Hi Lynn: I finally checked my 4 year old blog, tapwaterforgas.com and found what I knew anyway but what I was afraid to check. I only have 2 links to it. I was not surprised but I am appalled at my own actions.

I have read about links, bored with reading about it actually and have now seen first hand what the absence of quality links does. In my instance a reduction in 50% traffic from the SERPS.

My nose is to the grindstone and I have begun a campaign with Wordtracker’s Link Builder. Reading everything from their site and finding out how much I didn’t know. -Jim

A New View On Link Building

For most people, link building is seriously frustrating. It’s the one task they hate most, dread doing, or avoid. And outsourcing your link building can really backfire on you if you’re not careful.

Let’s pause, and look at link building from a different perspective…

Links are incredibly important to the virtual landscape because they connect related content across the web. If you pay close attention to how you read & find content yourself, you’ll appreciate all the links & references out there.

Imagine a web with no links.

Would you have found me? Would I have found you? What else may you have missed out on that has had a positive impact on your life or business?

As marketers, we have to think like end users. We have to think like our readers, and consider what would serve them best. How rude is it NOT to give them a reference, a resource, or the “next best click”?

The goal with link building is to connect related content, and make the web a more enjoyable browsing experience for users. Period. If you take all the marketing jargon and “link building tasks” out of it, it really is that simple.

If you stop thinking of it as a mundane task, and start thinking of it as a service to your market, you’ll see Link Building in a whole new light. Create links that serve readers. It’s a whole lot better than junking up the web for the sake of better search engine rankings. And the results are the same – or better.

Best,

p.s. I recently emailed a permanent one-way link offer to my subscribers. If you missed that, feel free to contact me for details. And make sure you sign up below so you don’t miss out on other cool stuff I send out by email only.

Contact Me directly if you have comments/questions.

~ Lynn

As we look back at what has happened in 2011 in the internet marketing world, it is clear that Google Panda is one of the biggest stories.

Many online businesses get the majority of their traffic from Google, and this Google traffic converts, so it is a lifeline for many. And with Google Panda, SEO has changed – and it has sent shock waves through online webmaster communities.

The key takeaway from Panda is that Google is favoring authority.

The biggest winners from each Panda update continue to be established brands. The losers from Panda are those that try to automate content in bulk or don’t add definitive value…

If you are small – you can no longer compete with the big boys on a broad scale. If you own a shopping mall website, Amazon will outrank. If you publish sports stories, ESPN.com will out rank you. That’s the reality we now face.

So, what are us entrepreneurs, webmasters, and small business owners to do?

How do we deal with Google Panda?

The first thing we must do is focus on becoming an authority. You need to know what niche you are in, focus on it, focus on it more, and define yourself.

For example, instead of being the leading travel site on the web – you maybe can focus on being the leading Northeast Corridor travel site on the web. It is this fine tuned focus on a given niche that can give you authority in a particular vertical.

Once you have defined that authority, you need to focus on your user experience. Google Panda cares about usage metrics such as time on site, average page views per visit, and repeat traffic.

So, you need to forget about SEO – and think about your users.

How can your website be better for your users? What can you do to make it so that your users recognize you as a brand and an authority in your given vertical or niche? Remember, Google Panda cares about “branded search traffic”- which is the amount of people searching for your brand in Google.

So continue to think about this – your brand is what ultimately is most important. Each of our web properties has or is undergoing a re-design so that our sites are cleaner, clearer, and more focused on precisely what our brand is all about.

It is also critical to develop a following. Take advantage of Twitter and Facebook so that you can easily keep in touch with your users. Make your social media presence engaging so that users contribute and spread the word about your brand to others.

Remember, Google Panda can’t take away your social media connections, so if you take advantage of your existing traffic to build a solid social media following, this will work to diversify yourself from Google.

A social media presence also helps to boost your brand and authority – which will end up helping you in the eyes of Panda.

Of course, your core product is extremely important. If you have content on your site – less can often be more. Instead of producing 5 pieces of content per day which are just OK – produce 2 pieces of content a day which are outstanding.

Focus on adding value, thoughtful analysis, and in depth research. Focus less on automated content which will saturate your website, confuse users, and take away from the quality content that you may already have.

Lastly, don’t track fluctuations day to day, week to week, or even month to month. Panda continues to come and update. The first Panda update was Feb 24th, there have been 6 updates since then with the most recent update happening on September 28th. There are going to be more updates.

Don’t worry about how your improvements are effecting your search positioning. Think about the user – not about Google. Spend your efforts improving your user experience. Don’t consistently test out how you rank for a given keyword on a given page of content.

Have faith that Panda will reward your hard work and focus on user experience.

Google wants quality in its results – so if you focus on quality – you are going to give yourself the best possible chance to rank well. And at the end of the day – that’s all you can do!

- Guest Post by Evan Britton

Audie says: “I read on ClickNewz several days ago (somewhere!) your comment about having several websites that you built several years ago that still earn money, but you no longer do anything to them. Have you written about this model on ClickNewz and can you point me in the right direction?”

Hi Audie (and everyone!),

If I did say “websites”, I actually meant “pages”. It is true that I have pages (both web pages and blog posts) online that I created years ago that still make money consistently. And those pages require no maintenance, or very little. I’m happy to explain, and point you to the posts & tutorials on this topic…

We’ve been talking about my online marketing strategy and organic marketing this week. Those two posts will give you some insight into how I market my content and get consistent targeted traffic.

The simple explanation is this:

I create quality content on a specific topic, and optimize that content for a specific relevant keyword phrase – called a Long Tail Keyword Phrase. That content is either on a web page or in a blog post on a related domain.

To give you an example from a post here at ClickNewz, I wrote about how to make money online for beginners. I wrote that post a year and a half ago (April 2010).

