To put it mildly… I <3 WordPress. I think it’s a great little CMS and Iove it’s simplicity and effectiveness. I strongly recommend it for any small business owner or affiliate who’s looking for a quick and easy way to start publishing some content online. But for everything I Iove about WordPress, it comes up a little short in the SEO department. Below are 5 must-have SEO plugins for WordPress to optimize your WordPress install.

All In One SEO by Semper Fi web design
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

This is the bread and butter plugin for WordPress SEO management. With this plugin you can manage your titles, meta-descriptions and meta-keywords for pretty much every page on your Blog. On more than one occasion I’ve severely regretted showing clients how to change their homepage title tags… outside of that this is the perfect basic SEO plugin for folks that aren’t terribly tech savvy yet still want some control over some of the basics.

Robots Meta by Yoast
http://yoast.com/wordpress/meta-robots-wordpress-plugin/

WordPress is great at a lot of things and one of the things that WordPress is great at is creating duplicate content across your website. The Robots Meta plugin will allow you to no index and/or no follow admin pages, archive pages and depending on how you want to categorize your blog either category pages or tag pages. Personally I like to no-index the following pages:

• Login and registration pages
• Admin pages
• Date-based archives
• Tag Archives

WP Super Cache
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

Not that speed is a huge factor for SEO but a slow loading site can provide a poor user experience and that can lead to some signals that we don’t need to be sending to search engines. WP Super Cache is a caching plugin for WordPress and basically it will speed up your blog by generating and serving html files rather than processing your blog’s PHP scripts.

Sexy Bookmarks
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sexybookmarks/

Social media is becoming a bigger and bigger part of SEO and the Sexy Bookmarks Plugin makes it really easy and simple to implement some of the most popular social networks to every post or page on your blog. Includes Facebook like button, Google +1 and Tweet button integration options as well as other popular sharing and networking sites like Reddit, Digg, Delicious, Diigo, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many, many other options.

Related Posts Plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/

Inter-linking your own posts is another staple of good on-site SEO and this Related Posts plugin automates the process by including the most related posts at the bottom of every post on your blog. You add this to the clean SEO titles you’ll be generating with the All-In-one-SEO plugin and you’ve got some pretty good inter-linking happening on your site.

Honorable Mention

Google XML Sitemap Generator
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

An XML sitemap is one of the last things you should be using to get your content indexed but on occasion it is a good way to make sure the search engines are aware of all the pages on your blog especially for larger sites.

Yoast Breadcrumbs
http://yoast.com/wordpress/breadcrumbs/

For larger WordPress blogs which cover several categories, a good breadcrumb path can be useful for establishing a good interlinking structure and prioritizing your category pages. Breadcrumbs can also make it easier for users to navigate your blog but most importantly breadcrumbs will make it easier for search engines to understand the structure of your site.

Permalinks

In addition to these plugins I think it’s important to update your permalink structure to SEO friendly URLs which you will also have to do to run WP Super Cache. Luckily it’s a lot easier these days since WordPress comes with a default SEO friendly URL permalink structure out of the box. Simply go to your settings, go to permalinks and choose the “Post name” option.

These are my favorite SEO plugins for WordPress. What say you?

Related posts:

1. Using Content to Build Links
2. Sample SEO Audit For An Information-Based Website
3. Quick And Easy Ways To Get Some Links To Your Site

While it may not have the name of the Google engineer, Navneet Panda who the Google Panda update is allegedly named after, the content of a US Patent Application DETECTING AND REJECTING ANNOYING DOCUMENTS definitely contains verbiage that looks eerily familiar to what we’ve seen and heard about the Panda update. In my opinion, what we’re looking at in the above patent is a part of the technology that Google may be using to “pandalize” a portion of the web.

The abstract reads:

“A system and method for evaluating documents for approval or rejection and/or rating. The method comprises comparing the document to one or more criteria determining whether the document contains an element that is substantially identical to one or more of a visual element, an audio element or a textual element that is determined to be displeasing.”

Personally I like to the print up the patent in it’s entirety with images and all and for those that are similar, here is a link: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20110219300.pdf. Below is the image I found the most interesting and here is the description of the drawing:

“FIG. 3a is a flow chart illustrating an exemplary method for approving or rejecting an electronic document based on the characteristics of the electronic document according to an embodiment of the invention.”

Basically a document is identified and then run through a bunch of tests, if you will, to determine if the document, aka webpage, is acceptable or not. Sounds like Panda right?

The Field of the Invention gives us a pretty good idea of the problem Google is trying to solve with this patent:

“The present inventions relate generally to detecting undesirable characteristics of a document such as an advertisement and rejecting such document for distribution.”

The detailed description gives us a good overview at what the patent technology is capable of :

“The embodiments described herein solve many problems with existing systems and methods. One problem facing Internet content providers is evaluating a large number of documents (such as advertisements presented through its services) to determine whether each is annoying or otherwise displeasing for a wide variety of different users. Embodiments described herein overcome these and other problems by processing a document to determine whether the document is annoying or otherwise displeasing by identifying annoying or displeasing parameters and comparing the document to the parameters (e.g., offensive language or flashing action). The processing may occur automatically, i.e., by a machine-implemented process and/or without human input or intervention.”

