Press Release Precinct

In her presentation for Webstock 2008, Jill gave the audience a 45 minute tutorial in SEO Basics. First up, Jill discussed what SEO isn’t. Some of the most common SEO myths she exposed included:

PPC Myths:

• PPC ads will help organic rankings
• PPC ads will hurt organic rankings

Tag Myths:

• you must have a keyword-rich domain
• you must have keyword-rich page URLs
• heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.)
• you need to use keywords in meta keyword tags, in particular you need to use keywords that are included in your page content.Jill says that it’s actually better to use the keyword tag to include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you don’t have in your pages.
• using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings.

Content Myths:

• page copy must be a certain # of words. Jill actually made up the 250 word limit a few years ago and it’s stuck, but there is really no set limit to please search engines.
• that you need to bold/italicize your target keywords.
• that you must use a specific keyword density. Jill says that keyword density tools are ridiculous.
• that you must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase per page. Instead, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases that are related, so that your copy reads better than repeating one phrase over and over.
• that you need to optimize for the long-tail searches. You don’t generally need to optimize for these – engines will find them on their own.
• duplicate content will get your site penalized. There is not a penalty as such, but engines will filter out duplicates in lieu of the original copy (or what they think is the original).

Design Myths:

• your HTML code must validate to W3C. Not even Google.com validates!
• your navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly, graphical navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.
• you can’t use Flash. It’s fine to use Flash, as long as it is one element of your page, not a complete Flash site. Use a text-based site too if using a Flash site.
• certain design techniques are black hat. Javascript code is legitimate, not just used by black hats.

Link Building Myths:

• that Google’s link: command is accurate. It’s not a useful tool. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead.
• that reciprocal links won’t count. From the right site, reciprocal links are fine, even very helpful.
• that pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results. They’re not. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so ignore it.
• you must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google rankings. In Jill’s opinion, the Yahoo Directory is not worth the money these days.

Submitting, Crawling and Indexing Myths:

• that you need to submit URLs to engines. Provided you have a link to your site, you will be found and indexed.
• that you need a Google Sitemap. Not needed for the average site. It won’t change your site rank.
• that you need to update your site frequently.
• frequent spidering helps rankings. Not true.
• that you need multiple sites. This won’t help in the engines and creates more maintenance work.
• that you need doorway pages. Jill says this is so 1995!

SEO Company Myths:

• that a #1 ranking will always lead to more traffic or sales. The good rankings need to be for keywords and phrases that people are actually searching for.
• that the company can place pages in certain positions. Not possible, unless they’re using Pay Per Click or sponsored spots.
• that your rankings will tank if you stop paying the company. Rubbish!
• that they have a “proprietary method” of SEO. They’re lying!
• that they have a “special relationship” with Google. Again, they’re lying. Google has no relationships with organic SEO companies that Jill is aware of.
• that they can increase your rankings without doing any on-page work. Run away!

Next, Jill defined what SEO is. Her definition of SEO is “making your site the best it can be for your site visitors AND the search engines”. She made the point that search engines need to:

- Find
- Crawl
- Index
- Determine relevancy
- show results

So you should keep these top of mind when designing and SEOing your site.

Jill also made the point that search engines don’t know you. So you should disclose what you sell and who you are in plain language that naturally incorporates the keyword phrases. Dumb down your pages for users. What search engines want is good content. If you’re not getting good traffic from your pages, they’re broken, she says. In a nutshell, make sure your pages speak to your target audience and solve their problems.

Jill then discussed how to choose keywords to target on your site. She recommended brainstorming with friends, family and business colleagues and creating a seed list of keywords. Then take that list and run it through keyword research tools such as WordTracker or Keyword Discovery and even Google AdWords to determine the best keywords and phrases to target.

Jill says there are three types of keyword phrases:

1) General and highly competitive terms – not good choices.
2) Long tail – uncompetitive terms – generally no need to SEO for.
3) Relevant and specific terms, which are the best to choose because they highly searched, yet are targeted enough to bring qualified traffic.

Next, Jill explained where to put your keywords. She recommended putting them in:

- anchor text
- clickable image alt attributes (alt tags)
- headlines
- body text copy
- title tags (Don’t make your titles less than 10 words, she says.)
- meta description tags

Jill finished up by teaching the group how to measure SEO success. She said that high rankings are not the best measure of success because you might be ranking for phrases nobody is searching on. Instead you should be looking for increased targeted traffíc to your site and more conversions. Use your web stats to give you the clues as to whether your site and your SEO is working.