That post currently (still) ranks #2 on Google for that phrase:

That’s just one example of one page on one domain.

Each piece of content you create, properly optimized, will continue to work for you for years – simply by remaining available in the search results to the people who are searching for it.

The goal is to create content that targets very specific phrases, which reach a much more targeted market and tend to convert much higher than general keyword phrases. Every single page or post you create is one more opportunity to get in front of your target market.

The more content you write, the more traffic you’ll get – it’s as simple as that.

This is why I focus on Content Marketing as a strategy, and ENJOY sitting down to create content: because I know the ROI is awesome, and that little bit of time invested will continue to bring traffic & revenue for years to come.

As promised, here are links to specific posts that explain this in more detail:

• 8 Elements of an Organic Marketing Strategy
• Web Page Optimization (Checklist)
• Keyword Strategy It’s Not Just Numbers!
• Content Marketing Strategy (Questions to Ask Yourself)
• How to Write a Blog Post
• SEO Content: Choosing Keywords & Phrases
• Using Keyword Modifers to Qualify Visitors

These are the very methods I use myself to create passive income streams with SEO & Content Marketing. The key is to create Evergreen Content that will be as relevant next year as it is now.

And on that note, I remove the date stamp in the single.php file on WordPress posts. That way individual blog posts are not “dated”, and are less likely to be dismissed by the reader on the assumption that it’s “old news”.

Great content will be shared. Content that ranks well will also be found and shared. So the core to your marketing strategy should be creating properly optimized high quality (engaging!) content, and making it easy to share that content by providing social media share buttons.

I hope that helps. If you have ANY questions, leave a comment below!

Best,

One of those questions was
about Keyword Strategy:
“How often should we incorporate our keyword list into our blog for the search engines? I don’t want it be unreadable for our human visitors…”

It was a great question, and this is an issue a lot of bloggers and content marketers struggle with: “Should I write for the search engines, or write for human readers?”

The answer is both, and it’s easier than it might seem. After you read this post you’ll have a whole new understanding of keyword strategy & content marketing…

Where Keyword Phrases Come From…

The key to understanding how to use keyword phrases in your content, and in creating a proper Keyword Strategy, is knowing where those keyword phrases come from in the first place. It isn’t just random data, or marketing metrics. It’s not a piece to the marketing puzzle that is meant to make writing difficult…

Keyword Phrases come from people. Humans, not bots. Your keyword lists come from specific people: your target market.

Real people type real queries into the major search engines every single day. That data is then compiled and served to us when we do keyword research.

That being the case, there isn’t really a question of whether to write for the search engines or write for your readers. You’re always writing for your readers – or for your target market. Yes, even when you are using a “keyword strategy”.

Keyword Phrase = Question

When a real person sits down and types in a keyword phrase, they are basically asking a question. The search engines then serve the most relevant results (hopefully) and that person chooses a link to get an answer to their question.

This is the reason Search Engine Optimization aka SEO is so important. It gives you an opportunity to meet your target market where they are (searching) and enter that conversation with a response…

Content Marketing = Response To Question

When you choose a keyword phrase, write content for that phrase, and then optimize your content to rank well in the major search engines for that phrase… you are responding to your target market. You are entering the conversation they started when they typed that phrase into a search engine.

This is so much better than “interruption advertising” where you hope to catch your market in the right place at the right time, and compel them to stop what they’re doing to visit your site. Instead, SEO is like the Yellow Pages- it allows you to be in the exact place your market is looking for you, at the exact time that they need you.

When you look at your Keyword Strategy as a means of entering a conversation, in the right place at the right time, it makes it much easier to incorporate keywords into your content.

NOT optimizing your content for a specific keyword phrase is a disservice to your market. It isn’t very nice of you to hide your answers and solutions from them when they need them most…

The Art of Writing with Keyword Phrases

The key to a successful keyword strategy is viewing each phrase as a piece of a longer question, and then responding to that keyword phrase conversationally.

This is referred to as SEO Copywriting, where you combine your keyword strategy with your copywriting skills. To give you an example, here is a recent post on ClickNewz that targets a specific keyword phrase…

Keyword Phrase: “best ecommerce shopping cart”

This is actually two keyword phrases in one. The shorter phrase “ecommerce shopping cart” is more general and has higher search volume. The blog post I wrote to target this phrase can be seen here:

Choosing the Best Ecommerce Shopping Cart

The person (real live human) that searched that phrase is shopping for an ecommerce solution. If they find my blog post in the Google search results, this is what it would look like:

As you can see, the keyword phrase shows up in the title and description and also in the URL (the hyperlink, or in this case: permalink). The person searching that phrase is obviously trying to make a decision about a shopping cart solution. In the description they read there are five things they should consider first.

This serves as a good example of catering to the exact thoughts, and needs, of your target market. Each page of content you create serves your market on the micro level, by responding to their keyword phrase.

Conclusion…

To answer the question “How often should we incorporate our keyword list into our blog?”, the answer is: every single time you sit down to write!

There will be exceptions of course such as breaking news, updates, trending topics, etc. And this will be the case even more as you grow a strong subscriber base and a responsive readership. But ideally, the majority of your blog posts (or your content, period) should be optimized to serve your target market.

Now that you see keywords as conversation starters, and content marketing as a “response”, I hope this helps you come up with a Keyword Strategy that both serves your market and makes your writing tasks easier…

Get a FREE detailed Website Copywriting Tutorial from Karon Thackston, SEO Copywriting Expert.

Karon has another free report you can download titled Demystifying Keyword Research

* * * * *

I have been studying Karon Thackston’s guides and following her model of SEO Copywriting for more than 5 years. I highly recommend you download her generous free reports and learn creative ways to incorporate keywords into your copy (and your titles!) without sounding stuffy or “over optimized”.

