Google has been making a lot of changes to the SERPs, and it seems they are pushing a lot of well known brands to the top of the listings.

One of their recent updates which I will coin as “Google Brand Links” can have a negative impact on online businesses.

Online traffic visitors will generally search for keywords (not brands) to find a product online, and online businesses rely heavily on these ‘unbranded keywords’.

If you were to search for ‘underwear‘ on Google, you’ll notice the first listing is freshpair.com. You’ll also notice that this company is not trying to go after branded keywords like “Victoria Secret”, “Joe Boxer”, “Hanes”, “Fruit of the Loom”, and “Calvin Klein” (even though they probably sell these brands)

Before, if I was looking for ‘underwear’ online, I would’ve probably been checking out freshpair.com before looking at the other sites on page 1. Now, Google has added these Google Brand Links to the top of the SERPs which will grab a person’s attention before they even see freshpair.com.

If I was a woman looking for underwear online, then I would probably click on the Victoria Secret link. If you click on the link, you’ll see that the Victoria Secret’s home page comes first which is no surprise. The problem is that Victoria Secret has an ECommerce site just like freshpair which means that fresh would more than likely lose the sale.

Now that’s just the first part…..it gets worse.

Let’s suppose you’re an ecommerce company that is selling a brand of an electric blanket that is not well known. Before the Google Brand update, you relied heavily on the organic visitors. Now that Google added the branded links, your chances of getting your product noticed has become very small.  Not only have the big brands taken over the Shopping Results, they are now in the top under the Google Brand links .

That poor guy ElectricBlanket.net will probably lose a lot of traffic to Sunbeam, Beautyrest, Martex, Sealy, and LL Bean …and of course the Shopping Results. Sunbeam and other companies may not sell products directly, but when you click on their links…..guess who shows up? Amazon and JC Penney.

Now the online visitor will probably end up with one of these 2 companies, and electricblanket.net will never see them come to their site.

If you search for TV Wall Mount, you’ll notice that the brands are at the top again. If I were to buy a tv wall mount online, I doubt I will look at the brand as they’re probably all made in China by the same manufacturer. Since more than 50% of the online traffic click on the first link, they’ll probably end up click on the Sony Google Brand link.

Does Sony have it’s own Ecommerce store? Yep. I probably won’t buy their $899 TV wall mount, but since I’m already on that page….I’ll probably buy it at Amazon or hdtvsolutions.com. Amazon doesnt lose anything but standsandmounts.com which was part of the first query will lose a lot of visitors.

The only recommendation I can probably offer may not be the best possible solution since you may get slapped with a cease and desist letter.

Either way I’ll offer it and you can do it at your own risk.

If I were the TV Wall Mount company, I would try to offer the Sony brand and the other brands of wall mounts. I would also look into optimizing the Sony Wall Mount product page to rank on page 1 right next to the Sony website. Even if Google takes down the new brand links, you would still get the visitors who search products by brand name.

Update: Google posts about the Brand Refinements here

I have always been a big believer of a link being just a link no matter where it came from. I have added lots of Edu and Gov backlinks to my site(s), and haven’t seen any difference compared to regular com/net/org backlinks.

I’m writing this post because a lot of people ask me how many Edu/Gov backlinks will it take for their site to rank on page 1 of Google. The answer is NONE, and the answer is also A LOT. 

The reason why NONE is an answer is because I rank for a lot of sites that have NO Edu backlinks. Ex. Mortgage Rates (I rank for my state and other national keyterms)

The reason why A LOT is an answer is because Edu and Gov backlinks are worth a lot because they receive a lot of natural links. They MAY carry a lot of weight but not for the reasons we make think they do.

Edu and Gov sites NATURALLY have other sites pointing to them. A site that contains a lot of back links will have a  higher chance of having a higher page rank, trust factor, and authority. I have seen Edu sites with the home page having a PR1 because it was a fairly new EDU site. I did a link analysis on the site, and saw it only had a couple of hundred backlinks. After a few PageRank updates, the site’s PR changed to a PR5. I did another link analysis on the site, and saw that the backlinks were now over 1,000. The Edu site was not even soliciting for backlinks. They now had local municipal sites with aged domains and high PR pointing a link to them.

Gov or Government sites are the same way.

Cars.gov was a fairly new Government site that was created for the Cash for Clunkers program. The site had a few instant backlinks from sites like USA.gov, and was ranking on page 1 on Google for Cars. Everyone in the US was talking about this new program, and writing press releases, articles and blog posts with a link pointing back to Cars.gov.
A lot of people speculated that they were on page 1 almost instantly because it was a .gov site. They overlooked the facts that are played into the SERPs everyday.

1. Google loves exact match domains. Search for Cars on Google or other keywords, and you will normally see an exact match domain on page1

2. Google loves a site that has strong backlinks pointing to it. I’m sure USA.gov (PR10) is not the only strong backlink Cars.gov has.

3. Google will rank the site with most AND quality backlinks, aged domain, aged backlinks, etc. Search for Cars on Google and you will see that Cars.gov is #6, and Cars.com is #1 with sitelinks! Cars.com is beating out a .gov site!

So what’s the lesson here?

Stop chasing Edu and Gov links and/or paying a lot of $$$ when other links maybe a lot cheaper, and worth a lot more in Google’s eyes.

If you need to find any Gov links you can start with Uncle Sam

Here’s Matt Cutts talking about how .Edu/.Gov backlinks carry the same weight as a .Com

DAO or Digital Asset Optimization is huge part of Off Page SEO. DAO is defined as Optimizing marketable assets for search engines & users.

Basically, every digital asset you own should be optimized for the search engines, and for users utilizing the website’s search function.

Here are a few examples of Digital Assets: Articles, Press Releases, Anchor text, Blog Posts, Micro Sites, Images, and even the profiles you create for social media sites or forums. Before anyone can begin with DAO, they must perform a keyword research.

For Images
• Image File Name -  Use Baby.jpg instead of 345.jpg (place keywords in image file name)
• Image Alt Text/Image title – Choose ALT instead of Image Title
• Words around an image including caption is very important.

For Audio Podcast
• Audio File Hyperlink – Ex. “Elvis Presley Hits” not “Elvis Presley Hits –>>click here” (Remove excess words/symbols like arrows or click here)
• Use Description, comments, Title, Details – (Rich content can help with Search engine rankings. Make sure to use every field)
• Meta tags for internal/external search – Users will use the search function in a podcast site. If you use tags, your audio can be found a lot easier.

For Video
• Add Description, Tags – Important part to fill so Users can find you within the Video site or on the Search Engine
• Place in correct category
• Pick an optimized title – Google ‘SEO’, and you will see 2 videos on Page 2 with the words ‘SEO’ in the title.
• Video Sitemap – If you broadcast videos on your website, it’s important to create and submit your video sitemap to Google.

Optimizing Titles
Picking a title that is optimized is extremely important if you plan to rank high in the search engines. There are two different types of optimized titles, and the title will depend on who it’s intended for.

Here are some examples for users (linkbait)
“How DAO can make you millions”
“Making millions using DAO”

Here are some examples for robots (search engines)
“Digital Asset Optimization – DAO”
“Digital Asset Optimization – An Overview”

The difference is that one is catered to users as some type of linkbait, and the other is catered for robots with keywords in the title. The title of this post is a little of both. New blogs will use a lot of keywords in their titles to help it rank in the search engines. Well established blogs will use a shorter title or a link bait title to attract referral visitors. My recommendation is to use a little of both.

Less Cloudy, Targeted, and Optimal titles
• Mortgage rates drop by 1% according to Bankrate.com (cloudy)
• Mortgage rates drop by 1% (less cloudy)
• Mortgage Rates drop (optimal for nationwide)
• Charlotte Mortgage Rates drop (targeted)
• Charlotte Mortgage Rates (optimal, targeted for local)
Using too many words in the title can make the title cloudy, and can hurt your chances of ranking higher. It’s always important to use keywords instead of filling up the title with ’stop words’. If the article is targeted towards your city, then make sure to include your city name in the title.