As for the future of SEO, well despite the rumors that SEO is dead, Jill doesn’t think that the big engines will switch to exclusively paid listings any time soon. In her opinion, there will always be some free ways to get listed so there will always be a need for SEO. In the same vein, a crawler-friendly site will always get good results and off page criteria (e.g. links) will always be important.

About The Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College – an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

1) Master News Style By Reading News Stories

The folks who write wire copy for the Associated Press are masters at presenting information without calling attention to themselves. Read all the AP wire copy you can and get a sense of the rhythm and flow of their writing. Examine their choice of words and sentence structure (typically, they choose the simplest way of saying things) and their overall tone of solid objectivity. This is the style to which you should aspire.

2) Write a Great Lead

The lead paragraph in a press release should, theoretically, be able to stand alone as a news item. A standard news lead answers the Five W’s — Who? What? Where? When? Why? Successfully answer those five questions in one paragraph and you’ve summarized everything beautifully.

Bad lead:

The new Acme X100 is drawing raves from customers, who call it the best thing to happen to the flanging industry since the X99.

Good lead:

Philadelphia, August 15, 2007– Calling it a “milestone day for our industry”, the Acme Company unveiled the first flanger capable of creating widgets using only solar power. According to Acme President Joe Blow, the X100 is expected to find wide use in the developing world, where access to traditional electric power is unreliable.

The Five W’s are answered! Who: the Acme Company. What: theintroduction of the solar-powered X100. Where: in Philadelphia (the headquarters for our fictional company). When: August 15. And, most important, Why: for use in the developing world.

Remember this: in almost every release that’s successful, what put it over the top was the answer to “Why?”. You must make plain the significance of your news by answering that question succinctly and without hype!

3) Write in Third Person

Perhaps it’s a silly convention, but press releases really should be written as if they’re coming from an objective outsider to your company, not from within your business. Of course, the journalist knows better, but nonetheless, they expect releases to be written in the third person. In short, here’s the difference between first person and third person:

=> First person: We’ve developed the Acme X100.It’s our most advanced model ever.

=> Third person: Acme Industries has developed the X100, which a company spokesperson called its “most advanced ever”

4) Attribute All Opinions

Never flatly state an opinion. If you want to state an opinion or, as in the above example, make a claim, always attribute it to a representative of the company (which very well may end up to be you!). Anything apart from entirely factual info (dates, store availability, product features, biographical information, etc.) should be attributed. Again, the best way to get a feel for this is to read wire copy. Start sorting out the things a reporter feels comfortable with, including without attribution and things for which he uses a named source.

5) Use the Inverted Pyramid

On the first day of Journalism 101, aspiring scribes learn about the Inverted Pyramid. Basically, it’s way of organizing information so that the most important information is at the top — the widest part of the Inverted Pyramid — and, as you funnel down to the narrowest point, the information becomes less and less vital. There’s a good reason for this: if a reporter’s 10 paragraph story gets cut to 6 paragraphs because of space considerations, the reader will still be informed of the most important news. What’s cut will be background, quotes and other nonessential material. When writing a press release, the Inverted Pyramid is equally important. First, it’s the style the journalist is comfortable with and second, it assures that even if a rushed reporter can only read the first couple of paragraphs, she’ll get enough info to decide whether to use the release or not. If you bury the best part of your release in the fourth paragraph, the recipient may never make it that far.

6) Remove all “Stoppers”

A “stopper” is something that will stop a journalist in her tracks and distract her attention. Once that happens, your release is toast. The point of your press release: to present information in the least obtrusive way possible. Consider it this way: the journalist isn’t dumb — she knows full well that you’ve sent her the press release for purely commercial reasons, hoping to get publicity that will make you more money. She can live with that as long as [a] there’s something in it for her (a good story) and [b] she’s not reminded of your commercial desires too often. A “stopper” breaks the suspension of disbelief needed for this little dance to be successful. It’s the boom mike showing up in the frame of a movie — once you’ve seen it, it’s hard to convince yourself that you’re really experiencing something that happened during, say, the Middle Ages. Here are some “stoppers” to avoid:

=> Clunky language. Journalists keep their language pretty simple. Long words, compound sentences and lofty, pretentious phrases are no-no’s. Keep your sentences short. Don’t try to present more than one idea in a paragraph. Avoid words you wouldn’t use in everyday circumstances.