Best,

It’s an interesting site – the developers have a great sense of humor. LOL.

It’s new, it’s a very focused (targeted) social community. It’s tied in with other social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, so it has the potential to give you viral exposure for your expertise.

And did I mention they’re giving away an iPad as part of their launch party??

Like I said, the site is new and just getting off the ground. That could actually be a great opportunity for a few select people to step in and make a nice splash!

In the screen shot below you’ll see some of the current seo questions & answers featured on the main page:

I set up a profile myself, which you can see here:

http://seonky.com/users/9/lynn-terry

See that pretty little backlink to ClickNewz on my profile page?

In addition to the backlink, and the potential for viral social engagement (if you have search engine optimization techniques to share), you can win a shiny new 16GB Wi-Fi iPad just for joining and posting!

You can learn more about the drawing, and how to enter, at:
http://seonky.com/pages/winIpad/

Social Q&A sites are a great way to get backlinks, engage your target market and establish yourself as a market leader. If SEO is not your expertise, this fun new site may be a great way for you to just get some of your top SEO questions answered.

Either way, it’s definitely worth checking out. And you may just win an iPad!

Check it out, ask a question or maybe answer a few, and let me know what you think. I would love to hear your thoughts. I’m curious too if you make it a practice to participate in Social Q&A sites like this one, or like Yahoo! Answers?

And if you choose to sign up, be sure to put the link to your SEOnky profile when you comment below.

Best,

This post is sponsored by seonky.com via Sponsored Reviews

Good website design often means better usability. That is, the user has plenty of visual elements and cues they can use to intuitively navigate their way through the site and content.

Where there can be a trade-off between design and performance, however, is in SEO. Often design elements do nothing for SEO, or can even harm SEO efforts.

In this article, we’ll give you 5 tips for designers who want to make sure that their sites look great – and also have a chance of ranking well in the search engines.

Guest Post by CT Moore

1. Page Load Times

Recently, Google (and other search engines) have started factoring a page’s load-times into how well that page will rank. Essentially, search engines are out to provide the highest quality results possible and their users are human beings who don’t like to wait for your page to load. So if you have load-time problems, your site won’t be seen as relevant to users.

There are a few things you can do to improve load-times.

First, you can optimize all our images so that they’re not too heavy.

Second, you might consider a file hosting service. Essentially, you host all your images and media with them, they spread them throughout a global network of servers, and the server closest to the user’s location is the one that loads the media on your site, meaning that the fields load quicker.

Third, you should optimize you CSS. For starters, you might want to look at ways to clean up and shorten your CSS so that there is less for browsers to process. However, you might also want to reconsider how many stylesheets you have layered over one another, and see if you can consolidate any of them.

Finally, you want to make sure that if you’re running any widgets or javascript, that they load after the main content area loads. This way, you don’t have to worry about third-party javascript not loading and taking your whole site down with you.

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2. HTML 5

There are two main SEO benefits to HTML 5. The first is load-times. For instance, HTML 5 offers an alternative to Flash, meaning that you can have rich media on your site that doesn’t weigh a ton.

On another note, HTML 5 provides a number of tags above and beyond a < div >. These allow you to better organize and structure your content so that search engines can understand it. Some of these tags include < article >, < section >, < header >, < footer >, etc.

Each of these tags offers an opportunity to send yet another signal to search engines that a page, or specific part of a page, is relevant to a certain set of keywords. For instance, you might use the < article > tag instead of a < div > to let Google know that that part of the page is the main focus of the page, and therefore keyword there count for more than keywords elsewhere on the page.

Of course, Google has admitted that they haven’t yet decided on how they will factor HTML 5 tags into ranking factors. But this much is clear: while it might not help your rankings, HTML 5 can still factor largely into SEO in the future, and it definitely won’t hurt your rankings in the meantime.

* * * * * * * * * *

3. Optimizing Images

The manner in which you embed images on a page can affect SEO in a number of ways. Essentially, embed images can have up to 3 elements that can help support your SEO efforts.

First, there is the filename. Simply put, all your image files should be named something that describes the keywords they’re relevant to. You should also use dashes to separate words instead of underscores.

For example, instead of naming your logo “coporate_logo.gif”, you might consider “Company-Name-software-solutions.gif”.

Second, there are alt attributes. These are what provide descriptive text when you hover over an image, and were originally conceived to help the vision-impaired navigate a page. But now, search engines use them to index what keywords an image is relevant for.

Alt attributes represent an opportunity to send one more signal to the search engines that a certain page or domain is relevant to a certain set of keywords. By writing a descriptive attribute, you can fit in a couple extra keyword variants to help that page rank better.

Finally, if the image is a hyperlink that links internally, you can also use the title attribute within the link. You see, a title attribute lets you indicate to search engines that link (and its landing page) are all about.

Of course, anchor text is a more common way to do this, but with image links, anchor text isn’t really an option. So by slipping a title tag into the link portion of image link HTML, you can give search engines an additional indication as to what’s waiting for users on the other side of that link.

* * * * * * * * * *

4. Copy Elements

They say that content is king for a number of reasons.

One of those reasons is the user: if there’s not content, there’s no reason for users to visit the page. But another reason is SEO: search engines use the keywords to determine what the page is all about.

So what does this have to do with design? Well, there are some HTML elements that you can use to both affect how your copy appears and boost your page’s SEO.

What we’re talking about here are header tags (H1, H2, etc.). These are great for sectioning off content on a page, and providing visual cues that help pull users through the content by making it more scanable.

But something else headers tags can do is send clear signals to search engines what a page is about. While the keywords that appear in your page copy are important for how a page ranks, the headers that break up that content can be even more important.