“The embodiments described herein enable Flash and animated image documents (e.g., advertisements). Some of these types of ads are annoying. An embodiment of the present invention provides for uploading a document such as an advertisement and comparing the document to specified parameters. The document can be compared to the parameters by a document processor (e.g., automatically by an image processor). The processor may process images, sound files, and other data to identify text, images (as well as spoken words and other data), and actions in the ad. For instance, text may be identified in an image using optical character recognition (OCR) technology. By comparing the document to specified parameters, characteristics can be identified in and associated with the document, and the document can be accordingly rated and approved or rejected based on these characteristics and the status of the ratings of the comparison parameters.“

This smells like the Panda algorithms that have been unleashed on the web wouldn’t you agree?

Let’s get to the nuts and bolts though… What does the patent actually claim?

Claim #1

“A computer-implemented method of approving a document, the method comprising: analyzing content of a first document to identify one or more first portions, wherein the first portions are visual, textual, or audio portions: identifying one or more second documents that are similar to the first document… determining whether any of the first portions are substantially identical to the second portions that have been predetermined to be unacceptable; and approving the first document only if none of the first portions are substantially identical to the second portions that have been predetermined to be unacceptable.”

This is the “if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck” theory of setting up a set of seed documents or webpages, identifying them as “unacceptable” and then running an algorithm to find other documents that are similar to the seed documents to identify “low-quality” pages.

Claim #2

“A computer-implemented method of approving a document,… where the second portions have been determined to be unacceptable based on human input or automatically by a computer.”

I think it’s safe to say we’ve all read posts and articles about Google using human input to determine what a “trustworthy” page looks like and what one doesn’t look like. More on human input later…

Claim #3

“determining whether the first document contains computer code that may generate an action that is substantially identical to one or more actions determined to be unacceptable. “

Panda was unleashed to rid the web of low-quality results and I think this is where more human input may have been used to identify undesirable aspects of a webpage.

Claim #4

“determining whether the first document comprises computer code that downloads one or more video or audio documents without initiation by the user. “

More of the same… Google identifying aspects of a webpage that it considers to provide a poor user experience and then nuking everything that looks like it.

Claim #5

“A computer-implemented method of rating a document, comprising: identifying one or more first documents that have been determined by human means to include a visual element, an audio element or a textual element that is unacceptable; automatically, by a processing device, comparing a second document to the one or more first documents; determining whether the second document contains an element that is substantially identical to one or more of a visual element, an audio element or a textual element that has previously been determined to be unacceptable; and rating the second document based on the determining. “

In my opinion this was the biggest part of the Panda update. Google figured out a way to take human input and automate it. Automation ftw.

I should note that the first four claims of the patent made reference to approving or rejecting a document while the fifth claim makes reference to “rating” a document. Panda essentially drew a line in the sand and put websites on the good side of the line or the bad side (pandalized) and this patent seems to be all about identifying possible low-quality results and then running them through the ringer to determine if they are acceptable or unacceptable.

Claims 6 and 7 makes references to rating documents and approving or rejecting them as well.

The last claim on this patent I find interesting is claim #11. Here’s what I find interesting:

“A computer-implemented method comprising: analyzing content of a first document to identify one or more first portions; identifying one or more second documents that are similar to the first document, wherein the one or more second documents have second portions that have been predetermined to be unacceptable where a determination of unacceptability is based on a threshold and where the threshold relates to a presentation parameter associated with the one or more second documents; determining whether any of the first portions are substantially identical to the second portions that have been predetermined to be unacceptable; and rating the document as either acceptable or unacceptable based upon the determining.”

When I read the words “presentation parameter” and “threshold” the first thing I though about was ads. When Panda was first released, one of the first things I looked at possibly being a factor was the total number of ads on a webpage. Could this be the presentation parameter discussed in this claim and does the threshold refer to the total number of ads on a webpage?

In my opinion this is one of the more interesting patent applications to come out recently. This patent is all about rating, accepting and rejecting documents based on comparisons to other seed documents which have been determined to be unacceptable. When Panda was first released it was described as an algorithmic update designed to combat low-quality content and results. This patent is full of different parameters Google can use to not only identify possibly low-quality results but also to automatically compare the identified results with other seed documents that Google has already predetermined to be unacceptable. Does this not sound like Panda to you?

Related posts:

1. How Viral Marketing Can Be Meaningless
2. Why You Should Consult With An SEO Pro Before Optimizing Your Website
3. Using Competitive Analysis To Build Links

Below is the SEO Audit template I use to audit content-based websites when I do not have access to the clients analytics. Before I get started with the SEO Audit process, I like to get a good idea of what the potential client expects to get out of his website and what the targeted keywords are. Once I do that, I dive into the SEO audit process and check to see if the website is optimized to achieve the clients goals and meets basic SEO best practices.

SEO Audit

Keyword Targeting

• What are the targeted keywords?
• Which keywords/phrases is the client site already ranking for?
• Are specific pages being optimized for targeted keywords?
• Cross check targeted keywords with related/similar keywords and phrases to ensure the right keywords are being targeted.