=> Hype and puffery. The ultimate “stopper”. Confusing press release copy with advertising copy is a pervasive problem with businesspeople. Don’t call yourself the greatest, the hottest, the coolest, the most unique or anything of the sort. If you must make a claim of superiority for your product, service or company, attribute it. Acme President Joe Blow said the X100 “has the opportunity to revolutionize the industry” is much better than The revolutionary Acme X100 is the greatest industrial advance since the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.

=> Trademark Symbols. Including TM or copyright symbols that scream, “hey, check me out! I’m a press release! I come from a business! The legal department made me include this stuff!”

The bottom line: write like a journalist, avoid the stoppers and answer the Five W’s and you’ll succeed!

About The Author
Bill Stoller, the “Publicity Insider”, has spent two decades as one of America’s top publicists. Now, through his website, eZine and subscription newsletter, Free Publicity: The Newsletter for PR-Hungry Businesses he’s sharing — for the very first time — his secrets of scoring big publicity. For free articles, including our no-cost report, “Press Release Secrets”, go to: PublicityInsider.com.

The top 10 internet marketing tips for 2008 are:

1. Optimize your website’s content
2. Create a content development strategy for your website
3. Invest in a paid search (pay-per-click) campaign
4. Publicize your website through article marketing
5. Develop a social media marketing strategy
6. Create a Company Blog
7. Experiment with video marketing
8. Engage your audiences with web widget marketing
9. Discover the benefits of mobile marketing
10. Create an effective email marketíng strategy

Let’s look at each of these in more detail:-

1. Optimize Your Website’s Content:

First and foremost, get your website content right. Make sure it is easily read by both humans and search engines. An essential variable applied by Search Engines in the way in which they rank websites is based on the relevancy of the content that the search engine is indexing.

2. Create a Content Development Strategy for Your Website:

In addition to optimizing the existing content on your website, it is essential that you develop a strategy to continuously grow your website’s content on an ongoing basis. All new content should be written specifically with the web reader in mind and should also be optimized for the search engines.

3. Invest in a Paid Search (Pay-Per-Click) Campaign:

When you pay for traffic (visitors) that click on your advertisements that are being advertised on search engines, this is called pay-per-click or search engine advertising. Paid search allows you to quickly leverage search engine traffic by bidding for keywords that are related to the products or services that you promote and sell on your website. Paid search advertising is particularly beneficial to companies who are not yet well ranked on search engines through natural search.

4. Publicize Your Website Through Article Marketing:

Article marketing is regarded by Internet marketing experts as one of the most effective promotional methods to publicize your website and to grow the number of back links (incoming links) to your website content. To ensure ongoing awareness, articles should be submitted to suitable article directories, content publishers, article announcement lists and content syndication (RSS feeds). Each article should be published on your website first and should include a bookmark button to encourage social bookmarking.

5. Develop a Social Media Marketing Strategy:

Studies show that by the end of 2007 more than 60% of top global companies will have had some form of social media marketing strategy in place. Corporates and small business owners should create a clear social media marketing strategy as part of an integrated communications and marketing strategy. Social Media has become an essential component of online marketíng and search engines are adjusting their rankings to include search personalisation. One of the effects of the social media revolution is an exponential growth in the amount of content online.

6. Create a Company Blog:

In the past, corporates have focused marketing and communications efforts on becoming faceless. This has changed significantly. Where the online consumer has become very much in control, companies will no longer be able to connect with their customers in a meaningful and emotional way without having a personality. More and more companies are starting to realize the significance of establishing a company personality and we are starting to see more Corporate Blogs coming alive. Business Blogging will continue to become more lucrative as more and more people look to new media such as Blogs and social websites for insight.

7. Experiment With Video Marketing:

There is tremendous power and revenue-generating potential in Video Marketing. With the rapid ongoing growth of YouTube’s traffic in addition to the emergence of Internet Television websites, streaming video is dominating the international web and marketers are quickly scrambling to capitalize on this exciting channel. As companies seek to simplify video sharing, video marketing will become more interactive which could have huge implications for Affiliate marketing.

8. Engage Your Audiences With Web Widget Marketing:

Widgets have made significant strides as an accepted marketing technique in recent months. Many new Blog oriented services are launching Widgets providing businesses with the opportunity to quickly introduce their services and new products to audiences.

