Why Digital Asset Optimization matters

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.

Assume the position…you fit the description!

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;

LSI, Google Branding, Flash Pages, and more SEO Magic Dust

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

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.

Webfluence experiences Spam

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.

2yr old boy on page 3 for keyword SEO in 49days

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!

Microsoft Internet Explorer Blackhat DIV ID

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.

“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.

Yale, MIT, and some other EDU’s get hacked

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)

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

Charlotte SEO

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.

Google Branding True or False?

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?