Title Tags

• Are the targeted keywords being used in the Title tags?
• Are the Title tags too long? (as close to but not over 70 characters?)

Meta Descriptions

• Is good ad copy being used in the meta descriptions to draw clicks?

In Content Keyword Use

• Are the targeted keywords being used in the content?
• Are the targeted keywords being overused in the content (keyword stuffing)?

Content

• Is correct site architecture being used to display the content?
• i.e. does the content link up to the appropriate category page?
• Are breadcrumb links being used?
• Are links being used in-content to promote targeted pages/keywords?
• Check permalink structure; are keywords being used?
• Check the title tag
• Are images being used? Are image Alt attributes optimized for targeted keywords?

Notes: Often the problem with content is that is gets buried too many clicks away from the homepage and it doesn’t link up to targeted category pages. At this point I’m not looking at the quality of the content, just making sure it’s properly optimized and easy to find.

• Are the URLs optimized for the targeted keywords?
• Are the URLs too long or unintelligible by search engine spiders?

Notes: Obviously the biggest problem here is typically URLs with too many parameters or URLs with a bunch of malarkey on them (and no targeted keywords). In my experience and in conversations with other SEOs, it seems that switching to SEO optimized URLs is seen as a beneficial change when executed properly.

Design Quality

• Does the design and layout of the website look trustworthy?

Share-Ability

• Is it easy for users and visitors to share the content on the website?

Content

• Is the content worthy of being shared?
• Is unique content being used throughout the site?
• Content on category, sub-category pages and content pages should be good enough to attract links on their own. Is it?

Notes: This is usually a part of the audit that is a bit more difficult because it is a lot more subjective but with Panda running wild it’s imperative that the website have the look and feel of a trustworthy website.

The quality of the content is also a huge issue during this part of the process. Compare the content from the client website to the content of the top 10 results for their targeted keywords. Is it comparable? After looking over the content, I like to ask myself: “Would I link to this content? Why or why not?

• Is the content organized in clearly defined groups?
• Are all pages on the same level or is there proper site/link architecture?
• Is good content only a minimal number of clicks away from the homepage?
• Are there links on the homepage to all important category pages?
• Are targeted keywords being used in the anchor text of internal links?

Homepage

• Does the homepage link to all targeted category and sub-category pages?
• Are there excessive links in the footer?
• Are there links in the footer or navigation to unimportant/non-targeted pages?

Category and Sub-Category Pages

• Do category and sub-category pages link down to related content?
• Are outbound links kept to a minimum to target sub-category pages and related content?
• Are there excessive links in the footer to unimportant/non-targeted pages?

Notes: Post Panda I’m seeing good site architecture playing a bigger and bigger role in rankings. For larger websites targeting a larger set of keywords, good site architecture is imperative to overall good rankings.

• Are Meta tags being unnecessarily used to no-index or no-follow content?
• Are important pages being dis-allowed in robots.txt?
• Are meta directives being used over robots.txt to no-index or no-follow pages?

• Crawl website and list crawl and server errors along with recommendations

 Notes: I like to use Screaming Frog and Link Assistant’s Website Auditor for this portion of the audit. Website Auditor gives me a good view of the website’s hierarchy which helps during the information architecture portion of the audit as well. This part of the audit is pretty simple; run the software and report the results.

Overview/Summary

• Check total number of inbound links and the number of root domains linking to the main domain
• Check the anchor text distribution of the inbound links
• Make a note of the most valuable incoming links; are there good, quality links in the profile?
• Are there any shady or spammy looking links?

Website Link-Worthiness

• Would you link to this website?
• Is the content good enough to attract links naturally?
• Is the content easily shareable? Are there links to share content via Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Homepage/ Site Quality

• Make a note of your first impression. Is the site trustworthy?
• What’s in the footer?

Notes: At this point I just want to get an idea of what type of links the client has been building, if any, and make note of the most prominent links. I mostly use Majestic SEO for this part of the process but also incorporate Open Site Explorer and Yahoo Site Explorer.

Google Targeted Keywords

Initially get an idea for the level of competition by checking the serp’s for the client’s targeted keywords. (Make sure personalized search is off)

• Make notes of the top 10 results
  • Domain age of top results? Wikipedia results? Big Brands? Spammy domains?
  • How did the top results get there? (brief observations – total # of inbound links and unique referring domains)
  • How many sponsored ads in the serp? (More can be a sign of high competition)
  • Are there any Universal results in the SERP?
  • Check meta-descriptions of top results. How does client site compare?

• Check total number of inbound links and the number of root domains linking to the main domain for the top 10 results
• Check the anchor text distribution of the inbound links for the top 10 results
• Check the quality of the links; are they in-content links on authority websites or footer and sidebar links on a link network?
• How does the client’s link profile compare to that of the top 10 competitors in the serp result?

Notes: I’m not going to throw any numbers out there but I think as SEOs we can all agree that inbound links are a big part of Google’s algorithms. At this point in the process I like to ask myself how the client link profile compares to that of the top 10 results for their targeted keywords.

And that’s all folks!

This is what I would call a preliminary SEO Audit because a much more extensive audit will take place when I get access to the client’s analytics and do a much more thorough inbound link analysis of the competition. At this point, I’m just trying to get a bird’s eye view of the competition and give myself a good idea of the website’s overall health as it relates to SEO best practices.