Web Widgets are small applets that live in HTML and provide miniature versions of a specific piece of content outside of the primary web site. Web Widget Marketing is not only an exciting new marketing technique; it is fast becoming one of the leading brand-building marketing strategies for businesses advertising online.

9. Discover the Benefits of Mobile Media Marketing:

Mobile media marketing has continued to grow at a meteoric pace as many web companies recognize the huge potential in mobile marketing. As new technologies emerge and standard websites are converted to ones that can easily be accessed by mobile devices, companies will need to ensure that their websites are mobile-friendly. This leads the way for new and innovative opportunities to provide the consumer with improved brand and marketing experiences.

10. Create an Effective Email Marketing Strategy:

Introduce an effective Email communications strategy as part of your marketing strategy to grow your existing customer base and to expand your client base significantly through permission marketing and regular targeted communications. Engaging your customers with relevant, targeted information when, where, and how they want it is crucial to marketing success. By combining technological advances with tried-and-tested best practices, the future still looks bright for email marketers.

To conquer commercial combat, a significantly powerful Internet presence, supported by a brilliant E-Marketing Strategy, is paramount to ensuring that you remain competitive, grow revenue and magnetise your customers!
About The Author
Blue Magnet is an Internet Marketing Training & Consulting company in South Africa. Visit http://www.bluemagnet.co.za for more information.

The recent Google shakeup is all about paid links. Stop paying for links now! Google is now “punishing” websites for having paid links, because they feel it’s cheating the algorithm. You might be upset by this, but they are doing it to improve the quality of their results. Here is how you can take advantage of it.

Google is moving towards algorithms that favor sites that are “naturally” linked to. What is “natural” linking? These are links that a webmaster puts up because he or she wanted to, not because they were paid to. They saw something they liked, and put a link to it. This means all those shady SEOs who were buying links up by the hundreds can’t cheat good sites out of the rankings anymore. So how you do get natural links?

Focus on Your Subject

There is a saying in marketing, if you market to everyone, you are marketing to no one. Maintain your focus, and keep your content within your niche. Don’t try to spread yourself too thin.

I personally have been guilty of this sin in the past. At one time JeremyMorgan.com had SEO articles, PHP scripts, Ford Mustang News and photoshop tutorials, and pictures of my family and locations back home. Needless to say I didn’t really dominate any of those niches. Focus your efforts, and try to stay on topic.

Give Them Something to Link to

Once you find your focus, provide content that others in your niche want to link to. It’s really that simple. Think to yourself, “are people going to want to link to this?”. As much as I think my speculations and opinions on industry trends are great, the reality is most people link to articles I write that actually tell you how to do something. If you really want to build links, give them something helpful or really interesting to link to.

Even pages that you cannot easily monetize. The more links you get, the better.

Join the Community

In 2008, they have a community for almost anything. Get involved in those communities, sign up for forums and comment on posts. Become an authority. Just by being helpful to others and bringing information to a community, people will link to your site out of respect, knowing that their audience will appreciate the link. Be honest, helpful, and maintain your integrity on the boards. Instead of making fun of that newbie, help them out.

Look for Places with High Quality Links

Don’t be afraid to ask to exchange links with others who might benefit from your service. Links from sites like your local library or community-centric pages go a long ways. Even your employer may put up a link (be careful not to mess that one up!).

Get Deep Links

Deep links are very important. Try to get links pointing towards inner pages of your site rather than the front page. With enough of these types of links, you can dominate some of the serps related to that topic, as well as build your overall quality.

Write Articles

Chances are, you’re reading this article on somewhere other than JeremyMorgan.com or Webfoot Central. That’s because I submit articles all over the internet. Not only do you help build backlinks, but you contribute to your community, and make a name for yourself. Don’t write spammy articles, or try to advertise too hard. Make something useful that others will want as content on their own site.

Issue Press Releases

I can’t really comment on this one too much, because I’ve never done it, but for some sites it’s a very useful tool for getting inbound links, and good publicity. Make sure you have something going on that’s worth talking about!

Blog, Blog, Blog

Every site needs a blog. Even if your site is primarily about selling widgets, have a widget news related blog. Individual articles will get people linking to them, and will keep your site fresh and add content, which google and other search engines love.

If You Must, Sponsor Some Links.

There are a few sponsored links worth getting. Yahoo Search Inclusion is one example. If you are in a highly competitive industry, such as adult, SEO, mortgage, finance, or gambling you will need to purchase links to get an edge. There are a lot of people competing for your terms.