So start off a page off with an H1 (a “title” of the article), and then if you have more than 250 words on a page, consider how you can break that content up using H2 and H3 tags. This will make your content more scanable for users, but it will also provide another valuable place to input the keywords that you’re trying to rank for.

* * * * * * * * * *

5. Flash Hacks

Of course, Flash isn’t as popular as it used to be, and it’s less and less common for new, flash-based websites to be launched these days. However, that doesn’t mean that you might not have an existing flash site or a site with flash based elements on it. There are two general ways to get the most SEO juice out of your flash sites.

First, if you’re dealing with a site that driven mostly by Flash, you’ll want to create an HTML shell for the site that has page titles, meta descriptions, text links, and perhaps some descriptive content that reflects the flash content. Then use javascript to detect whether a browser can view Flash, and when it can’t (such as a search engine bot), serve up the HTML shell version of the site.

Secondly, you can optimize individual Flash elements on a page. This applies to either a site that’s entirely Flash-based, or an HTML that has some Flash elements.

Optimizing Flash elements is much like optimizing image. Simply name your Flash files with descriptive keywords, and use dashed to separate those keywords. By doing so, you’ll add that many more signals to your pages to tell search engines what your content is all about, and that, in turn, will help you rank.

* * * * * * * * * *

Designed to Perform

When it comes to SEO, there doesn’t necessarily have to be a trade-off between design and performance. Rather, much like with user-interfaces, good design can actually drive performance.

From HTML 5 to actual copy elements, there are a number of actions you can take to either SEO your existing design, or enhance your design for both SEO and usability.

Of course, sometimes we’ll face unavoidable trade-offs between usability and SEO. In these cases, you should always build/design for users and not search engines.

After all, search engines are out to give users search results that are relevant to actual human beings, not bots. And if you always design for bots, no one will link to or visit your content, and you’ll have no chance of ranking at all.

* * * * * * * * * *

About the Author: CT Moore (@gypsybandito) is a strategist, writer, and speaker who specializes in SEO and social content strategy. He’s consulted for both start-ups and major brands, such as American Apparel, Yellow Pages Group, and Microsoft Canada. When he’s not helping brands leverage digital media to reach their business goals online, he tries to find time to blog and/or write about things that have nothing to do with the internet.

For Day Twelve, refer to pages 30-32 in the
31 Day Guide to Growing Your List

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Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine marketing is just what it sounds like… Rather than paying for your ads to be displayed, you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad. -page 30

PPC marketing is a great way to test your new squeeze page, split test certain elements on your squeeze page, and optimize your conversion rate. It will also give you stats on conversions, which will be useful in approaching potential Super Affiliates and joint venture partners.

You can expect higher conversion rates on PPC ads for a well-designed squeeze page where you are offering something free, to be delivered by email – or even on a very low cost “impulse buy” type product.

That said, you still want to create a very intriguing ad, and you want to micro-target your ideal visitor through keyword selection.

There’s definitely an art to PPC marketing. I recommend you keep a super close eye on your active campaigns, and make adjustments as necessary.

It’s been quite a few years since I actively used Google Adwords. I believe it was 2004-2005 actually. I recently received two $100 gift cards in the mail from HostGator, so I’ll be using those and digging in to PPC again myself.

Back when I first started using PPC (Google Adwords), I did NOT just jump in cold turkey.

I invested in a $50 guide from the leading expert on the topic, which turned out to be a great investment. You can easily lose that much (and 10x more) trying to figure things out on your own.

I’ll be doing the same before I set up my new campaigns. Given that so much has changed over the last 5+ years, I’ll definitely do my homework prior to putting my money on the table. I did a bit of looking around and decided on WordTracker’s step-by-step guide to Adwords. ^

Your Task For Today:

Set up a Google Adwords campaign. Target long tail (very specific!) keyword phrases, and split test your ads – and the elements on your squeeze page.

If this is your first attempt at PPC marketing, or it’s been awhile for you like it has for me, be sure to study-up first!

Best,

p.s. Still struggling with your Squeeze Page??
Paul Evans and Carrie Wilkerson hosted a great in-depth training workshop on this last week. You can get the full replay, plus access to their upcoming “techinar” here: Expert Squeeze Page Training. The workshop is 3 hours of solid content. From beginner to advanced. Good stuff!

For Day Ten, refer to pages 26-28 in the
31 Day Guide to Growing Your List

While JV Partners and Affiliates will bring you a nice amount of very targeted traffic, and is well worth the ongoing investment of your time, you should also optimize your pages for free search engine traffic. This is a more passive source of targeted traffic, which is ultimately very low maintenance with a very high ROI…

How To Optimize Your Site For Free Search Engine Traffic

There are two steps involved in optimizing your site for the major search engines: keyword selection and on-page optimization. This is done on the page level, meaning for each individual page on your domain.

Search engines rank pages, not sites. You want each page of your site to rank well for a specific keyword phrase that relates to the content on that individual page.

While many people feel that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is complicated and difficult, the truth is it’s quite easy. It is my top source for targeted traffic and sales.

Done right, you won’t have to worry too much over the constantly changing search engine algorithms & updates. The methods I use have never resulted in getting penalized or losing rankings. Only those following fads or shady tactics have reason for concern. Organic SEO stands the test of time.

To prove that point, I have web pages that are 5+ years old that still rank in the top 10 at Google – and still make sales every single week. With nothing more than the occasional fresh link pointing to them to maintain those rankings…

Choosing Keyword Phrases

Selecting the right keyword phrases for each page of your site is where optimization begins. This is arguably the most important step in the SEO process. The keyword phrases you choose will either attract your ideal visitors on auto-pilot, or attract untargeted visitors and tank your conversion rate. I recommend choosing the phrases that attract your ideal visitors on auto-pilot.