Related posts:

1. Why You Should Consult With An SEO Pro Before Optimizing Your Website
2. How Hiring the Cheapest SEO Could Cost You Your Website
3. What Are Anchored Back Links And Why Are They So Important?

Are you buying or selling Twitter?

I got my start in SEO several years ago via affiliate marketing. Anybody familiar with affiliate marketing is aware that the tactics used in affiliate marketing are  a lot different than say the tactics one would use to promote a client site. Nevertheless the principles of driving traffic to generate sales are the same in affiliate marketing as they are in the business world.

Are we making more money based on our marketing efforts?

Nine times out of ten with affiliate marketing that was not the case with social media and that’s why I focused the majority of my efforts on SEO as an affiliate marketer. Because SEO delivered: Targeted. Buying. Traffic.

The mantra in my circle with regards to social media was that it was too hard to convert and that peeps who were using social media weren’t generally looking to buy stuff or to be sold stuff. Rather they were looking for entertainment and to connect with their social network. Any way you look at it when you’re short on time and man power, social media is not something you’re going to be spending your time on if things like eating and paying the mortgage are important to you. The running joke back in the day was that white hat SEOs were starving because they couldn’t get anything to rank and social media specialists would be back looking for 9-5 work as soon as their money ran out.

So obviously things have changed a bit as the whole world seems to have gone crazy over social media. When you have congressmen and politicians talking about “You should follow me on Tweeter” you know it’s something you have to take another look at.

So where does that leave Twitter?

It’s not like Twitter is a new service anymore so I think it’s safe to say that Twitter is what it is. But what the hell is that!?!?

For the life of me I don’t understand Twitter… I mean I think it’s a great tool and all but I’ve reached a point where I need to decide where Twitter fits into my marketing efforts and I assume there are many more out there just like me??? So let’s get to the meat of the potato (sorry I heard that on Storage Wars which I’m strangely addicted to…) am I buying or selling Twitter? For those of you not familiar with my buying or selling series please read the snippet below from a previous post.

I’ve decided to start a new category called “Buying or Selling.” The concept behind “Buying or Selling” is pretty simple when you think of it in terms of buying or selling stock. When a stock is going down in price you obviously want to sell and when it’s going up obviously you want to buy. So what I want to do here is look at SEO tactics and determine whether I think they’re something that’s useable and effective, in which case I would be “Buying” that tactic, or if the tactic is dead and no longer viable than I would be “Selling” that tactic.

Are You Buying Or Selling Twitter?

I like Twitter. I think it’s great. But how good is it at delivering targeted, buying traffic? Consider the following:

As far as buying or selling Twitter, right now I would have to say I am holding Twitter.  Frankly I think it can be a very useful tool for an SEO but I don’t believe it will ever be used as a ranking factor. For example I do believe it can have a reranking effect on the serp’s (provided you have legit followers who are logged in when they do a search), I do believe Google uses the Twitter firehose as a signal but not necessarily as a ranking signal (more of a discovery signal), obviously Google uses Twitter to populate news results and I think it’s an awesome tool for connecting with peeps in your niche.

But and this is a big but…

My litmus test with internet marketing, SEO and social media tools is this. I simply ask my wife, mom and friends if they’ve even heard of the thing #1 but #2 would they ever use it? And I gotta tell you not many people I know are using teh Twitter. As is the case with most of you I’m sure, most of the peeps I know use Facebook for pretty much everything social. Back to Twitter…

At this point here’s what I can say about Twitter. Twitter is great at getting new stuff indexed. As far as any conclusive evidence that Twitter has any direct  impact on search engine rankings, it does seem to have a “reranking” effect and I do routinely see Tweets in news results but it ends there. Here’s a great post by David Harry on Google Social Search and SEO with illustrations on how Google is importing recommendations from people in your social network and reranking results in the process. Basically they’re taking a page or result that wouldn’t ordinarily be on the first page and they’re inserting it into the serp because there is a social connection between the searcher and the result. Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz also wrote on the topic recently: Social Annotations in Search: Now Your Social Network = Rankings.

Obviously this a huge development in SEO as the lines between SEO and Social Media have been blurred. A social media campaign can now actually have an effect on some serps.

What do Google and Bing have to say?

Here’s the latest from Google and Bing on which social signals they use and how: What Social Signals Do Google & Bing Really Count?

Some interesting tidbits from that article:

Both Google and Bing tell me (Danny Sullivan) that who you are as a person on Twitter can impact how well a page does in regular web search. Authoritative people on Twitter lend their authority to pages they tweet.

and there’s also this:

Yes, we do use [Twitter] as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article

Here’s Matt Cutts on how Google used data from social sites:

Personally I don’t believe Google is using Tweets as a ranking factor as some have suggested. I believe it’s used as a signal to find new content and it’s obviously also used to populate news results. And now we see that it can also have an effect on serps when the searcher is logged in to his social accounts or should we just call them personalized results because it seems that’s the direction the search engines are taking us.

But how much can the search engines actually use Twitter signals beyond that?