Blog Posts
• Optimized URLs – Use /fha-mortgage-rates.php not /page1.php
• Use HTML coding (strong/bold on keywords or anchor text) - Using Bold or Strong tags
• Internal Linking – very important if you want Users/Robots to find other posts in your site. Also helps the SEO juice flow through your site.
Not a lot of people use bold/strong tags on their anchor text. This can help make your hyperlinks with rich anchor text standout to the robots. Make sure to use it in your forum signatures, press releases, and articles.

Usernames for Profiles
• Pick an optimized username - Ex. NC_SEO not johndoe or vice versa if you’re looking to create accounts for Online Reputation Management
• Look for places to fill with content (About me, description, interests, around links, etc)
• Look for places to get a back link – a lot of social media profiles allow you to place a free link in the profile section.

Building your Assets
• Social Bookmark your assets – This creates traffic to articles/blog posts/press releases. (another form of backlinks)
• Write Press Releases/Articles – Depending on the type of digital asset, you maybe able to write content that points to the asset.
• Write in Mixx or Digg – These sites are very popular for being large amounts of traffic
• Build Back links directly to asset pages – This works if your digital asset is pointing a backlink to your main website.

Building backlinks to press releases, articles, and blog posts can help boost them in the search engines. If these assets have a backlink to your main website, then the juice of the backlink from the Digital asset to your main website will become a lot stronger. This is a pyramid effect which is one of the best ways to build the overall SEO authority of your main website. Another example of this pyramid effect is using micro sites. Your main website can have dozens or even hundreds of micro sites pointing to it. Each micro site can be strengthen by building backlinks, social bookmarks, Press Releases, and articles that point to them. I would recommend researching what the difference is between a micro site and an actual partner page that is against Google TOS.

It seems in recent weeks that Google is forcing Whitehat SEOs to go underground.

With recent posts from Michael Gray and Lisa Barone it seems that Google is putting out an APB alert on all SEOs.

So what happens if one of your websites was found to be guilty in the eyes of Google?

In Lisa’s post “Fact: Viral Conversations faced more scrutiny because Michael is an SEO. …Google handles your site is both site-specific and SEO-specific. And they do hold grudges.”

Now if a person’s website once got deindexed or penalized from Google’s index then they can fix the problem, and request a ‘reconsideration request’. The part in the form that bothers me is Google is demanding to know if the person worked with an SEO.

“If you used a search engine optimization (SEO) company, please note that. Describing the SEO firm and their actions is a helpful indication of good faith that may assist in evaluation of reconsideration requests”

Most clients who hire an SEO do not know anything about SEO, and this is why they hired someone. This reminds me of how a police officer interviews a potential suspect. They tell the suspect to let the officers know everything, and say that the information MAY assist their future sentencing. Everyone knows that if you dont have anything in writing then you have nothing! NADA!

I also believe that Google takes in consideration the Spam Reports or Paid Links report it receives from individuals looking to report their competitors. I believe it’s treated the same way when the police receive a report of a suspicious vehicle in the neighborhood. Some neighbors are nosy, and others just like to look for trouble. Those looking for trouble are normally YOUR competitors who would love for you to drop out of the rankings. Google takes all the reports seriously, and will also look to see if you’re doing something else wrong. I wonder what would happen if 10 different people or 10 different IP addresses report a website for something false. Just like in our regular justice system….even innocent people go to jail because of false witnesses.

 Here are a few tips to avoid the Google radar…..

1. Your domains should have a private registration. I own a few private domains, and have not seen any negative impacts on the SEO part from making them private. Google is a registrar, and can view all the domains that you own. If they find that you’re doing something wrong with 1 website, then they’re more than likely going to look at your other websites.

2. Stop bragging/boasting about how you ‘gamed Google’ or how you ‘quickly shot up the rankings’. Doing this will draw Google’s attention, and even Matt Cutts frequents forums to see what others are doing to spam Google. Google’s best moderators of the web are YOUR COMPETITION. Your competition will love to find a reason to fill out a spam report to see your rankings drop. There are even ‘religious’ white hat SEOs who will report you to Google because they try to exceed Google’s guidelines, envy you, or they’re trying to win some brownie points.

 3. Believe that Matt Cutts is a double agent. You better believe he’s loyal to Google, and he will do what’s in their best interest. Sharing information or asking him the wrong questions THEN handing him your website will only hurt your chances of ranking. His responsibility is the the search engine not to email you to tell you that you have a potential violation of Google guidelines. Google’s goal is to build the quality of the search engine, and not to help you increase your rankings.

4. Be careful with leaving footer tracks. It was a good idea to have a backlink to your site on your client’s footer for referral traffic, and for some link juice. The potential problem doing this is that Google can view your backlinks, and will see who your clients are. Not only will you be monitored with your own SEO company’s site…they will also view all of your client websites. If you were penalized with 1 site for a certain issue, then they’ll look to see if you’re doing the same thing across all of your sites (including clients). There’s nothing worse than someone reporting you in the reconsideration request, and Google taking a hard look at your work. Chances are that they will look and look until they find something wrong. Another reason is that your competition may find your clients, and start soliciting them directly. Also, be careful with displaying a portfolio to the public on your website.

5. You fit the description. The title was taken from profiling of students who were profiled because of their color. The truth of the matter is that a lot of people are profiled because of many different stereotypes. If you proclaim to be an SEO, then you will be looked as a ‘person of interest’ to Google. Your websites, and your client websites will all be scrutinized with a different eyeglass to make sure you’re not trying to manipulate Google’s algorithm.

If you’re really paranoid, then you can try these. Don’t use the same username for bookmarking accounts; Use different hosting providers; Use different logins for your Google accounts WITH different IPs;

Linking to a penalized website can really hurt your own website. This is why it’s very important to know who you’re linking to when not using the ‘nofollow attribute’ on your external links and internal links. This is known as ‘linking to a bad neighborhood’.

You can control what’s flowing in your website, and what’s pointing out. This is why Google will penalize you for linking to bad neighborhoods. Pointing an external link to a bad site will penalize the page that is pointing the link, and possibly your whole site. Not only does this apply to external links, this also applies to internal links to bad neighborhoods.

Here’s my recent experience:

I have a mortgage site with a  ’mortgage rates’ page that needs to be updated every day with new rates. Since this is not the homepage, and only a few numbers are being changed on the page, I can imagine that Google will penalize this page. They probably believe that I’m trying to manipulate the search engine by constantly changing the info on the page.

Since this is a mortgage rate page it’s very important to my users. The first thing they want to see are the mortgage rates. So I have to include a link all over my website to make sure it’s accessible, and to catch their attention when reading my content. Previously, I was ranking high for a lot of pages on a mortgage site, and noticed that these pages did NOT have a link back to the rate page. I went ahead, and changed the content of the page by just adding a link to the mortgage rate page.

Within 7-10 days all the pages dropped by 10-11 pages on Google. They were all on page 1, and now ended up on page 10 or page 11. I was trying to figure out why this happened since this was the only thing I changed on the website within that time period. I knew that Google had penalized my rate page before, and sometimes would deindex it. So I wondered if my recent change to the rate page had an effect on the rankings.

I went back a few days later, and did 2 things to test things out. I had about 10 pages with the internal link pointing to the rate page. I added nofollow to 5 pages that contained the rate link, and remove the rate link from the other 5. Within a few days all 10 pages were back on page 1 for their respective keyterms.

One of the common misconceptions is that Google will penalize a WHOLE site if one page is not within their guidelines. This makes sense, but we also must see that Google may penalized just that 1 page instead of the whole site. This is why it’s very important to pay attention to ALL the pages on your site. If you’re interlinking to that penalized page then the whole site can suffer as well! 

Just like the common cold it’s not hard to determine if an individual page is being penalized.