Conclusion

Use common sense. The best way to get ahead is by being honest, and providing a decent service. Stop trying gimmicks or tricks to cheat your way into good rankings. The best long term SEO plan involves taking the high road and doing things honestly. Check out the SEO book to see what I learned about ethical SEO. Now I don’t have any problems getting people to my website. You can too, all it takes is a little effort!

About The Author
Jeremy Morgan is a Portland SEO who frequently blogs about SEO and how to earn a living online.

Your first instinct may be to make your site different from everyone else’s. After all, trying to differentiate your business is what you’ve been doing throughout your branding process.

Building a Website is Like Building a Custom Home

When you create a custom house, you can arrange your floor plan however you want, paint the walls as you please and fill the house with furniture you love. Your goal is to create a unique space that stands out from everyone else’s.

In the same vein, there are elements of your website where standing out makes sense. For example, the overall look of your site and your copy should be different from other sites – especially those of your competitors.

Differentiating your website is good for your small business – to a point. What you don’t want to do is reengineer its basic structure.

Standing Out Isn’t Always the Stable Way to Build

Underneath it all, even the most unique custom home has the same foundation and spacing between studs in the wall as every other house on the block.

By following underlying principles of construction, builders help ensure that the house is structurally sound. Why not use the same approach when it comes to your website? That way, your site is far more likely to work well for you.

To use site building rules, of course, you need to know what they are.

Rule 1: Do Competitive Research

Before someone sets out to build a custom house, they’ll probably do quite a lot of research—looking at other houses, determining the architectural styles that appeal to them, and perhaps even checking out homes in the neighborhood where they want to build.

The same goes for your website. You need find out what you’re up against. Once you’re familiar with competitors’ sites, you can make sure that your site will not only be different in the right places, such as look and feel and content, but that it will also be comparable in the right places.

Most likely, your competitors have been building their sites for some time – and probably updating them to answer customer questions and market their businesses more strongly. You don’t want prospects to pass you by because your site doesn’t answer an important question that a competitor has addressed.

Visiting other sites and making notes of basic structure, business information presented, customer questions answered and even relevant tools and articles gives you a jump start on creating a site that facilitates apples-to-apples comparisons.

Rule 2: Plan Your Site Architecture

As you may suspect, planning your site architecture is like drawing up architectural plans for a custom house, where you plan just what you’ll include and what will go in each space. For example, do you want a library? A formal dining room? And where will you put the piano?

Similarly, for your website, you must decide the pages you’ll include and the information on each page.

When planning your site architecture, think about what you’d like your website to do for your business. Do you want it to bring in clients and close sales? If so, pricing information and even a shopping cart can help do that. Do you need your site to get media attention? Then a Media Room might be the key. Make sure to include the pages and content required to get the job done.

In addition, think about how you plan to expand your website in the future. At the beginning, designing a website of more than 10 pages can overwhelm a small business – both in terms of budget and time required to write the content.

But, if you create an expanded site map at the beginning – a website wish list if you will – then you and your website strategist can determine which pages will be most important in helping you reach your goals. You’ll also have a clear roadmap you can use to add on to your website as your budget and schedule allow. For more about the pages to include on your website, see this article: Pages To Include On Your Website.

Rule 3: Name Your Pages in a Way That Makes Sense

Have you ever walked into an unfamiliar house and been unable to find your way around? You probably asked the hostess where the kitchen was so you could drop off your pot luck dish or the way to the bathroom.

On a website, though, visitors don’t have the luxury of asking where things are. So you want to make it as easy as possible for them to find the information that they need.

Some small businesses want navigation button names to be clever or interesting. But, it’s important to think about the website visit from your customers’ or prospects’ point of view. They often come to your site looking for specific information. Even if they’re just browsing, they want an organized way to look around – where clicking a link takes them to the page they expect. Remember that visitors don’t have a lot of time or the patience to bumble around your site.

You see the same navigation buttons on every site you visit for a good reason. Established usage conventions have trained visitors to look for names like “Services,” “About” and “Contact” when they’re out browsing around. Capitalize on this and your visitors will be able to find what they’re looking for quickly – keeping your site and your business in their good graces.

Following these three simple rules makes it much more likely that your website is structurally sound and that your visitors will have a great experience there instead of a frustrating one.