I use WordTracker, the industry leader for Keyword Research:

WordTracker’s Free Keyword Tool

Free Trial of the full version of WordTracker

You’ll start by typing in your base keywords. The tool will return the results for those, as well as other phrases containing your keyword. Those phrases are what you want to focus on as they will give you a broader view of what your market is searching for, and a clue as to the intent of the search.

The intent of the search is much more important than any number or metric the software gives you. Be careful not to get caught up in things like search volume or competition analysis. The more specific and targeted your keyword phrase, the higher your conversion rate will be.

Less of the right people is always better than more of the wrong people.

As for competition, there are many wrong ways to analyze it. Forget anything you’ve been taught about competition analysis. For example, the number of Google results for a keyword phrase does NOT indicate how competitive it is.

You are not competing with 3 million pages. You are only ever competing with 10 – the top 10 results. Period.

You don’t determine IF you can rank in the top 10 for a keyword phrase. You determine how hard or easy it would be to rank in the top 10. And you make your decision from there. I prefer easy.

I have several tutorials that make Keyword Research SIMPLE. I highly recommend you read through these before you choose your keyword phrases:

• Choosing Keywords & Phrases
• Long Tail Keyword Strategy
• Frustrated With Keyword Research??
• Using Keyword Modifiers to Qualify Visitors
• “how to get eyeballs and make sales”

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On-Page Optimization

Once you have chosen the keyword phrases you will use on each page of your site, you simply optimize the pages for those keyword phrases.

Again, this task is really simple. Ignore things like keyword density, keyword proximity, and any other over-complicated SEO terms or concepts. You simply want to use your keyword phrases in the appropriate places on each page -period.

See: Web Page Optimization (checklist)

To simplify it, you’re basically going to use your keyword phrase(s) in these 7 places on any web page (or blog post) you are optimizing:

* File Name
* Title Tag
* Text Header
* Sub-Headings
* Within the Content
* Within the Meta Description tag
* Anchor Text of Incoming Links

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Your Task For Today:

Research relevant keyword phrases for your pages, and optimize each page of your website. Tomorrow we’ll look at how to get your optimized pages ranking in the major search engines for the keyword phrases you chose.

Best,

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The update was rolled out in the US only, with plans to roll it out globally over time.

Google says: “This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” source

As you know, I was traveling when this hit last week so I didn’t have the opportunity to scour the latest news & discussions on the topic. I’ve been catching up this week, mainly through the discussions with Elite Members in my forum.

Rick Wilson of http://www.ebizrantzandravez.com, an Elite Member in the ClickNewz forum, started an informative thread and great discussion on the Farmer update. I asked him to share some of those same views & resources with you here…

===============

Rick says: I know that many here use EzineArticles.com to submit their articles to. I understand they have tough standards already but it looks like it’s gonna get tougher for articles to “pass muster” there from now on.

Chris Knight has a blog post about what’s happened at EzineArticles and what they’re gonna do next. Looks like it’s going to get ALOT tougher to submit to.

Some of the examples he listed are:

• We’re considering raising the minimum article word count to 400. Currently we give less exposure to articles that are between 250-400 words, but we still accept them. Thin content often comes under 400 words even though I have seen many high quality articles in the 250-400 range, it is rare. 600-850 words may become the new normal with 400 being the minimum.

• Expect to see our current article rejection rate (40.6%) climb by another ~20%.

• WordPress Plugin and API – We will no longer be accepting article submissions via these tools

• Articles that are advertorials were already targeted by our team, but they will now get a hyper-focus to reject.

Read more posts on what Ezine Articles is going to do:
http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2011/02/search-engine-algorithm-changes.html
http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2011/02/quality-matters.html

ALL this has me thinking about article marketing these days …

There was a not-so-surprising UPROAR when EZA (EzineArticles.com) initially announced after they got hammered by Google, that they were going to do away with ‘do-follow’ in their links in the resource box. Now, I can certainly understand why they (article submitters) would want that coveted “link juice”. But the traffic would be my priority.

If I’m submitting articles to directories like EZA, I’m hoping to get traffic to my sites thru links allowed in the articles (link juice or not). IF your articles are actually good then you will generally get a decent click-thru rate. Any ‘link juice’ (‘do-follow’) from the links is just icing on the cake.

I think people put too much emphasis into the ‘no-follow’ issue anyway. And I think people better get used to it and plan accordingly from now on. The big ‘G’ is on the warpath again. AND they will be in the future.

Every time they do their ‘war dance’ there is some collateral damage. This time it was ALOT! Google seems to have a BIG ‘double standard’ most of the time, but I don’t necessarily blame ‘G’ for what they are trying to do as search results AREN’T very good much of the time. As we all know when we try to sort thru the search results for something.

While there are certainly legit sites that were caught up in the collateral damage, I find it amusing that some of the people complaining the loudest are the ones with the splog type sites that shouldn’t have been ranked so high in the first place. It’s a bit of poetic justice.

I still see BAD, obviously crappy sites ranking above better sites.

Elsewhere …

Those over at SEObook.com show some stats and came up with some interesting findings: http://www.seobook.com/google-kills-ehows-competitors

Top Losses …

1. wisegeek.com
2. ezinearticles.com
3. suite101.com
4. hubpages.com
5. buzzle.com

Top Winners …

1. youtube.com
2. ebay.com
3. facebook.com
4. instructables.com

The “top winners” is NO real surprise there – RIGHT?

Evidently about 12% of the SERPS will have been or will be affected by this change. So far it’s been only in U.S. but will enentually be expanded worldwide soon. Gonna be VERY interesting in SEOland. The SEO forums are “lighting up”!

The ‘cat and mouse’ game between the SEO’s and the big ‘G’ continues …

STAY TUNED!