Here are the symptoms:

1. Individual page or site drops a few pages in rankings, and stays there. Some penalties may even be as small as 10 spots. If you were #1 then moved to page 2, then you may want to check your site if your position stays on page 2.

2. Green pagerank bar turns grey. If a page on your site has a Pagerank 0-10, then turns grey, you may want to pay attention to why it turned grey.

Pay attention to the use of ‘nofollow link attribute’ for external links AND internal links. Also, pay attention to the symptoms above or your whole site can suffer if you’re interlinking. I would recommend finding out first why the page is penalized, and trying to fix it before doing any major changes.

Read more of Robert Enriquez SEO tips on his SEO Blog

You probably found this post because you have a nice website that nobody seems to like.

If you have an Ecommerce site, then having a high bounce rate is understandable.

Google views a bounce as a visitor who visited 1 page, and didn’t visit any other page on your website. If they stayed 1hour on the page they landed on, and didn’t visit another page, then that would be considered a bounce.

Everyone seems to ask the wrong question about reducing the bounce rate.

When you look at your website your question should NOT be “How do I lower my bounce rate?’

It should be “How do I make my website ENGAGING?” Engaging – tending to draw favorable attention or interest -Merriam Webster

Does your site draw favorable attention? ….are you sure?

Here’s a few factors to look at (in no specific order)

1. How many pages do I need to scroll DOWN to get to the information I’m looking for? I don’t want to scroll through 4-5 different FULL posts just to get to the post I’m looking for. There are businesses that have a homepage where you can scroll down at least 3 pages. Also, how W I D E is your website? NOBODY likes to scroll sideways to read information that has been cut off.

2. Do you have a side navigation bar or do you have it at the top or both? A lot of old pages have the navigational bar on the left side. There’s nothing wrong with this if you have a short nav bar or it floats when you scroll down. The issue is that most websites have a long navbar on the side, and it’s annoying to have to scroll down just to get to the next tab. Newer websites tend to use both, but try to get the important tabs on the top of the page (going horizontally).

3. What order are you using in the nav bar? Do you put the best selling products or the information most ppl are looking for at the top of the nav bar or all the way to the left (if you’re using the top horizontal navbar)
I would recommend putting the Contact Us or Apply page all the way to the left (if you’re using the top navbar). Most people read left to right…so they’ll always see it when deciding to go to another page.
or
Placing it on the top of the navbar if you’re using the side navbar. Placing it at the bottom shows the importance of it. Placing it at the top will make sure it sticks out like a sore thumb.

4. Do you provide valuable content about your products or are your pages only pitching products? Most people get easily turned off when someone is trying to ’sell them something’. If you sell comic books, then put an informational page of when the ‘comic book idea’ was first created. When was the first comic book sold, who wrote it, where was it sold, etc. Providing information will help build your ‘trust’ with potential buyers.  You can also use interlinking for seo to direct visitors to your product pages from the information pages.

5. Colors – Are you using a light gray font color on a white background? Are you trying to have your visitors buy something or have them go blind? Make sure that the colors are completely different so the words/letters stand out. Also, are you using purple/pink colors on your website that sells male products? Banks use a white background to demonstrate ‘trust/authority’. I wouldn’t put my private information in a website that has a black background. Most sales pages from large companies use a white background. They spent millions on determining which colors will ‘engage’ their visitors. Hacker websites use black or dark colors to engage their visitors. The dark colors will help create the ‘naughtiness’ feeling of hacking websites.

6. Font size/bold tags - Is your title so large that it requires 2 lines? I still see a lot of websites that have titles on 2 lines because they like to use BIG font sizes.  I also see websites using bold tags on  the whole page. Not only is this bad for SEO, it’s also not good if you want to emphasize a phrase or a word.

7. Time it takes for your page to load – Huge pet peeve for a lot of people who are shopping during work hours. They’re usually on their lunch break, and don’t have time for a page to load. There may still be a lot of people who are still on slow internet connection. If any page on your website takes a lot of time to load, you better expect your visitors to leave.

8. Popups – nobody likes to come to a page, and have a few ads popup. If the visitor has a slow connection, then you’re going to slow down the most important pages, and your potential buyer will bounce!

9. Accessiblity - Can users access the rest of your website with one click? Are you utilizing categories, drop down menus, tag pages, or a search box? Everyone loves easy access, and do not like to jump hoops for information.

10. Broken links/broken images – If the landing page is a 404 page, then you better believe most visitors will leave. If the images have a Red X, then your site will also look like it’s not being maintained.

11. Complimentary products – Some visitors may not buy the main product, but if you offer a selection, then you’re more likely to have a sale.  Placing suggested items next to main products will help you get more sales. Also, placing the best selling products on the homepage will also develop more sales.

12. Header – I have seen a few webpages where the header is HALF of the page, and everytime I visit a new page, I need to scroll down half a page to see the content.

13. Mispelled words – Nobody likes to see misSpelled words. A lot of scam websites are done overseas, and the scammers are not fluent in English. Misspelled words also make the site look unprofessional.

14. Music – Imagine this …. you’re at work, and just started your 10 minute break. You decide to search for a local realtor, and as soon as you go to the website there’s music blaring from your speakers. Even if that website may have had the best information a person needed, they’ll probably never know because of the bad first impression.

15. Displaying personal names/pictures – There are a lot of people who discriminate for other things besides the 7 protected classes. Can you imagine visiting the Men’s Hair club website, and when you view the corp page, it shows the President/Vice President/Secretary as all women? Nothing wrong with that but it just doesn’t look right. What if you’re trying to find a conservative church, and you find this website that holds all the same beliefs you do. The day you decide to visit the church, you go on the website to find some directions. You bump into the ‘pastors page’, and you click on it to see what the pastor looks like. There you find a picture of the pastor wearing jeans/white t-shirt with tattoos & piercings on the face. Most conversative folks will never go to that church. Some women would love to deal with other women, and some latin people would love to deal with other latin people. I would remove anything that will give a person a reason to discriminate by their personal nature. My sales increased with a lot of websites because I removed the owner’s picture/name from the website.

My best recommendation is reviewing your website, and send it to your friends/family to give a review. I would also ask coworkers for their opinions. YOUR opinion maybe ’special’ , and sometimes everyone may not think like you.

What’s with all this magic dust going around? A lot of this stuff is nothing new, but there’s a lot of people speaking about the ‘latest/greatest’.

I’m sorry to break the bad news, but some of this is getting out of hand. There have been many websites that rank high, and LSI may little to do with the rankings.

Example 1
A lot of these websites don’t think about LSI, and yet they rank high in the SERPs. Hackers are notorious for getting authority domains to create pages that will rank on Google. A great example of this is Yale & MIT hacked. These websites do not contain viagra but they were on the top pages of google for ‘buy viagra’. If these pages weren’t about viagra (maybe mortgages), I’m sure they would stay a lot longer in the SERPs. The point is that Yale is an authority domain, and anything it spits out is considered ‘golden’.

Example 2
Google branding is another example. Can it be that branding will help your rankings or Google will see that
Soft drinks = Pepsi
Soft drinks = Coca Cola
Hey let’s do a google search to see if any brand name companies appear in the top 10 for ’soft drinks’.
Nope….nada…zilch
Let’s try “airline airfares”
You will notice that all of the sites have airline airfares in the title tags.
A lot of these domains have “airline airfares” as the anchor text in their backlinks.
If Pepsi or Coca Cola had ’soft drinks’ in the title tags, I’m sure it would make a great difference in their rankings.
When people come to your house, you don’t ask them if they want a ’soft drink’. You ask them if they want a ‘coke’ or ‘pepsi’.
When you plan to fly somewhere you look for any airline that will give you the best price.
(unless you’re looking for perks like mileage) Keywords/Brand….gotta know when to use them, and 99 times out of 100..you will need to use keywords.

Example 3
SEOMoz posted a case study on a site called Open Cube. This website was on page 1 for the keyword ’seo’, but the website wasn’t offering seo services, didn’t have the seo text on their website, and didnt even have the text SEO in their anchor text! So how did they rank for SEO? They included the keyword SEO in their title tag, and of course had help from having 1 million backlinks. So one question I have is where is the keyword variation in the anchor text since they didnt even use the keyword SEO?