About The Author
Erin Ferree is a brand identity designer who creates big visibility for small businesses. Her ebook, “All The News About Email Newsletters” will tell you everything you need to know about desiging, writing, and sending out an email newsletter to stay in touch with your clients and prospects. http://www.elf-design.com/products-mini-newsletter.html

Retrace Your Steps

Write a list of everything that anyone has done to your site within the past 3 weeks. Now look for anything that could have negatively impacted your content, site structure, or the reliability of your URLs. Once you write down the course of events the answer might pop right out at you. Here are some common situational culprits:

• You just moved your website to a different hosting provider: did your site experience much, if any, downtime during the switch over? Quality hosting companies will allow you to setup your site on their servers before the switch takes place so that downtime is minimized if not removed entirely. If a search engine happened to visit your site while it was down, there is a small chance your rankings would be negatively affected, but it will only happen for a short period. Once the search engine re-indexes your website everything should be back in order.
• The structure of your site has permanently changed: did you redirect the traffic from the old URLs to the new URLs using a 301 redirect? If not, then you should. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which tells any visiting search engine to permanently change its index to reflect the new site structure.
• Contact your hosting company to check if your server has had any downtime recently. In most cases search engines will not drop your rankings if they visit your site and it is offline once; however, if this happens consistently then your rankings can fail. If your hosting company states that downtime has occurred, then you have at least one possible answer for your ranking woes. As long as your site is now reliably online and has not been offline for an extended period (days or weeks) the rankings should reappear as your site is re-indexed. There may be a notable drop in rankings but, in most cases, they will return to pre-incident status.

Check Your Content

Is all of your textual content up to date? It is amazing just how quickly a website’s rankings can drop when someone accidentally overwrites optimized pages with older, non-optimized pages. Check the content and if you find old content, just overwrite it with the newer content and wait for the search engines to come back and re-index your website; Google and Yahoo are likely to come back within a week or even a day.

Check Your Server Headers

When a search engine visits your website it must first respond to any commands provided by your server. These commands are often identifiable in the server header. As a result, we like to verify that no incorrect, unusual or unnecessary commands are stashed in the header of your site. We use the free SEO Consultants Check Server Headers Tool to review any headers and take action if required, but there are others freely available as well.

Search Engine Webmaster Tool Resources

If you have not already done so, I strongly recommend claiming your website on Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Central and Live Search Webmaster Center . Each of these fine resources provides extremely useful feedback (from each respective search engine’s perspective) for site owners such as:

• Whether your site is currently banned. If you are, in some cases they will tell you why.
• Notes on any impediments the search engine has experienced when trying to index your website.
• Who is linking to your website.
• Which pages are the most popular on your website.
• Which keywords lead the most traffic to your website.

In addition, these free webmaster resources allow you to submit an XML sitemap of your website so that you can ensure no pages are missed when the search engines index your website.

Search Your Site for SPAM

It is possible that your site has been “lucky” enough not to have been penalized until now for certain content transgressions. You see, search engines don’t always catch SPAM right away. In fact, I occasionally find myself shaking my head in disbelief when I see blatantly spammy sites appearing in the top 10 search results. Your site may not be entirely spammy but all it takes is for one transgression to come to light for a search engine to penalize your search engine rankings. What SPAM is and how to identify it is an article unto itself so here are some helpful resources for you to review:

• 15 Shades of SEO SPAM by Jim Hedger (written in 2006 but still applicable)
• Wikipedia’s Definition of SPAM has some great content worth reading as well.

Contact an SEO or Request a Forum Review

If you haven’t found a reasonable answer after following the instructions above I would recommend either contacting a reputable SEO company for advice or posting your ranking problems publicly on a popular search marketing forum within a resource like Webmaster World. There are a lot of people on forums that can be incredibly helpful and may have an answer for you. But a word to the wise, make sure the person providing advice has a solid reputation. I strongly recommend reviewing a number of their previous posts and Googling them to ensure they have suitable experience to provide advice – unless of course you have a ‘no duh’ moment where their advice makes perfect sense.

Related Content for Suggested Reading

• Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly?
• The Ten Minute Optimization – Updated

About The Author
Ross Dunn is the CEO and founder of StepForth Web Marketing Inc, a web marketing company founded in 1997 and based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. StepForth provides cutting-edge web marketing services that provide highly successful, targeted results for its clientele. Ross Dunn is a Certified Internet Marketing and Business Strategist (CIMBS) with a background in web design and online marketing. His broad Internet experience in combination with a talented staff has made StepForth a name synonymous with top results.