Can you rely on it and incorporate it into your organic search results (not personalized results) algorithms if only a fraction of the population is using it? Consider the following:

• FaceBook  has 600 million visitors and half that visit every day.
• Twitter claims 175 million users but a closer look by Business insider shows us that:

1. There were 119 million Twitter accounts following one or more other accounts.
2. There were 85 million accounts with one or more followers.
3. there are 56 million Twitter accounts following zero other accounts, and 90 million Twitter accounts with zero followers
4. there are 56 million accounts on Twitter following 8 or more accounts

So long story short, Twitter is a lot smaller than we think and if we were to actually measure “active” users I think it would lose most, if not all, of it’s appeal to investors. And here’s a little somethin’, somethin’ about the Twitter demographic from Information Week:

Most Twitter users are between the ages of 26 and 44, college graduates or still in school, and earn between $25K and $75K a year. This means services aimed at retirees, for instance, or big-ticket buyers, may fall flat. Or, they may only reach a too-marginal segment of your prospective audience, people who don’t have much of an audience of their own and don’t serve to spread word effectively about your brand.

If you ask me, Twitter is as big as it’s going to be and it’s not going to get any bigger. And that’s why I’m only holding Twitter and not buying it. Look as a SEO I’m no where near as seasoned as a lot of the SEO veterans out there and I’ve already been into several niches where Twitter is barely used, if at all. How much are the search engines going to be able to rely on Twitter signals in those niches? And my experience with Twitter also echoes the data above. Twitter has become a spammers paradise, it is primarily used by other SEOs and social media specialists and of the real followers out there very few are actually active.

Personally I love Twitter. I think it’s a fascinating tool with many uses for an SEO. But do me a favor and take your I-do-this-for-a-living-and-love-every-aspect-of-it cap off for a second and think from the perspective of someone who doesn’t work on the internet all the day. What is the use and purpose of teh Twitter? And what kind of return-on-investment can your client expect from using Twitter?

If you’re anything like me, your brother, wife, momma and friends don’t have a Twitter account. And how many people do you know have the time to follow the “authorities” of their favorite hobbies or the interest to be updated in real time?

While Twitter is a great tool, I think the decision on whether or not to use it should be made on a niche by niche basis with an eye on ROI. It is not now nor do I believe it ever will be a ranking factor. So your decision to use it should be based on something other than organic search results.

Related posts:

1. Buying or Selling: Paid Links
2. How Viral Marketing Can Be Meaningless
3. What Are Anchored Back Links And Why Are They So Important?

Being that I’m starved for content ideas I’ve decided to start a new category called “Buying or Selling.” The concept behind “Buying or Selling” is pretty simple when you think of it in terms of buying or selling stock. When a stock is going down in price you obviously want to sell and when it’s going up obviously you want to buy. So what I want to do here is look at SEO tactics and determine whether I think they’re something that’s useable and effective, in which case I would be “Buying” that tactic, or if the tactic is dead and no longer viable than I would be “Selling” that tactic. This week I want to look at paid links.

Buying or Selling: Paid Links

In the case of paid links there is one big detriment to using them and that’s getting outed by one of your competitors because frankly I’m not too high on Goog’s ability to sniff out paid links on their own… at least when you know how to buy paid links but that’s a post for another day…

Recently it’s become sport to out big, brand names for buying links or other nefarious tactics and some pretty big names have gone down. Brand names such as J.C. Penney, Forbes and Overstock. The penalty for buying links is a big slap to your rankings and to the back of your dome for thinking you could ever pull one over on Goog. This fear alone is more than enough to keep most webmasters and small business owners away from the likes of paid links but is that smart on their part?

When I think about SEO tactics I don’t ever think in terms of ethics or morals. When I think about SEO tactics I think about effectiveness and I look at the work or investment/return ratio. I can guarantee you the Board of Directors at all of the companies listed above think in the same way. I can guarantee you the Board at J.C.Penney’s wasn’t thinking about Goog’s feelings or their TOS as they took their profits from multiple front-page rankings to the bank. Not to beat a dead horse but buying links was a calculated move and it paid off big time for J.C. Penney. They front-paged for a bunch of buying terms right before the holiday season and they took flak for it after the fact. Their rankings were “slapped” after they had already proven to themselves that paid links work and are effective.

So I’m buying links for the simple fact that they work and Goog is atrocious at finding them.

Granted there is risk involved and that’s where as an SEO I pull myself out of the equation. When it comes to paid links, if you’re working with a client your job as an SEO is to apprise the client of the risk involved in buying links. Risk assessment is up to the client, not me. I simply say here is what is in my tool belt and this is the risk/reward ratio of those tactics in my tool belt. And when they ask me about paid links the response is always: “Paid links work but you have to be careful and you have to buy the right ones. And you have to be willing to take a “slap” to your rankings if you get caught.”

How can Google tell the difference between a paid link and a natural link? It can’t and neither can the search engine spiders or the algorithms if you know what you’re doing.

So when it comes to paid links I’m obviously buying. On my personal affiliate websites it’s a no-brainer and with clients it’s up to them to determine how much risk they want to take to achieve higher rankings. Generally speaking paid links aren’t something I would propose to a client but when I start to here comments and chatter that sound like “things aren’t happening fast enough,” “is there any way to speed up the process,” and my favorite “are we there yet?”