Example 4
Flash pages. It is ‘well known’ that flash pages cannot rank on Google. Is it because of the flash or because too many myths going around? It is more of the 2nd one because flash indeed can rank on Google. Text does not have to appear on the page for it to rank. Flash pages have their text in images so there’s nothing for google to read. Perfect example of this is when George Bush’s profile link at the White House was appearing #1 for the search term ‘miserable failure’. This search term did not appear in the webpage, but because it was included in the anchor text of thousands of links, it came up as #1 in Google. This is also known as Google bombing. Flash websites just needs more work (backlinks), and you can be #1 just like George Bush.

Example 5
My website. Yes I’m writing about this seo blog you’re reading. Not many people know this but this website used to be a wine website. I have heard a lot of ’seo experts’ say that if you buy an old domain to make sure it is ‘relevant’ to what you plan to use it for. Yea I’m sure you heard it yourself. If you plan to use the website for real estate, then make sure it was a real estate website before. Yea good one. I wrote a post about how a 2 yr old boy got this website on page 3 of Google for the keyword SEO within 49 days. My website is on page 4 now because I changed the title tags too many times, and I’m sure google didn’t like that one bit.  I only had a few hundred backlinks that were pointing to my site when I was on page 3. Everyone in the top pages have over 10,000! Hey at least I’m on page 2 for seo blog.

Here’s my take on all these experts. You need to stay away from ‘most of them’.
Most of these ‘experts’ work on well established websites, and when their rankings change, they think they found a gold mine.

Why do only a ‘few’ seo firms hire newbies? Because only a few people in the world know that hiring newbies is the 2nd best thing than working on a new website. A new person brings a fresh perspective, and will tell you what is working, and not what worked 5 years ago.

A newbie can find a nice backlink, and will credit this new link as the recent in SERP change. They notice patterns a lot easier than the old farts that know every aspect of SEO, but forgets what actually works.

Two answers from two different people on a simple question.
What’s the best SEO factor you can apply to any website?
Expert: <sighs> well it depends. depends on this or that, and when you get to that, then it will depend on this and that.

Newbie: backlinks
Me: How do you know?
Newbie: I have been writing content for weeks, and never got noticed. I added backlinks, and now I’m ranking everywhere.

If you dont have the luxury of hiring someone then create ‘new domains’. These domains will help you research/record on what works, and what doesn’t work. SEO experts are data collectors. Always collecting data on what works, and what helps.

Stay away from those who say ‘they know enough to be dangerous’. Those folks will give you bad advice, and you’ll lose your rankings. That is pretty dangerous stuff to be messing around with.

Google Sandbox – is it real? Who knows…..who cares.

What I have been noticing in this industry is there’s a lot of people trying to reinvent the wheel, and most of it is a joke.

I own a few domains, and I have never had a site ’sandboxed’. I have ranked for many domains, and they still rank till this day.

The last joke I heard was about Google Branding. I’m not sure if the search engines are hiring people to mislead others or what.

Back to the Sandbox…

The Google Sandbox is considered a ‘probationary period’ given to a new website. Even though your website may have a high Pagerank, lots of backlinks, and quality content it will not rank high in the SERPs. This filter is said to be placed on ‘new websites’.

Here’s how I avoid being in the sandbox

1. Post new content every day, other day, or once per week.

2. Interlink the pages on your website. If Google finds one page then they’ll find the others because you’re interlinking.

3. Place a nofollow link attribute on all irrevelant external AND internal links. This is very important because you can’t control how long the robots will be on your website, but at least you can control where they go. This will make the crawl more effective, and they wont waste time on pages that do not matter.

4. Obtain ‘quality backlinks’ to your website. Here’s another issue that new websites have. Most people would send a backlink to their homepage, but will not get backlinks for other pages on their site. If you do a link:domain.com on Yahoo, you will see a large amount of backlinks to the homepage, but not to the rest of the site. I do about 40-50% backlinks to the homepage, and the rest to individual pages on my website. Make sure to also obtain links that are DOFOLLOW to your site.

5. Stop constantly changing the meta tag title or description! Just like the content…you need to make sure it’s perfect before broadcasting the page. Changing the meta tag title can have a huge impact in the SERPs. I changed my homepage meta tag title, and went from middle of page 3 for the keyword seo, to the bottom of page 4.

6. Buy a domain that contains the keywords or buy an old domain. I have seen this many times where the website ranks in the top #5 for competitive keyterms just because of the age of the domain or because the keywords are included in the domain name.

The search engine allows you to add your own site, with your own title.

I’m not sure why they haven’t created a way for users to login/register or some sort of identification.

I went on the site to search ’seo’ and looks like someone doesnt like Matt Cutts!

This is going to be a big issue if they continue to allow users to post their own sites with their own titles.

Webfluence Search

Ok the gig is up. I just turned 2 in March, and I broadcasted this SEO blog on February 10.

Technically, I have about 16 posts (including this one), and 3 pages (including home page) = 19 pages on my website

I have been trying to rank for the keyword SEO for the past couple of weeks.

My hobbies are watching my favorite video How to Poop (learning Japanese as well), singing songs, and of course SEO.

Whenever I’m working with a new website, I jam to my favorite song – Yes We Can (bobs head while jamming)

I also love jamming to Super Why when I’m doing Keyword Research.

Will I get to page 2 for SEO? I really think so!

Keep your heads up, and read my blog to learn how to rank on the search engines.

If I can learn how to poop, then you can learn how to do SEO!

2yrd old SEO Expert

I like checking out the source code for most websites to see if they are using the correct seo coding on their page(s).

I belong to a secret Charlotte SEO society that is located in North Carolina. I was viewing their page in firefox, and at the top of FF went to view>page style, and clicked on No Style. This function helps you view websites the way robots may view a page. Nothing beats the soure code, but this function helps to see if there’s any hidden text.

If you scroll all the way down, you will see the hidden text with a backlink that points to Microsoft’s products.

blackhat div id

“Your are currently browsing this site with Internet Explorer 6 (IE6).” (BTW Multi-billion dollar company…it is YOU’RE not YOUR)

I was hoping that this was only viewable to some readers who actually have IE6, but it looks like it was crawled/cached by Google.
(to view the cache go to google.com, and put cache:semclt.com. Go to the top right, and click on Text Only Version)

I can imagine that there are a few million websites that have this text on their websites with the backlink to Microsoft.

I’m betting a lot of blackhatters know about this, and have already exploited this.

So I was searching one of my client’s backlinks, and I noticed that they had some ‘text’ on Yale’s website.

I was surprised to find this because it’s a florida mortgage website which has nothing to do with Yale.

I clicked on the link, and it redirected me to another page.

I realized that someone had to hack into Yale’s website, and upload some pages to do this.

I googled the title of the listing, and saw that many edu’s have been hacked by the same website(s).

“Refinance Mortgage Open Chapter 13 site:yale.edu” (put that in the google search)

Yale Hacked

With MIT just search Refinance Mortgage Open Chapter 13 site:mit.edu

If you click on these pages they will take you to

easy-loan-calc.com or e-loan-expert.com

According to Compete.com the e-loan-calc website is getting 44,959 U.S. visitors per month, and e-loan-expert is getting 42,647 U.S. visitors per month!!!!

Gee I wonder how much money this guy is making?

I’m not stranger to a site being hacked. I had one of my Mortgage Wordpress blogs hacked, and over 5000 pages of viagra were uploaded.

Still waiting on Matt Cutts to give me back my rankings…. Checkout the rest of my SEO blog

I have been noticing that a lot of websites are now including the Canonicalization Element (CE).

This is a good thing for the robots to identify the ‘core’ or the ‘authority’ page of multiple duplicate content.

“A canonical page is the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content.” is Google’s definition of CE.