Rick Wilson aka @CorpRebel

===============

Resources For The Latest Google Algorithm Change (codename = Panda):

Blog Posts By Chris Knight & Staff At EzineArticles.com
http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2011/02/search-engine-algorithm-changes.html
http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2011/02/quality-matters.html

SearchEngineLand.com
Google Forecloses on Content Farms w/Farmer Update
Who Lost in Googles Farmer Algorithm Change

Wired.com Interview With Matt Cutts & Amit Singhal Of Google

I would be interested to know your thoughts and personal findings, and any resources/links you want to share. I’m opening this up for discussion as we all explore the implications of the Farmer Update – as both marketers and users. Leave your comment below! -Lynn

Getting Traffic!

There are so many ways to do it (according to the ‘experts’), but they all take time – and it is said that 80% of all site traffic will come from the search engines, but that’s like trying to maneuver through traffic on the freeway! Easier said than done, what with all the competition, especially on page one…

Richard is not alone. Website Traffic is a challenge for most people who are working online. So today we’ll look at a few simple ways to increase traffic to your site free.

It is true that it takes time to build up a consistent flow of targeted traffic to your website. But the key word is “build”. It’s a process, just like every other aspect of starting and managing an online business.

That said, it really isn’t that difficult. And it doesn’t take near as much time as you might imagine. And one more note: the competition is rarely as fierce as it seems…

Easiest Way to Increase Traffic To Your Site – Free

Before you try other methods of getting traffic, it’s important to make sure your website is properly optimized. This is called SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. As I explained in A Surefire Way To Increase Blog Traffic, you’ll get search engine traffic whether you intentionally optimize your website or not.

“If you do not intentionally optimize your content (blog posts, articles, forum threads, etc) for a specific keyword phrase, and intentionally get backlinks to that content, you will still get traffic and readers.”

… so it only makes sense to optimize with purpose, and with a plan. Otherwise you’re cheating yourself out of more traffic, and most importantly – better traffic.

If you’re struggling with targeted search engine traffic, I highly recommend you download SEO Fast Start by Dan Thies (Free Download!) and study the guide. Dan is an SEO Expert, and the guide outlines the same model I use myself.

Also see my post on SEO Content which will teach you how to choose keywords & phrases to target for faster results and better conversions.

You want to target what’s called long tail keyword phrases. These are longer, more specific (and less competitive) keyword phrases. You don’t just want to choose any phrase though – you want to use keyword targeting to attract a very specific type of visitor. See my tutorial on Using Keyword Phrases That Make Sales.

Competition Is Never What It Seems!

Don’t let competition deter you. The truth is, most competitors are rarely as daunting as they seem. The fact that they achieved their rankings, and their business success, should prove to you that it can be done. Just keep in mind that it didn’t happen overnight for them either.

Start with long tail keyword phrases that are easier to rank for, as I mentioned above. Make sure every page of your site or blog is properly optimized for a well-chosen keyword phrase, and that each page has a very specific call-to-action.

Make sure these two things are done before you start testing other marketing strategies. That will allow your site to get established in the major search engines and begin rising in the results.

And without that call-to-action, traffic is useless. So make sure it’s in place!

Once you have your site or blog ready for rankings & traffic, the next step is to look at ways you can leverage your competitors. Analyze the search results for the more competitive keyword phrases in your niche. Look over the top 10-20 pages and consider ways you can leverage those.

Are they blogs? You can comment, create pingbacks, and even offer to guest blog for them. That’s just one simple way to take advantage of their high rankings, and funnel that search engine traffic straight into your own site!

101 Ways Ways to Increase Traffic To Your Site Free

There are endless ways to get website traffic, but ignoring SEO is like shooting your blog in the foot. Almost every other marketing strategy you might consider, ultimately improves your search engine rankings. So it only makes sense to make sure you ARE targeting keywords. Otherwise you’re missing out on tons of highly targeted free traffic!

Article Marketing for example, will bring in traffic. But if you optimize the title of your Article, it will get more views from specific keyword searches. And if you optimize the Anchor Text in the link within your article, the page on your site/blog you link to will rank higher for that term.

But if you don’t optimize your Article, or your web pages & blog posts, for specific keyword phrases… you’ll only get a trickle of maybe somewhat targeted traffic.

As you can see, most online marketing strategies lead back to SEO and keyword targeting. They’re all connected. That’s why keyword research and optimization is where you should start, as it’s the foundation to almost every other way you’ll use to increase traffic to your site.

See my Top 10 Keyword Research Tutorials

I encourage you to go back to your blog or website and analyze it closely. Is every single page optimized for a specific keyword phrase? Does every single page or post have a strong call-to-action? If not, start there. There’s no point do any other marketing work until you’re set up to rank & convert…

Best,

p.s. I know you were hoping for that list of 101 ways to increase traffic to your site free but that would only distract you and have you running off in multiple directions trying 3 different things at once. Make sure your blog or site is ready first. In my next post I’ll give you more specific ways to get targeted traffic.

Download the 90-minute Keyword Research Panel session (Audio)

I mentioned in my previous post that I taught 3 workshops and did a mastermind session at the Niche Affiliate Marketing workshop in Atlanta…

I forgot to mention being on
the Keyword Research Panel! Probably because it wasn’t actually on my schedule.

The 4 panelists were labeled “TBD” on the event schedule, meaning “to be determined”. You can see in the photo who was chosen: (left to right) Dan Morris, Suzanne Myers, Karon Thackston – and then me, Lynn Terry.

I was thrilled to be sitting by Karon on the panel, of course. I mentioned already how much I’ve learned from her about keyword strategy & SEO copywriting. Hers were some of the very first info products I bought & studied years ago.

(It’s a good thing Karon Thackston and Rosalind Gardner don’t require royalties on all the money earned from what they teach in their guides! haha)

The session was lead by David Perdew, the event coordinator, and lasted a full hour and a half. It was done live at the event with a full room, and none of us knew the questions in advance. A potential recipe for disaster, no doubt! LOL

It actually turned out to be an incredible session.