Yea when I start to hear stuff like that, I let it be known that there are options and alternatives but that they also entail a lot more risk. Personally I’ve been surprised at how many peeps are more than willing to take on more risk but maybe I shouldn’t be. We live in a results driven world and in a results driven world, paid links work.

I’m buying paid links. Chime in in the comments. Are you buying or selling paid links?

Related posts:

1. Using Competitive Analysis To Build Links
2. Quick And Easy Ways To Get Some Links To Your Site
3. Using Content to Build Links

Cliff Notes version: For small business owners who are looking to audit their own websites this book is perfect. For the seasoned SEO who is looking for “secrets” from a reputable name in the industry to quote the book: “These are not the droids you are looking for…”

First of all the book is written in an easy-to-read and entertaining manner which makes it easy to get through even though it’s over 400 pages long. I’m writing this review after reading half the book as it seems the first half of the book pertains to on-site search engine optimization and auditing websites for SEO while the second-half is more about the business of SEO consulting.

As I mentioned in the Cliff Notes, this book is perfect for the business owner who is reluctant to outsource SEO or wants to give himself a good idea of what on-site search engine optimization entails. This book is very thorough for that and perfect for the SMB owner who wants to audit his own website.

Search Engine Optimization Secrets does give you a pretty detailed walk-through on how to conduct an SEO audit for a website and if this book has any value that’s where it is…

Danny Dover talks about some basics like the importance of domain names and the importance of links or “popularity” and then gets into one of the biggest problems I see when auditing websites and that’s duplication and canonicalization. He also talks about the importance of good site architecture and good navigation and of course he gets into the proverbial SEO copy debate on “what is good content” and how to be able to distinguish the good from the bad.

Danny Dover also gets into different tools that he uses to audit websites and tools he uses and recommends to track and monitor SEO progress. This is where I feel this book can be invaluable to some SMB owners because I have to imagine most of them are clueless about half of the tools that are available to them for SEO…

Unfortunately that’s about as positive as I can get about this book. Frankly I’m not really sure why someone with such a stellar reputation in the industry would use the word “secrets” in the title of their book when he probably pretty damn well knew there wouldn’t be any in the book. The preface for chapter 5 has a line which reads:

Alright here it is: most SEO problems are caused by a lack of links. You see, hyperlinks are the Swiss Army Knife of SEO. Assuming a few other conditions are met, links can fix almost any problem.

Unfortunately Danny Dover doesn’t spend too much time on link-building… matter of fact I believe the book had a whole page dedicated to the topic which was a huge disappointment for me.

According to Danny if you wanna get real wild, cut loose and take on a little risk with your link-building you should look into… drum roll please… buying links from directories.

Things I took away from this book

Not much really but it did have some basics that I think are critical for anyone getting started with SEO:

• It’s all about bout the links – links are still the most important ranking factor in Google’s algorithms
• Title tags are the most important on-page ranking factor for SEO
• Identifies the most common SEO mistake – duplication and canonicalization
• Stresses the importance of good site architecture and navigation
• Stresses the importance of good, in-depth content

The unfortunate thing is the majority of this stuff is covered in the first couple of chapters…

Price of the book? Is it worth it?

I picked up this book for a little over $40 at my local Barnes and Noble. At that price I still think I got my moneys worth and I still haven’t read the second half which covers SEO consulting. This book was nice for me because I’ve never worked inside an agency so it was nice to get a view or insight into how bigger SEO firms or consultants conduct their audits. It does give you a nice template and review process for auditing a website.

As far as containing any secrets, this book  was a huge fail and that’s why I’m not thrilled about it. The title of this book should be Search Engine Optimization by Danny Dover but that probably wouldn’t have sold as many books I’m thinking.

If you’re a small business owner thinking about SEO, GET IT. If you’re an experienced SEO looking for secrets to get you a #1 ranking, “This isn’t the droid you’re looking for…”

Related posts:

1. A Los Angeles SEO Company – Los Angeles Search Engine Optimization
2. Antelope Valley SEO – Antelope Valley Search Engine Optimization
3. What Are Anchored Back Links And Why Are They So Important?

Today Blekko announced they will be banning some of the most popular content farms from their index.

From Search Engine Land: http://searchengineland.com/blekko-bans-content-farms-from-their-index-63134

The top 20 sites Blekko removed from their index include ehow.com, experts-exchange.com, naymz.com, activehotels.com, robtex.com, encyclopedia.com, fixya.com, chacha.com, 123people.com, download3k.com, petitionspot.com, thefreedictionary.com, networkedblogs.com, buzzillions.com, shopwiki.com, wowxos.com, answerbag.com, allexperts.com, freewebs.com, and copygator.com.

This move was obviously in reaction to Google announcing their 2011 spam target this year are content farms. Matt Cutts of Google announced part or all of the algorithm is live as of last week. However, ehow.com and other typical “content farms” have for the most part, seemed to be unaffected. This implies that either the algorithm that launched had nothing to do with content farms or Google does not classify these sites as content farms.