Now this definition is general, and the exampled they used was for a website that contain domain.com or putting the www’s infront of the domain name. Most websites with Windows Server have this problem, and it’s basically the same page but a different address/link.

The point of using the CE is to ‘hint’ to the robots which page  is the ‘authority’ out of a set of pages on your website that have HIGHLY similar content. If that doesn’t ring a bell in your head or have a lightbulb turn on, then you need to stop reading this post.

Blogs are NOTORIOUS for having d u p l i c a t e content. Let me explain…..

I write this post, and I include it in 1-2 blog categories, AND added a few tags. I also added the nice permalinks.

The issue is that this post will appear in my categories (2pages), tags (I have 4 tags=4pages), and of course the post link.

2 cats + 4 tags + 1 post link = 7 pages on your website with the SAME CONTENT. This is why it’s important to put a No Follow Attribute on category pages, tag pages, and the archives.

The Canonicalization Element is supposed to help avoid having this problem of duplicate content.

So on what page should you put this CE? I think it would make sense to ONLY put it on the actual post page.

If you put it all on the 7 pages, then the effect of the CE will be wasted. Now you’re back to square 1 in having the robots pick which page is the authority or core page out of the set of pages.

Here’s the definition again “A canonical page is the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content.”

The canonical page = Post page. Set of pages = categories, tags, and archives.

New definition = “The post page is the preferred version of the category, tag, and archive pages which display highly similar content”

Make sure to use this SEO factor the correct way!

I been receiving a lot of responses from whenever I mention that a website should have a ‘nofollow’ on the home button.

There other links that should carry this attribute, and I wrote more about that on my No Follow Attribute post.

There are some who may disagree with this post, but read the whole post then decide.

Everytime you do something in coding you have to ask “Is this for the robots or humans?”

Obviously placing a No Follow tag or attribute will be for the robots not for humans.

So is the Home button that is found on almost every website for the robots or the humans? The answer is both.

Websites should have two navigations for users. One for the humans, and one for the robots.

If the navigation is bad for the humans, then your users will not find the content they need. They will BOUNCE, and be less likely to come back.

If the navigation is bad for the robots, then your page will suffer in the SERPs. They will also BOUNCE, and be less likely to come back.

So when we look at websites, we have to look at it the way a human would, and how a robot will view it.

The Home button may look like an ordinary button to a human, but a robot views it as a link WITH an Anchor text.

This link is on every page of your website, AND you’re telling the robot that your homepage has the anchor text of ‘Home’.

That’s a bad idea because our home page should be name after a keyword like SEO Blog. (check my footer)

This is the SAME principle of removing the word Home from the Meta Tag Title. When you first broadcasted your site you would’ve remembered that the name of the page was called Home or Default. You quickly removed it, and placed a keyword in its place. You did this for the robots, and not for the humans. Nothing really changed except the robots can properly identify your page(s).

So should you change your Home button name with a keyword? That’s not a good idea because you want your users to be able to find the homepage.

So now you’re asking these two questions
So what should you do after placing the nofollow attribute on the Home button?
How will the robots find my Home page?

Easy. Place a link to your home page on your footer that actually contains a keyword that identifies your homepage.
The footer appears on every page in your website….just like the home button.

I have seen a lot of people utilize the footer in this way but forget to add the nofollow on the Home button.
That’s 1 link with a keyword, and another link (home button) with the wrong keyword. That’s a waste of juice!

Here’s how to change it in WP
Go to the Header file, and go to this line, and insert the nofollow
rel=”nofollow” href=”?php echo get_settings(‘home’); ?”Home

Using the No Follow Attribute is essential when trying to direct spiders or juice flow in your webpages. It’s very important to use the HTML code rel=”nofollow” on the majority of your outbound links, and even internal links. If this attribute is not used properly, then your pages will leak its authority juice to unwanted pages.

Blogs are built with a great SEO structure, but they lack the nofollow attribute on the majority of its internal links. One major example of this is when placing tags on a blog post. If you click on the tags, you will notice that it will take you to a different page.

You probably worked hard writing the blog post, and probably had a lot of backlinks pointing to it. You probably searched it on Google to see if it has been indexed, but you notice that your tag page appears. The problem is that you’re flowing that backlink juice to your tag pages, instead of keeping it on the actual post page.

Most of us are notorious for using at least 4-5 tags on a blog post. That means your blog post is leaking to at least 5 different pages! If you continue to use the same tag in every blog post then that tag page will become the dominant page of all those posts.

Tags were not created to be searchable on a search engine. Tags were created to be searched WITHIN the blog using the blog’s search function. Archives & Categories were also created for users to be able to find information on your webpage. Archives, Categories, and Tag pages were not made to be indexed in the search engines. They will only create duplicate content. There will be 4 pages of the same information. (Your blog post, tag page, archive, and category page)

All of your pages should point to your home page which is the most important page in your website. If you have 10 blog posts, and they’re all using the same tag, then that tag page will now become the authority of the 10 posts. Should you stop using tag pages? No.

Use this code to help you place a nofollow attribute on categories and tag pages.
On wordpress go to wp-includes\category-template.php, open it up in notepad, and find this line
$rel = ( is_object($wp_rewrite) && $wp_rewrite->using_permalinks() ) ? ‘rel=”category tag”‘ : ‘rel=”category”‘;

change rel=”category tag to “nofollow” so it appears like ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ : ‘rel=”category”‘;

Also find $rel = ( is_object($wp_rewrite) && $wp_rewrite->using_permalinks() ) ? ‘ rel=”tag”

add nofollow to tag so it appears like this rel=”tag nofollow”‘

I have tried many different plugins, and they all failed to place the “no follow attribute” on the tags. Make sure to place it on the tag cloud.

Here are other links that is helping you LOSE juice from your pages or should have a nofollow attribute because of the anchor text being used.

Home button – the word ‘Home’ is an actual anchor text that points to your home page. Your webpage is not about ‘Home’ so I would recommend putting a nofollow on it.

Contact us/About Us/Privacy Information/TOS/Maps – these links on your page should have a nofollow attribute. These pages should not carry any weight, and do not contain actual content that may pertain to the website’s message. Website visitors come to read your content not the privacy information or TOS.

Read More/Learn More – This is another example of ‘anchor text’ being used. Usually the title of the post is being showed with anchor text/hyperlink, and a 2nd link will be redundant. It also doesn’t make sense to give juice to a page with the anchor text “Read More” or “Learn More”.

Comments – It’s important to turn off the feature under Settings/Discussion and unclicking “Break comments into pages with…” Otherwise Google will also index these comments as a separate page from the blog post. It’s important to put nofollow attributes on any links that are coming from the comments. Otherwise you will lose link juice! Make sure to put a nofollow on the Comments Feed.

Gravatar – another sneaky outbound link that needs a nofollow tag on it! No wonder this website has a SEO pagerank of 7!

Login/Logout/WP-Admin/Author pages – All of these links should have a nofollow attribute. You should also download the ‘Robots Meta’ plugin so that you can also put a ‘noindex’ on these pages.

Blogroll links – these links should have no follow attributes as well unless you actually want to pass juice to another website.

Social bookmarking buttons – make sure these buttons have nofollow attributes or you will have all that juice flowing away from your pages!

SEO short for Search engine optimization, is the process of improving the amount of visitors or traffic coming from search engines. By optimizing the website and/or web pages the Search Engine Results Page SERP will yield a larger amount of visitors from search engines. SEO is also used to target specific key terms like Charlotte SEO. By targeting a specific keyword the website can receive visitors from a specific region of where their company is located.

There are over 200 factors in how a website may rank on a search engine. These factors are generally not offered to the public so the SERPs will not be manipulated by any single user or company. A search engine marketing can only offer an individual their SEO theories in how they obtain high rankings for quality keywords. They should also provide search engine results from websites they have or currently working on. This will demonstrate if their mindset for search engine optimization is closer to the 200 factors than other companies. Not all companies have the same experience or expertise, and the amount of knowledge they possess will be the turning factor for your success.