1. Buried in dense blocks of text which make them difficult to find.2. Featured on sites so unappealing to the eye that you don’t care whether the content is good or not.

3. Bracketed by distracting ads that encourage you to Buy Their SEO Book!

Please bear in mind that achieving success through search engine optimization is highly dependent on a wide range of factors and any ethical Internet marketing consultant will tell you that up front. Some rules will apply to your website and some will not. But even when everything is done correctly, ranking well doesn’t happen overnight as some sites lead you to believe. It takes time but if you’re willing to be patient, search engine optimization will help you and your business achieve its goals.

Additional Search Engine Optimization Tips

1. Know Your Target Audience – Before any code or content is written for the site, think about your target audience and keep them in mind at every stage of site development. Consider age, gender, and especially, think about the things that will make your target audience want to visit your site often.

2. Build a Clean, User-Friendly Site – Web users have very short attention spans and the decision to linger at your site or clíck the Back button is made in a few seconds. Build a site that’s easy on the eyes and structure it so that information can be found quickly and easily. Use bulleted lists, subheads, bold important text but don’t overdo it, and use clean, intuitive page layouts. Avoid building pages with frames, .PDF’s, and Flash. By the time these pages have loaded, your viewer is probably long gone.

3. Well-Written Content – Make sure the content on your site is well-written, gets right to the point, and doesn’t insult the intelligence of your readers with wild claims and hyperbole. Good content encourages readers to explore the other pages of your site and creates high-quality inbound links.

4. Let Keywords and Keyphrases Occur Naturally – Both search engines and readers alike will notice obvious keyword stuffing immediately and your credibility will suffer. Let the words and phrases that you want to optimize occur naturally in the content without overdoing it.

5. Use Short, Relevant URLs – Give your page URLs good file names which include the keywords optimized for that page and definitely avoid query strings. Try to limit page titles to relevant words separated by hyphens. For example, instead of “.com/seo” try “.com/search-engine-optimization-tips” or “.com/seo-tips. ”

6. Good Meta Descriptions – Keep meta descriptions between 200-250 characters and make them relevant to the page and informative. Good meta descriptions raise confidence that the page will contain the information that web users seek therefore making it more selectable.

7. Quality Inbound and Outbound Links – The quality of your inbound and outbound links far outweigh quantity for SEO purposes. Link farming is frowned upon by search engines and readers alike. If someone clicks on an outbound link from your site, make sure that it takes them somewhere interesting and informative or they’re not likely to clíck on another.

8. Limit Keywords and Keyphrases – Feature two or three optimized keywords and phrases on each page and again, make them occur naturally in the content. If you want to rank well for other terms, simply build other pages optimized for those terms.

9. Update the Content Regularly – Add new content to your site on a regular basis. It gives your site visitors something new to read and the search engines will be inclined to index your site more frequently.

10. Avoid Unethical SEO Methods – Link farming, duplicated content, cloaking, spamdexing, and other attempts to fool search engine crawlers will get your site penalized and buried where no one can find it. Search engine algorithms are increasingly sophisticated and Black Hat SEO methods will destroy any possibility for ranking well.

These are just a few search engine optimization tips for you to consider that will help your site rank well and there are many, many more. For a more thorough understanding of how these strategies and others work together to bring positive results, explore the other pages of this site and contact an experienced Internet marketing expert. The guidance and counsel of an ethical search engine marketing consultant is the best SEO tip of all.
About The Author
Brick Marketing offers full service Website Marketing services such as: Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Clíck Management, Social Marketing, Blog Services, Affiliate Program Management and more. Telephone             877-295-0620 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 877-295-0620 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or visit Brick Marketing Search Engine Optimization Services .

Think of a topic that interests you. Maybe it’s your favorite sport or hobby, for example. Now imagine that you’re searching the Internet for information on that topic.

The first article you come across is related to the topic you’re researching, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of value. It’s too general and full of pointless “fluff.” It makes obvious points that a third-grader could grasp. And it fails to offer any related information or resources.

The second article you come across is much more in-depth. It explains several aspects of your topic with refreshing insight. It is helpful and useful, and it links out to many related articles and resources on the subject.

If you could only bookmark one of these pages for future reference, which one would it be? It would be the second page, right?

You, like most people, would probably prefer the second page to the first. It’s an easy choice, and that’s because the author of the second article understood (and delivered) the most important concept of website content development — the value factor.