All 4 of us approach our market research and keyword strategy in different ways, and we each shared exactly how we did it and why. I learned some very interesting things from Karon, particularly about various keyword research tools, and picked up some awesome research tips from the entire panel.

Check out the video above, and then download the audio from the link below. It’s 17 bucks, which is only the price and NOT a reflection on the value you’ll get from this. Those in attendance spent hundreds (if not more than $1,000) for their front row seat, live at the event…

Download the 90-minute Keyword Research Panel session

Enjoy!

p.s. After you listen, I would love to hear ONE a-ha moment or great tip you picked up from the panel. What one tip, or one thing, stood out for you personally??

Want to attend NAMS-5 in January? Go to: www.nicheaffiliatemarketingsystems.com

“Googling” things has become the default first step in our quest to find answers to any questions we have.

Because those questions include things like “where do I find this product?” and “who can help me fix this?” businesses have recognized that paid search is a great way to connect to potential customers.

Also, paid search allows businesses to easily monitor how effective their Internet marketing spend is.

Noting these advantages many businesses have created Adwords accounts, but due to some common mistakes, they may be unknowingly reducing the effectiveness of their online campaigns.

Here are 7 BIG Mistakes that should be addressed in order to maximize the return from your Adwords account…

1. Leaving the Content Network On

Content targeting, which is active by default, is what Google uses to match the keywords in your adgroups to thousands of publishers within the Google network, known as Adsense.

Instead of relying only on relevant queries in Google to return your ad, it places your ads on sites within the network that contain content it sees as relevant to your keywords.

For example, if you are a snack food company and are targeting “mixed nuts” in Adwords, Google may place your ad next to sites with recipes that require nuts and articles that explain the “health benefits of nuts” which are somewhat relevant, but it may also place your ad on sites with articles about “peanut allergies” which is not relevant at all.

Leaving this feature on is an easy way to spend a lot of money fast without reaching qualified customers. The simplest way to manage the content network is to turn it off.

If you choose to use content targeting it is very important that you create separate campaigns for just the content network so you can adjust the budget (discussed more below). You should also start out with a smaller budget and test the effectiveness before allocating more money to this method.

2. Not Implementing a Geo-targeting Strategy

If you do not create location-specific campaigns, then your ads will be served at the national level by default, and you may lose money from users who click your ads that live outside of your reach.

If you are a local plumbing company based in the Chicagoland area, it would make sense to allocate your budget to people searching for plumbers in that region instead of people all over the country. Needless to say, a Californian with a leaky faucet is not going to be the ideal customer for a Chicago plumbing company.

3. Not Tracking Conversions

The only way to determine if your paid search efforts are successful or not is if you are tracking conversions or the action you want the customer to take on your Web site. This may be obvious, but we see businesses make this mistake more often than one would think. Conversions can be anything from a purchase to a form submission, and you are not limited to tracking just one.

If you are a service company that does not sell anything online, then you want your ads to direct the user to a landing page with a form that they can submit with all of their information. If conversion tracking is setup properly, you will know exactly which keyword led to the form submission instead of just knowing how many total forms were submitted.

Knowing this information then allows you to go back to your campaigns and adjust budgets and bids according to which campaigns and keywords are bringing you the most conversions for the lowest cost.

NOTE: Before going onto Big Mistake #4, it might help to discuss how keywords, ad groups, and campaigns are organized within Adwords.

If you look at the tree structure below, you will see there are multiple keywords within each ad group, and multiple ad groups within each campaign. You can have as little as 1 or as many as 1000 ad groups within each campaign.

You want to group similar keywords together within ad groups to create targeted ads, and you want to group related ad groups within campaigns to allow for proper budget adjustment.

Looking at the example structure below: if you realize that a lot more of the people that are searching for “London homes” are converting compared to the other cities, then you can create a separate campaign for London in addition to the “UK Cities” campaign and add more budget to the London one.

4. Not Having Enough Campaigns

A very common mistake that we see is that all of the ad groups in the account are confined to just one or two campaigns. This is a problem because budget is adjusted at the campaign level. If everything is in one campaign and some ad groups are outperforming others, then there is no way to put more money towards the groups that are converting more without also funding the poorly performing ad groups.

If we see keywords that are performing well, we may even create a campaign just for the one keyword so we can garner the maximum amount of conversions possible from that word.

5. Not Having Enough Ad Groups

Organizing similar keywords into multiple ad groups gives you a better opportunity to have higher click through rates (CTRs) and quality scores.

The quality score is a rating from Google that ranges from 1 (not relevant) to 10 (highly relevant), and the main reason you want that score to be high is that it will enable you to bid lower for higher placements.

If your ad groups have too many keywords that are unrelated, then Google will not know which words it should base its relevancy rating upon and your CTR will most likely be lower leading to a low quality score. Generally if your quality scores are around 7 or higher you are in good shape.

6. Not Having Multiple Ads

It is best practice to have two or three ads per ad group to allow for A-B testing and optimization. If you only have one ad you are missing out on the opportunity to test different messaging, and to serve more relevant ads based on search queries.

For example: There is a sporting goods store and they have a 50% off sale on baseball bats, and are also offering free shipping on all of their products. If someone searches for “discount baseball bat” they know to serve a text ad that has copy about their “50% off discount on bats” whereas they may want to place a text ad with “free shipping on all bats” for the search query “baseball bats with free shipping.” If they find that one of the two ads is receiving more clicks and conversions, then they may want to modify the other ad to try and increase its effectiveness as well.

7. Using Only Broad Match Type for Keywords

When you are setting up the keywords in Adwords, you can choose between three different match types: broad, exact, and phrase. Google uses the match type to determine when to serve your ad.