Most business owners do not understand the intricacies of search engine optimization. Business owners normally look for the bottom line of what’s it going to cost, and how much revenue it’s going to bring. Most fail to realize that SEO is a service not a product. A SEO company may complete the task of obtaining high search results, and the client may still not have an increase in sales or revenue. It’s important to understand that a website’s color, navigational usability, content, etc may affect the sale on a product.

Most banks have white backgrounds on their websites for a reason. Not many people are willing to put their private information on a black background website. Colors are very important in helping a user become a client not just a website visitor.

Most website visitors would like to find information within 1-2 clicks, and not have to search for it on a website. We live in a microwave generation where everything must be accessible from our fingertips within a few keystrokes or clicks.

Content is very important for a user to distinguish whether a website is just another sales page or an informational website. Informational websites appear to be more trustworthy, and authoritative.

To find out more information please visit Internet Marketing Services or SEO Pricing for our rates. Please visit our SEO blog for optimization tips.

What is a backlink? Another website pointing to your website. Another website can be another website you own or anyplace that is willing to allow you to place your link on their website.

What is Anchor text? The text that is associated with a hyperlink. Example: SEO for Dummies <<<< “SEO for Dummies” is the anchor text that is associated with the hyperlink http://centuryhouse.net

Why is adding Anchor text to a hyperlink important? Anchor text adds ‘relevance’ to the hyperlink. Common domain names are taken so adding an anchor will help a person know what the hyperlink is about before clicking on it.

Ok here are my experiences using Backlink Anchor Text

Variations of a keyword will usually bring up different search results. I’m #4 for the keyword ‘SEO for Dummies’, but you will not find me if you search for the keyword ‘SEO for Dummy’. If you search for ‘SEO for Beginners’ you’ll see me on page 2, but with the keyword ‘SEO for Beginner’ (without the s) you will not find me. Either they are two different searches or Google has a hard time placing the two keywords together. This also applies when you’re using State abbreviations like FL for Florida. Searching for ‘FL Senior’ will give you different results than searching for ‘Florida Senior’.

My thoughts are that a Backlink Anchor Text is and should be the same as a search query. So if you search for SEO you’ll  come up with a lot more results than if you would search for SEO for Dummies. The anchor text is looked at as a closed keyword phrase. Some examples of closed keyword phrases are when you use bold tags, attach a hyper link, or adding H1 tag. You’re not adding a bold tag, H1 tag, or a hyperlink to the whole page, but just a certain phrase. The same thing applies when you itacilize or when you underline a keyword. Open ended is when the whole article contains no HTML tags that will distinguish a keyword or phrase from the rest of the article.

Ok so an anchor text is close ended, and an article is considered open ended.

An anchor text is also an exact match that needs to attach itself to the same keyword or keyword phrase on your article. Another way to look at this is hitting CTRL+F, and searching for ‘SEO for dummies’. The search will only give you the  ‘exact match’ of the phrase you placed in the search box.

Here’s an example to demonstrate.

Anchor Text you’re using = Charlotte Newspapers >>>>(Your Article) “The Charlotte newspaper released important news today…”
Some people would think that this would be an exact match to the article but the Anchor text contains an ’s’. The article does not contain the letter ’s’ in the keyword newspaper.

Anchor Text you’re using = Charlotte Newspaper >>>>(Your Article)  “The Charlotte newspaper released important news today…”
This is an exact match of an anchor text with a keyword phrase in the article. The spiderbot registers the anchor text as ‘Charlotte Newspaper’, it follows the link, then finds ‘Charlotte Newspaper’ on the article making it an exact match.

In layman’s terms …. 1 fits into 2, but 2 does not fit into 1.  FL fits into Florida, but Florida doesn’t fit into FL.

So if the above is true then why do people use these types of anchor text for hyperlinks

SEO expert, SEM consultant, Adwords (they use commas)

SEO expert/SEM consultant/Adwords (they use slashes)

Local SEO expert who also does SEM consultation (they place a hyperlink on the whole sentence)

The problem is that “Local SEO expert who also does SEM consultation” is an exact match keyword that needs to be found on the page it’s pointing with an exact match! If it actually did work then I would just add a hyper link to my WHOLE ARTICLE, and I would be #1 for everything. Using slashes and commas in your anchor text devalues the link quality. Make SURE that the robots that crawl the anchor text links will find your exact anchor text on your page. Otherwise, the robot will devalue the backlink!  This is why the Google bomb requires thousands of backlinks in order for it to work. Usually the person’s page being bombed doesn’t contain the keyword being used in the anchor text.

One of the reasons why I rank for ‘SEO for Dummies’ is because I used that key term in my anchor texts over and over again. I didn’t add any variances to the anchor text. A lot of people would disagree with that, but I don’t want to be ranking for keywords that do NOT get searched.

Make sure to do your keyword research before writing ANYTHING. There are enough keyword tools that you should NOT be picking your own keywords. Always ‘consult’ with the tool to make sure it gets searched. Nothing hurts more than being #1 for a keyword, and not getting any visitors. Adding/removing the ’s’ in your anchor texts to make it singular or plural can be a HUGE difference in your rankings.

So if you use an Anchor text make sure the same exact match keyword phrase is in your article and/or meta tags. Is this required? No, but it sure helps out alot!

*some rankings have changed since post date as I am targeting different keywords

My response to Aaron Wall’s blog post Google’s New Search Engine Rankings Place Heavy Emphasis on Branding

My opinion is that “I don’t think it’s a case of branding”

It’s a case of having thousands of links pointing to your website with the keywords “airline tickets” or “auto insurance”.

Another thing is that those top websites are hiring SEO experts who are now optimizing their websites with the correct keyword title/description tag.
Every single site (except 1) has the keyword airline tickets in the title tag or the description.

Every single site (except 1) has the keyword auto insurance in the title tag or the description.

This is the ‘basics’ of SEO for Dummies

Never put your company name in the title tag or description.
It is a waste of space because people SEARCH FOR KEYWORDS not company names.
You can put your company name on the header/footer, but do not put it in the meta tag title or description.

Believe it or not…some people haven’t heard of travelocity but they will click it because it’s #2 on Google.

Branding a website IMHO is a waste of time.

Top ranking websites are now ranking because of social bookmarking.

Watch Matt Cutts video in 2006 where he says a good website should be good enough where a person will want to ‘BOOKMARK IT’ (3:10). I hardly search that often because now my favorite sites are ‘bookmarked’. Google knows this and this is why social bookmarks are the ‘new directories’, and now DMOZ/Yahoo is out. Here’s another link from an interview with Stephen Spencer and Matt Cutts. Matt Cutts clearly states that Google looks at social bookmarking links the same way as any other link. He also recently stated that SEO does consist of some sort of spamming. SEO spamming is commonly done by visiting social networks, social bookmarking sites, and other social media sites just to obtain a ‘backlink’ to your site.  

Think about it folks

What’s more important?
1 link from DMOZ or 100 links from 100 different people who have bookmarked your site?

Your HTML Meta Tag Description is very important if you’re looking to obtain more traffic from search engines. This is the second place where a vistor looks at to determine whether they will click on your website or not. Your sales pitch should be in your description tag not in your title tag. It’s important to pick a good description to have high click rate from search engines.

A SEO description tag is basically a description meta tag that has been optimized for the search engines. Description tags should contain your most important keywords, and should not be more than 2 sentences. It should be around 200 characters, and should have eye catching words that will convert search engine searchers to website visitors.

On my Meta Tag Title post I wrote about using SEO in title tags.

The example used was (not real)

Getting High Results with Lala’s Inc
Feb 1, 2007 … High results proven with Lala’s 10 year experience in the marketing industry. …
www.lala’sinc.com/ -

A lot of people wonder why a description will show the date with “…” following the the first/last part of the text. If your page does not contain a description tag then the search engines will pick one for you. In this case the search engines decided to use the date of the article, and the first sentence of the article. As you can see the description is vague, and it may not convert the search engine traffic to website visitors.