5 Benefits of High-Value Web Content

This kind of content has value for the reader, obviously. But it also benefits the author / publisher. Here are the top five benefits of creating high-value website content for your small business website:

1. It keeps people on your website longer.

2. It makes people more inclined to trust you.

3. It encourages readers to recommend the site to others.

4. It encourages other webmasters to link to your content.

5. It helps you improve your search engine ranking and visibility.

All of this sounds great, you say. But how do I create that kind of small business website content? Here are the top five guidelines for creating high-value website content.

5 Steps to High-Value Web Content

1. Choose the right author.

2. Choose the right topic.

3. Address all sides of the topic.

4. Add supporting graphics, pictures, etc.

5. Link to related resources, both on your site and elsewhere.

Let’s look at each of these steps in greater detail.

1. Choose the Right Author

I once worked for a company who let their web programmers write the instructions for their online ordering process. Big mistake. If their audience were programmers as well, this might be okay. But most of their customers had limited technical skills. So when these people encountered online instructions such as “Validate parameters before advancing” … the customers would often become dead in the water.

This is a prime example of choosing the wrong author for web writing. Sure, the programmers’ input is important. After all, they built the thing. But they should not be the voice of customer guidance. A skilled web writer (someone with usability experience) would have “translated” these instructions to say something like “Please fill in all required information before moving to the next screen.”

Here’s the key to this. The best author for your small business website content is not always the person who knows the most about the product or service from a technical standpoint. Often, it’s best to have an in-house writer who plays the go-between role of “consumer advocate,” getting the information from one group and translating it for another group.

2. Choose the Right Topic

If your small business only offers one product or service, then that will likely be the topic of your web content. In this case, I would focus on choosing the right angle as well. Don’t tell people what you want them to know — this is an outdated way of thinking about public information, especially when it comes to small business website content. Instead, find out what people want to know about the types of products you offer, and use your web content to address those questions or concerns.

If you are writing web content for a company that has many products or services, you will have to spend more time choosing topics first and choosing your angle second. In this case, it becomes more about topic organization than anything. Large websites with many topics are ideally suited for a category and sub-category system: These are our products >> And this is product ‘A’ >> And this is a web page that explains product ‘A’ in detail.

3. Address All Sides of the Topic

Whether you’re writing about one of your products, or you’re creating a tutorial of some kind, you need to cover all the angles. There’s nothing worse than website content that leaves the job only half-done, telling you why a certain thing is important but not pursuing that lead.

When you are close to a certain topic — as is the case with people who create a product or service — it’s easy to assume everyone else understands it as well as you do. But the opposite is usually true, so you need to explain all sides of a topic when you write content for your small business website.

Want to keep your pages relatively short for easy reading? You can do that while still offering complete information. That’s what hyperlinks are for!

4. Link to Related Resources

Here’s the key to developing great content for your small business website. Try to create authority documents that others in your field would link to and recommend to others. One of the key criteria for a resource document is that it links to plenty of supporting information, both on the same website and elsewhere on the web.

In addition to being good for your readers, this kind of useful content will make other webmasters more inclined to link to your website. This adds to your link “popularity” and can further improve the search engine ranking of your small business website.

When writing a particular web page, try to think of it as “the ultimate guide to [blank].” This is the first step to creating the kind of authority documents that eventually dominate the search engines and drive endless web traffic for the authors. But it’s rarely possible to create an “ultimate guide” to anything in just one page, so be liberal about linking to other sources on your own website and elsewhere (as long as they are not direct competitors).

5. Add Supporting Graphics, Pictures, Etc.

Reading online can be hard on the eyeballs. You can make the reader’s job easier in two ways. First, you can format your content appropriately for web reading (short paragraphs, narrow text columns, lots of bullet points, headers, sub-headers, etc.). Secondly, you can add supporting images and helpful graphics.

Well-placed graphics can improve website content in a number of ways. Images are more enticing than text upon first glance, so they can help attract and retain readers. They also help you clarify your message with visual reinforcement.

Conclusion

I have a motto I use regarding website content. “If it’s not worth putting online, don’t put it online.” This is my reminder to myself that I need to use the techniques outlined above to create superior website content. Because that’s the kind of content that leads to online success. Apply these lessons to your small business website and watch your own success increase! About The Author
Brandon Cornett operates a web marketing firm in Austin, Texas and is a web writer at large for dozens of websites and blogs. Learn more by visiting http://www.austinseoguy.com.