Broad matches will give you the most placements because your ad will be served any time your key word(s) appear in a search query in any order. Exact match will serve your ads only when the query matches your keyword, and Phrase match looks for your keywords in the exact order they appear within search queries even if the queries have other words in them.

In most cases you can safely avoid the broad match type altogether, but it should never be the only match type you are using. If someone is searching for “red laces for shoes” and you have “red shoe” as your keyword using broad match type, you will serve an impression and potentially pay for a click if the unqualified user decides to browse your site at that point. It is very unlikely that the click from that user will lead to a sale.

If you do elect to use broad match type for some of your keywords, then you must use negative keywords (like “laces” going back to the example above) to prevent your ad from being served to unqualified users.

Addressing these seven big Adwords mistakes will enable you to
run an effective paid search campaign for your business.

It is important to remember that you must continually optimize your campaigns, ad groups, text ads, and keywords based on your return on ad spend (ROAS) and conversion goals.

About the Author
Jon Morris was recognized as one of Chicago’s top 30 entrepreneurs under 30 by the Chicago Sun-Times, and was the recipient of the Outstanding Academic Award for graduating first in his class at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Over the last 14 years Jon has become a thought leader in the Internet marketing industry, and is currently the CEO of Rise Interactive, a company he founded in 2004. Rise Interactive is a Chicago SEO and Internet Marketing company that is focused on finding innovative ways to keep its clients ahead of the competition.

Before you start any marketing for your home business these days, you need to do your keyword research. And while there is a lot of information about keyword research, many still struggle choosing the right way or the right tool to find profitable keywords.

First of all, let’s remember that while it’s important to do your keyword analysis, it’s more important to take action! No amount of keywords will help you grow your business if all you do is keyword research…

With that said, today we’ll see how we can use Shopping.com to enhance our quest to find the right keywords and phrases for a specific niche. We all know and use the free WordTracker & Google keyword tools, and those are great, but there are other ways to see your niche from a different view.

Shopping.com is a great place to research physical product keywords. Let’s walk through how you go about finding your key phrases. Once you are at the Shopping.com site, click on the “See all” link on the top navigation. As soon as you do that, you’ll be taken to a list of the products sold at this site (as seen in the image here).

Let’s say we are looking for knitting keywords: we click on the link that says “Craft Supplies”. On the next page you’ll see “Knitting and Crocheting Type” with several categories specific to knitting, and if you scroll a little bit you’ll see a subtitle for “Craft Supply Type” with a link going to “Knitting and Crocheting”. All those are starting points for keyword research: those are things that people buy now.

And if you want to dig deeper, you can do that. Click on the link that says “Yarn” and on the next page, at the top, you’ll see some very specific key phrases that have lots of searches.

Now go to the free WordTracker keyword tool and see how many times these key phrases are searched for. I did just a small sample for you here.

• caron simply soft yarn 82
• sock yarn 187
• red heart super saver yarn 32
• ribbon yarn 46
• bulky yarn 37

Of course, don’t stop there. As you search these keywords on WT, you’ll see many more variations for your new found keyword phrases. The possibilities are endless, and all you need to do once you finish your keyword research is to start using them: write some articles for your blog, some for distribution, check some of your older posts and add tags to them, create a Squidoo page, a Hub page, etc.

–>Affiliate marketer Adriana Copaceanu has been successfully marketing online since 2004, and recently decided to share her Online Business Journey She loves doing keyword research so much she offers some up for free on her blog every Friday.

I don’t actually use anything, so I never have a good answer. My standard response is:

“I check the top 10 results at the 3 major search engines, searching the keyword phrase I’m trying to rank for. If my page is not there- in the top 10 results – I close my browser and get back to work!”

I was talking to Saku of SEO Rank Monitor last week, and he offered to let me take his online tool for a test drive and check it out. While there are several programs and tools that let you check your rankings, this one is different because it can interact directly with your Google Analytics account…

From a review on Yoast:

…uses the Google Analytics API to combine rankings data with visitor data, showing you what the difference really is between position 1 and position 2. It’s also the fastest rankings tracker I’ve ever seen, ranking a few dozen keywords for me in a few minutes, and then on a daily basis after that, giving some awesome ranking charts…

They offer a full feature tour of the SEO Rank Monitor dashboard, and a 30-day free trial to let you check it out before you decide to sign up for one of their two packages. The best value is the Pro Package which allows you to track up to 10 domains and 2500 keywords.

All of the tracking & ranking data is stored remotely on their server. That allows you to access it all over the world by logging in from any web browser.

What makes SEO Rank Monitor different – and better – than other SEO tools out there is the option to connect it to your Google Analytics account. You can then retrieve data about your visitors for all your tracked keywords…

In addition to tracking your own keywords and campaigns, the dashboard also includes a Competitor Monitor which allows you to keep up with the success of your competition. Or easily find keywords with little or no competition.

All of the stats and data are laid out nicely in visual, easy-to-read charts & graphs with the option to export into other formats.

I took Saku up on the offer to give it a test drive, and logged in to one of his accounts. At a glance I could see where keyword phrases were ranking across Google, Yahoo and Bing. I could also tell which keyword phrases were moving in the SERPs. Specifically which terms were moving up in the results, and which phrases were moving down.

The charts load quite fast, and it’s very easy to navigate.

Inside the Analytics Monitor, it gives you a Keyword Value. You can look over this chart and see where you rank for various keyword phrases – and the Keyword Value tells you the number of click through’s you can expect with a number one ranking for each of those keywords.

Definitely cool, and a tool I’ll be checking out more. Give it a test drive with their 30-day trial and let me know what you think!

-> http://www.seorankmonitor.com

Best,

Disclosure: this post was sponsored by SEO Rank Monitor