, Movable Type, Typepad, and Vox are all good blogging platforms, Wordpress is truly the superstar of the show. Wordpress is an almost perfect platform for those of us who want to have the best blogging features plus the freedom to make changes as we wish (I am talking about a self-hosted Wordpress blog here). But due to its dynamic structure, Wordpress blogs are barely optimized for search engines from the very first day, so I thought I share 5 quick things that I have personally done for my own Wordpress Weblogs.

1. Post titles, post titles, post titles: Title tags are one of the most important factors that search engines consider when evaluating your pages. Having the right title tag with keywords that you intend on targeting can make a world of difference. I would put more than my title post as my title tag just to have the opportunity to properly optimize each and every post for search engines. You can either write the PHP code yourself or use a plugin such as SEO Title Tag from netconcepts.

2. URLs: Post URLs are also important for your search engine efforts. Wordpress does not optimize your URLs for you, at least not right from the start. So make sure you optimize your Permalinks using Wordpress’ interface. You can use something like /%category%/%postname% for your Permalinks (go to Settings menu and click on Permalinks).

3. 301 Redirects: you want to make sure that you take care of broken links and 301 redirect them to the right location. You can easily do so with the Redirection plugin for Wordpress.

4. No follow Links: You want to make sure that you are not leaking Pagerank by links that are posted in your comments. In addition, links to META pages can also be no followed to increase your link weight. You can take care of this using All-in-One SEO pack.

5. Finally, make sure you have the right robots.txt for your blog. While many SEO professionals discount robots.txt as an effective SEO optimization technique, it is still important for you to make sure that you avoid content duplication issues on Wordpress. For instance, http://www.example.com/category/post1 is the same as http://www.example.com/post1 in most cases, so want to make sure you don’t get penalized for duplicate content as a result of this. You can either do a change to your .htaccess file to achieve this or add the following to your robots.txt file:
Disallow: /category/*/*

There are multiple ways around this, but the point is to avoid having two exact pages with two different URLs seen by search engines.

Finally, make sure you keep the fresh content coming. Use the keywords properly, and you should see better results by implementing the above changes. There are a few other things that you can do that I will address in a later post.

This is one of the most basic questions that SEO professionals face on a day-to-day basis. For some reason, executives and non-technical managers believe that manually submitting sites is one of the criteria that enables you to get ranked higher on search engines. That is not true, however. You are not going to get brownie points for submitting a URL to search engines manually. But should you?

Based on my experience, it is always better to wait for crawlers to find your site by themselves. If you are optimizing your site for search engines by adding content and gaining valuable incoming links to your pages, then crawlers should be able to find your site and index it unless you are doing something nasty such as faking traffic or incoming links to your site. Technically, you shouldn’t have to submit your site to engines manually. But if 3-6 months have gone by and you are not still indexed by search engines, then it is reasonable to try manual URL submission. Having said that, you don’t want to resubmit your site for a couple of months though. I have heard stories about people who have gotten banned for submitting their sites a bunch of times in a matter of few days. So it is possibly true that you can get banned for going extreme on a search engine. If search engines can’t find your site, the best bet is to check what you are doing wrong and not what they are doing wrong. And as always, SEO requires some patience so don’t jump your guns.

This may sound like a strange question coming from someone who lives and dies by SEO. Search engine optimization has been a very good field for me, and it has certainly opened doors for me. However, when I look at the big picture ( and I do that a lot, mind you) I see many search engine optimization professionals who spent numerous hours trying to maximize their client’s visibility by trying to feed the engines what they are looking for. The concepts such as keyword density, keyword research, and search engine optimized content are all great, but search engine optimized sites which show up at the top of search engines are not necessarily the results that users are looking for.

Search engine crawlers have gotten very smart in the past few years, and they don’t act like the good old “stupid” machines. At the same time, you can still trick them into ranking you higher by following the guidelines that search engines have provided you with. The question becomes how do you tell a good site from a rubbish site, if they are both optimized for search engines? Google is addressing that by having a trust factor in its algorithm. Trust could mean links from authority sites, and so on. So as long as you have great original content that is getting links from authority sites, then you are good. But, what happens when a quality but not search engine optimized site is competing against a rubbish but highly optimized website? You may say that, the first guys should pay more attention to SEO and that is true in a sense. But I feel as though optimizing pages for search engines has become easier than creating content (at least for some people). For every 1 quality site on the web, you see probably 100 terrible, useless sites. Search engine optimization has obviously somewhat contributed to this. In a sense, you are looking at probably 50 rubbish sites that having nothing but garbage (optimized garbage) on them. Obviously, the authority sites who know how the play the game will still rule the engines, but my feeling is that some smaller but good sites are getting ignored or pushed to the second or third pages and are replaced with search engine friendly sites. Why does this matter? Because searching shouldn’t be about how optimized your content is, but how useful it is to your readers.

You may know that Google and other search engines look at 302 redirects in a non-friendly kind of way. The reason is that there have been so many Black Hat SEO techniques that have taken advantage of HTTP 302 redirect method. But can you get in trouble for using 301 redirects?

The answer is yes and no. The right way to use HTTP 301 redirect is by redirecting pages that will be permanently pointing to another location. For instance, if you want http://www.X.com to always go to http://www.Y.com, then you can use a 301 redirect to avoid getting penalized for duplicate content, had you used frame redirects. But of course, there are situation where you may want to use 302 redirects. Let’s say that you have a website: http://www.x.com. But your website actually lives on http://www.x.com/XYZ. If you 301 redirect the first location to the second location, you will be probably listed on Google as http://www.x.com/XYZ. It may not be a big deal for you, but it definitely would look better on search results to have the first option. Read the rest of this entry »