What is somewhat surprising to me is the fact that Blekko got out in front of this one…

Blekko, the search engine that nobody is paying attention to, addressed a problem that most search engine users have been pretty vocal about.

Google has come out and stated that their version of the “content farm” algorithm has not been released yet but already we know that Google will not be banning content farm sites altogether; rather they will, as is typical of Google, attempt to solve the problem algorithmically…

As an Afilliate Marketer I know all about “thin sites” and “content farms” like eHow because I compete with them on a daily basis for longtail keyword phrases. I believe Google is making a mistake by not eliminating the content farms entirely from their index as Blekko has. If you ask me this is the one definitive method for forcing Demand Media to improve the quality of their content as well as force other spammers to do the same. But alas there are reasons to keep content farms around…

Jill Whalen, of High Rankings, recently wrote a post on why it’s beneficial for Google to keep content farms and low quality content websites in their index – Google Sucks All the Way to the Bank!. A great post and a must-read for any seo but basically the jist of the post is that Google benefits by having low quality results in their index because it forces searchers to

1. click on Adwords ads which Google profits from
2. or click on Adsense ads because they don’t find the information they’re looking for on the low-quality content farms that proliferate in the serps.

I don’t believe the content farms will go away anytime soon and particularly from Google’s serps. If Google’s past is any indicator, they will try to figure this out algorithmically and I think most of us already know how that’s going to work out…it’s not!

Unfortunately I believe Google will target some of the smaller content farms and do nothing about some of the larger content farms out there. And in the process probably ban and de-index some legitimate websites. All of this so they can save face and release a statement saying they’ve cleaned up their index. And while that may be enough for most folks… the folks in this industry know different.

Related posts:

1. Using Content to Build Links
2. Not All Links Are Created Equal
3. How Viral Marketing Can Be Meaningless

Any seasoned seo will tell you that not all links are created equal. In the eyes of Google a contextual link from an authoritative website is worth far more than a link on a footer of some site with nothing to offer other than duplicate content. A great method for acquiring some of these contextual links is to look for guest blogging opportunities from blogs in your niche.

Finding blogs to guest post on can be tedious and time-consuming but if you’re up for the task below are some search queries you can run to find bloggers who have at some point accepted a guest blog post.

• {keyword} “guest blogger”
• {keyword} “guest post”
• {keyword} “guest article”
• {keyword} “write for us”
• {keyword} “guest column”
• {keyword} “become a contributor”
• {keyword} “contribute to this site”
• {keyword} inurl:category/guest

To do this search I use the advanced search in Google and I toggle the results per page to 100. Personally I like to work from the bottom up and basically what you’re looking for are blogs that regularly take guest bloggers. On occasion you’ll run into certain blogs that only take guest posts from authority figures in the niche or have regular guest bloggers only. While you can still approach those bloggers I’ve found that only very rarely will they accept guest posts from other writers.

The key with this little exercise is obviously to go through the list as quickly as possible and to find as many possible guest blogging opportunities as possible. What you’re looking for are websites that regularly accept guest posts from different guest bloggers. Each guest blogging opp is a possible link back to your site!

If your website is relatively young and you don’t have any linkable assets your best bet is probably to write up an original article and send it along with the guest post request email. In order to do this you’ll want to spend a few minutes at the site to determine what type of content they post and get a good feel for what type of content stands a good chance of getting accepted.

I wish I had some tips or a magical template that would increase your conversion rate to 100% but I’m afraid I haven’t fount it yet. Writing good content seems to work pretty well though and so does thoroughly checking out their site to look for any guidelines or restrictions they might have on guest posts. You know for those of you looking to drop 12 links in that one article…

I digress.

I like to shoot through a bunch of targets and then take a closer look at all the blogs that I didn’t get a response from to see if they’re worth continuing to pursue. If the website shows all the characteristics of an authoritative site than I might continue to try and communicate through comments or through Twitter or Facebook. If they have a Twitter or FaceBook account it would probably be a good idea to follow them. For those of you that think now is a great time to hit them up for a link go ahead and smack yerself on the back of the head for me…

If you have a Twitter or Facebook account yourself you can share their stories as a friendly gesture. In the end it all boils down to building relationships with people and sharing content with them that would be useful to their readers.

Guest blogging works if you’re looking to build contextual links and not only is it a great way to build links but let’s not dismiss the fact that you’re placing yourself in front of an audience that is in a somewhat related niche. In other words the link could mean more then just link juice, you could also be looking at a spike in traffic and new readers.

Related posts:

1. Using Competitive Analysis To Build Links
2. Quick And Easy Ways To Get Some Links To Your Site
3. What Are Anchored Back Links And Why Are They So Important?

Need SEO assistance for a small online retail store that just launched. The store was built using GoDaddy Quick Shopping Cart. Website is [Removed to protect the innocent] Right now no work has been done for SEO and I would like to get the site on Google 1st page rankings in natural search for the following 8 keywords within the next month. 1. green gifts 2. green products 3. eco-friendly gifts 4. ecofriendly gifts 5. environmentally friendly gifts 6. recycled gifts 7. earth friendly gifts 8. earth friendly products Please include in your proposal techniques to be used, examples of prior work with SEO, and comments around feasibility of hitting the 1st page results in the time frame requested. No black hat or grey hat SEO.