This is a better example

Getting High Results with Lala’s Inc
Receive high Search Engine Page Results with Lala’s 10 year experience in the marketing industry.
Convert Search Engine traffic to website visitors!
www.lala’sinc.com/ -

If we were to search ”High Search Engine Results” on a search engine then it would appear like this

Getting High Results with Lala’s Inc
Receive high Search Engine Page Results with Lala’s 10 year experience in the marketing industry.
Convert Search Engine traffic to website visitors!
www.lala’sinc.com/ -

If most of your description text is bolded then it would be a lot more appealing than the other results.

Here is a WRONG EXAMPLE of description tags. DO NOT stuff the description tag with keywords! It looks sloppy, and alot of search engine users can now spot a spammer with keyword stuffing.

Getting High Results with Lala’s Inc
Search Engine, SE, SEO, Search Engine Page, Search Engine Page Results, Traffic
www.lala’sinc.com/ -

One last thing is that many website owners confuse the title tag with the description tag. These two tags should be look at as writing movie titles. The title tags are the name of the movie, and the description is what describes the movie. Your SEO description should be short and concise. Make sure to use meta tag analyzers to view how your page will appear on Google. First impression is everything, so make sure to write something appealing in the description with 2 or 3 keywords.

If I had a penny everytime a web developer/web designer told me they knew SEO due to the fact that they are web people, I would be a millionaire. It would be nice if it was true, but I see a lot of web design companies who can’t even rank for their own company page. Just because someone is a web developer or designer does not make them a SEO expert.

Web designers are like artists who come up with a beautiful page, and love to leave their signature at the bottom of their work. Their signature is usually a backlink to their company page which is normally located at the footer. They use their ‘company name’ as the anchor text which isn’t going to give them the full potential of that backlink. Instead of using an anchor text Charlotte SEO they will use their company name like Century House. The point is who searches for Century House? Those who are searching the company name are searching for it specifically because they already heard about the company. Those who search on any search engine will search for KEYWORDS not a company name unless they’re looking for more information on the company.

It’s very important to place a link on the footer of the page. The reason is that the footer appears on every page of the website. This helps to generate more juice from that link. A spiderbot may not find the page you have your link on, but if it’s in the footer then it will appear on every single page of the website. If Google likes one page better than the other it will not matter as your link will always appear at the bottom. Any new page or post that is created on that domain will remind the spiderbots of your footer link.

Another issue I’m seeing is that webmasters don’t use the bold tag on their backlinks. Imagine a spiderbot going through this new page you developed for your client. The whole page is using regular text but at the bottom of the page there is something that is SCREAMING FOR ATTENTION! It reads “Look at me I’m different from the rest because I have a bold tag!” The bold tag shows emphasis, so using an anchor text with the bold tag is telling the spiderbot that the link is very important.

The last point can be considered greyhat or blackhat. Those who understand the concept will understand the potential it has for search engine manipulation which is against Search Engine TOS/Guidelines. I have seen a lot of web designers who have a whole collage of websites that they have developed/created. One thing I notice with most webmasters is that they use the same hosting provider for all of their websites. Most don’t see that as a big deal, but if you look at the IP addresses on the websites they’re all the same. There is this ‘rumor’ going around that Google doesn’t give much ‘juice’ for websites pointing to each other that are on the same IP address. It makes sense because these sites are somehow related with each other. They all have something in common, and that’s sharing the same webmaster.

Still don’t get it?

Imagine looking for references for a company that you’re about to hire. Would it matter if the company’s reference is the owner’s brother or a close friend of the owner? I’m sure you’re going to want ‘more references’ from other places unless you’re very well acquainted with the owner’s brother or his close friend. I would look at this as an affiliation more than a reference.

abc.com IP 123  points to xyz.com IP 123 (looks like the same person) Client is a nobody so this is probably an affiliation

Google IP 123 points to youtube IP 123 (same person but Major website involved) Huge affiliation pointing to another huge affiliation

abc.com IP 789 points to xyz.com IP 123 (different IP address, not the same person) This is more of a reference link than an affiliated link.

Now imagine having done 20 websites for 20 different clients, and using different hosting providers.

The links will now be references instead of affiliations.

Recap

1. Use keywords for anchor text not company name

2. Place link in the footer

3. Use bold tags with anchor text

4. Use different hosting providers for each client for more SEO reference links instead of affiliated links

Link exchange with another website that is relevant to yours has been the way everyone has been taught. I believe this is one of the biggest lies or myths given to the SEO community.

When I first started out I read hundreds of articles that stated this concept. “You need revelant links or your page will be penalized”

I read that having relevant links will be the links that will put you on page 1 for Google, and other search engines.

I’m here to say from experience with my websites & others that it is a myth. I posted this story because I see a lot of new people in the SEO field trying this out, and see a lot of ‘SEO Experts’ doing this.

Here is how I came to the conclusion of the biggest myth in SEO

I started out with a mortgage website which everyone knows is a very competitive field. After reading these articles about ‘relevant links’ I decided to call around to see who would link to me. I realized that NO COMPETITOR will want to link to me. Any person would normally give up at this point, and probably have a nice looking website that nobody visits. It’s like buying a beautiful home, and all of your friends live out of town so nobody comes to visit.

So I started to obtain links from any place that would give me a backlink. Most people normally submit their sites to directories. Then I realized that nobody visits directories so I would not receive any referral traffic (wrong idea at the time). So I started blog commenting with a link back to my website. Blog commenting generated a LOT of visitors but the quality was garbage. I realized that nobody shopping for a mortgage would come from a blog or directory.

The weird thing was that people were finding me in the search engines, and from the same keyword. I realized that I was actually ranking for some decent keywords! What surprised me is that NONE of my backlinks were from a mortgage or real estate website. So I decided to go on a link spree, and start posting my link everywhere. What happened was that my site was penalized, and I dropped rankings. I realized that as fast as I posted links, the website owners were taking them down. Of course any Search Engine would see this as spam. Spiderbots would crawl the links, but would come back later to find out they were gone. Well I realized that this type of linking was going to hurt me so I stopped linking in places where they would take me down. Most of the places that do this are blogs. Most directories don’t care about your link being posted as long as it’s not an adult or gambling site.

So your question now is where you should get links.

Here are some examples

1. Authority sites – I started to Google my niche, and realized that there were a lot of nonmortgage related websites. I saw yellowpages, government sites, blog communities, article websites, etc. I noticed that ALL of these websites were/are considered an Authority website because of age, and the amount of web pages pointing to them. I also noticed that a few of them were listed on DMOZ and/or Yahoo.

2. Social Networking – There are a lot of social networking sites like Digg that rank on Google’s top 10 for pretty good keywords. These sites will give you backlinks, and a lot of them are recognized by Google as an authority site. Sites that receive over 50k visitors per month are good sites to get a link from.

3. Social Bookmarking – Believe it or not Google loves some of these backlinks. Whenever you bookmark a site, make sure to check your Google Webmaster tools within 2 weeks. If it shows up then you know Google likes it, and if it doesn’t then put that bookmarking site on the backburner. Try to stick with the websites that get crawled faster, and show up on your Webmaster tools.

A lot of people will not submit to the above because they’re afraid they will receive less quality traffic. I used to think like this until I realized that referral visitors wasn’t the purpose of submitting my links to these places. The main purpose was obtaining backlinks from websites. Sites that receive over 50k visitors per month normally have the spiderbots on their website everyday. If you post a link on these sites, then your backlink will get crawled faster, and your SERPs will update faster. This is how a lot of people can get their sites ranking for a keyword within hours or minutes. The best keywords will take longer to master, but building links will help you obtain rankings within the first page with the search engines.

Your Tag Title is VERY important when ranking on the Search Engines. You will notice whenever you search something on Google that the top 10 results will have your search terms in the Title tag. Google also will bold the search term keywords that are in the Title tag. (title tags are different from meta tag title)

One of the biggest mistakes that most ‘SEO experts’ make is placing a company name in the title tag.