The above request for seo services is actually fairly typical for business or website owners that don’t know much about search engine optimization. There are two big problems with this request:

1. The website is new and will inevitably end up in Google’s sandbox. The sandbox is a penalty that the Google search engine algorithm applies to new websites that usually build back links too quickly out of the gate. The penalty basically removes your website from top search engine rankings. So if you were ranking #1 for something, you won’t be after the penalty is applied.
2. Compounding matters is the fact that the keywords are somewhat competitive and there are multiple phrases the client wants to rank for.
3. Making things damn near impossible is the fact that the client wants to rank for all of these phrases in one month and doesn’t want any black hat or grey hat seo used.
   

Managing Client Search Engine Optimization Expectations

One of the hardest tings about doing search engine optimization for clients is managing expectations. The first thing you have to ask yourself as a website owner is this: “Is my website as good or better then the websites already ranking on the first page of Google for my targeted keywords?”

If all the websites ranking on the first page of Google for your targeted keywords are 500 page monsters with tons of content and back links and all you have is a 5 page website with little to no content that is brand-spanking new, then you have to ask yourself if you really belong on the first page of Google?

No business owner or webmaster ever wants to hear that there website doesn’t belong on the first page of Google but just because it doesn’t belong there now doesn’t mean that you can’t make changes to make it more deserving of a top ranking.

A good seo company should be able to let you now if your website is good enough to rank for your targeted keyword phrases. Unfortunately some seo companies will take any work they can find and that’s what you as a business owner have to look out for.

See the thing with the ad up top is that if I wanted to get that website to the first page of Google I probably could. The problem is that I would run the risk of getting that website penalized or even worse banned or de-indexed from Google. That’s the risk you take when you place an ad like the one above for seo services and one of the biggest problems with the seo industry is that there are a lot of seo companies running around that don’t know what they’re doing and those are the types of folks you will attract with an ad like that. Buyer beware and be informed as always…

Generally speaking a good amount of time for a seo to make some progress with a website in the search engine rankings is about 6-12 months depending on how competitive the keywords are.

Related posts:

1. Using Competitive Analysis To Build Links
2. What Are Anchored Back Links And Why Are They So Important?
3. Why You Should Consult With An SEO Pro Before Optimizing Your Website

It’s unfortunate but there are a lot of snake oil salesman in the seo industry… In any industry or business there are always folks who are willing to take short cuts in order to reach their goals and the seo industry is no different.

Inc ran a story recently about a gift basket website that was penalized for buying links which is against Google’s webmaster guidelines. You can read the whole story here: How Google Cost Me $4 Million.

The moral of the story is this: Google does not like it when websites/webmasters buy links and attempt to manipulate their search engine rankings… doing so could get your website removed from Google’s search engine results and end up costing you a lot of money.

I’ll be the first to admit there are a lot of shady seo’s out there in the search engine optimization industry and that’s why you have to do your homework when you go out and hire an seo agency to do your search engine optimization for you. If you’re going to hire someone or an agency to try an improve your search engine rankings you should probably ask what it is they will be doing to improve your websites rankings. Before you go out and outsource this kind of thing you may want to read Google’s webmaster Guidelines and at least familiarize yourself with what you can do, what you cannot do and of course what could get you banned!

In many cases I’ve run into clients that have spent a lot of money paying a seo company to basically spam their website all over the internet and sometimes this will have the same result as buying links. The reason some seo companies do it is because it flat out works with certain keywords. If you build enough links you can achieve a top ranking but a lot of bad things can happen in the process…

For starters your business and your brand could be directly associated with spam if your seo provider decides to drop your link wherever they see fit… it’s really sad but there are a lot of peeps practicing seo and they’ve never even read Google’s webmaster guidelines… they don’t know that half of the stuff they’re doing could get you banned!

As mentioned earlier some seo providers will drop your link wherever possible, sometimes just to meet link quotas, and some of these places are known as “bad neighborhoods” because they were basically created by spammers so they could have a place to place their links. Anyhow it’s a bad practice and links from these places could actually hurt your websites rankings because instead of building trust with Google, it’s actually taking it away.

Another thing these shady seo companies like to do is spam every blog on the internet with your link followed by a comment that goes something like this: “great post! I hope to read more from you.” Not only does this make you look bad but a webmaster having a bad day could report you to your hosting company for spamming and your website could be suspended for some time.

A lot of times the best case scenario when you hire a bad seo company is you end up paying a lot of money for a lot of crappy, worthless links.

Ok and that’s with the obviously shady companies out there… the company mentioned above in the Inc. article was a “reputable” company in the search engine optimization industry so you even have to be careful with the big guys because a lot of times they don’t know what they’re doing either.

Anyway you look at it, it’s best to familiarize yourself a bit with search engine optimization and at least know what could get your website banned from Google’s index… you know things like buying links and spamming your website to the top of the search engines. Know who you’re working with and have a good idea of what they will be doing to improve your rankings.

Related posts:

1. Why You Should Consult With An SEO Pro Before Optimizing Your Website
2. Using Competitive Analysis To Build Links
3. Quick And Easy Ways To Get Some Links To Your Site