Let’s suppose you search on Google for a key term ‘lala’s inc’. This is what the listing may look like (example not real)

Getting High Results with Lala’s Inc
Feb 1, 2007 … High results proven with Lala’s 10 year experience in the marketing industry. …
www.lala’sinc.com/ -

You will notice that the keywords Lala’s and Inc are bolded

A lot of people will jump up for joy when they see that their website is ranking on the search engines for their company name.

So what’s the issue here? The issue is “Who searches for a company name to find a product they’re looking for?”

Unless it’s a well known brand name…it doesn’t seem there’s a lot of people who search for a company name.

Users search for keywords, and not company names. I understand that most companies want to build their ‘brand’ but it will hurt you more than it will help you with SEO

Placing irrelevant words in your title tag is a waste of space. Make sure to use keywords, and for goodness sakes don’t use the whole dictionary to spam the title tag. Most experts agree that anything over 80 characters is too much.

I don’t try to put more than 3 set of keywords in the title tag. If there are too many keywords for that page then you need to write another page for that specific topic, and use specific keywords for that page. This is also better for SEO on ranking for that term, and of course building more content on your website.

On this web page you will notice that I used 2 sets of key terms, and I’m using the “|” symbol when separating my key terms.

Meta Tag Title | Meta Tag Help

Using commas makes the whole title look spammy. Make sure to use keywords that are found in the content of your page.

ALSO, make sure to use keywords that get searched for, and to use it in the order that it gets searched.

I was planning to name my page Title Meta tags, but a quick search shows that Meta Tag Title is the common way everyone searches it. When someone searches it on Google they will see that G will bold the keywords, and it will be in the order they searched. If you have it scattered throughout the title then I would assume that people will be less likely to click on your link. Meta tag title is different from the title tag element. I used the keyterm meta tag title because it seems that’s what everyone searches for.

If you change your titles to the correct way/order it should be in, then you will see a pretty good change in your rankings.

Here’s an Article Directory List that will come in handy for article submissions. Please make sure to read SEO Article writing before submitting any articles. I would recommend changing your content, and you may want to change your anchor text for your links on every 3 articles you submit.

Some websites have a list of 50 article directories, and some marketers will advertise that they will submit your article to over 100 directories. I don’t think it’s necessary, and normally the best directories require manual submissions.

Here’s how/why I picked these sites.

1. Ranks on Google – I probably submitted to over 300-400 different directories but only a few actually rank on the top 5 pages of Google. I started to see a pattern, and decided to start weeding out my list. I hired a few article submission companies to see if there were other directories that they might use. This can be a good strategy which helped me find a couple that were ‘gold nuggets’. If you plan on hiring anyone for article submission/writing, make SURE to review the article for correct spelling AND to optimize the title! I have seen a lot of companies come up with junk titles that never get ranked by the Search Engines.

2. Age of Site – It’s no secret that EzineArticles is one of the best article directory. I noticed that their domain was created in 1999. Age of an article directory plays a big factor in authority ranking. Always make sure to WhoIs the directory to see the age, when the website first broadcasted with archive.org, and to see how many visitors they receive.

3. Amount of visitors – This is very important as most visitors that come to an article directory are coming from Search Engines. If they have low amount of visitors it means they are not recognized that well by the Search Engines. Ezine receives over 10 million visitors per month. It’s obvious that they are not receiving these visitors from referrals or direct visitors. Most of these visitors are coming from optimized articles showing up on the top 10 of Google.

Submitting your article to these 14 directories will take you a long way. There maybe a few more out there for specific niches, but these will take most niches.

In no particular order (You may want to bookmark these sites)

EzineArticles

Buzzle

Amazines

ArticlesBase

Directory M Articles

ISnare

Search Warp

GoArticles

ArticleDashboard

Article Alley

IdeaMarketers

Article Snatch

eHow

ContentCaboodle

SEO Article Writing is one of the top ways to receive traffic, and some good back links. There are only a few people who know how to effectively have their articles rank on page 1 for the Search Engines. I hardly see any other person marketing articles in the way that it should be used. Most people don’t realize that you don’t need a well written article to rank on the Search Engines. I have seen many SEO marketers just copy/paste information, and just submit it to an article directory.

I personally use the directory more for backlinks than for referred visits. A lot of these directories have the page filled with Ads, and the chances of a visitor clicking on the 2 resource link is very small. This is why I look towards just putting those two links, and making sure they rank on the search engines. If your article ranks for the keywords you are optimizing for, then I believe that it will also help the links you have placed in the article resource box.

My first advice is to ALWAYS place unique articles on your website FIRST! I have seen a lot of people posting articles on article directories, and not have any content on their own site. Remember that you are promoting YOUR SITE, and not trying to promote an article directory by giving them more content. We all know that content is king, and our own site should be FILLED with articles/blogs. I would recommend posting it on your site then changing it around before posting it somewhere else.

My second advice is ‘try’ to place a link in the beginning of the article, and at the end. We want the spiderbots to see the links upfront, and at the end. There are a few articles indicating that spiderbots may not even read the whole content, but just the first/last sentences. Another reason why I recommend putting it at the beginning is that there are a lot of people who like to ‘copy’ our articles, and ‘forget’ to give someone credit by adding a backlink. If you have the links at the beginning, then chances are that it will be copied over to their webpage. I would also recommend that you bold the links with anchor text so it stands out.

My third advice is picking the right title. This is the most important part of the article. I never try to ‘pick’ a good title that will catch a reader’s attention. Stuffing your title with too many irrevelant terms will hurt your chances of ranking. I research the keywords to make sure that the key terms get searched, and to see what order the users search with. Some may search Writing SEO Article, but the vast majority use SEO Article Writing. Notice that my title isn’t “How to use SEO Article Writing effectively” or “Using SEO for Article Writing”. I’m using what users search for which is the term SEO article writing.

My last advice is making sure to use the right keywords, and bolding them within the article. Make sure to research what keywords to use for the title, content, and anchor text. There’s nothing worse then promoting keywords that do not get searched for. I recommend placing 2-3 different keywords within the article, and to bold them. It’s important that you read Using Bold Tags to help out your SEO article writing.

Note – some well known article directories will not allow you to place links within the article, and some will not allow you to have a short title. If you plan to use the link resource box, then I would recommend writing a short paragraph with the anchor text links in it. I do not recommend just placing only the links side by side. Also, if the directory does not allow you to use the short title then make sure to put the keywords in the front of the title like SEO article writing techniques instead of Techniques for SEO Article Writing

SEO Tip: Never ‘bold‘ a page or a paragraph. Whether using b or strong it’s important ONLY to bold keywords or links with anchor text.

I see a lot of websites that ‘bold’ the whole page or a whole paragraph. Many do this to make the letters stand out, but it will only hurt your web page. You will lose the effect of using these tags, and there will not be an emphasis on the words you may to stand out for your readers. You should use b or strong tags to emphasize keywords on a page, and not irrelevant words.

It’s like driving on a road, and you come across a speed bump. The speed bump is unnatural to the road, and the point of it being there is to tell you to slow down. Spiderbots scan your page looking for these speedbumps (tags), but if the whole page is bolded then it will lose the effect of this tag.

Also, make sure to bold an anchor text link. SEO for Dummies <<<< like that. There are a few emphasis on this link. The first part is that it’s a link pointing to my homepage which is also known as internal linking since it’s done ‘internally’. The second part is that it contains keywords, and doesn’t just say ‘click here’ or only shows the URL.  The third part is that it’s bolded. I always use this format when it comes to anchor text links especially if it’s a backlink. If you’re writing a blog, I wouldn’t recommend using it if you’re using a sentence as an anchor text. I would recommend using this in a 1-4 keyword phrase.

Here is a video of Matt Cutts going over using b or strong. Matt Cutts states that Google treats the b and strong tags with the same weight.