There are a million and one gurus on the Internet all with their own take on what will make you successful, and when it comes to business we all want to make sure we are following the right advice. What tends to happen is, over the years we accumulate subscriptions to numerous newsletters and e-lists, either through sites we signed up to or products we bought, we then get lost in a maze of spam and fail to be able to recognise the fluff from the gold dust. If you are getting spammed with junk, confused by all the conflicting e-advice and don’t have a clue what system to believe, follow these 5 rules to avoid the bu**S**t.
Rule 1: Organise and Expel The Riff-Raff
Redirect all your newsletters and e-blasts to an entirely new email account and Read more
Unethical SEO can get you banned from Google, just ask the BMW bosses who hired an SEO company that got them banned for cloaking, a practice that involves showing search bots different content than you show visitors …tut, tut!
But don’t laugh, it could so easily happen to you if you hire the wrong web site optimization firm. Here are some tips on avoiding the spam merchants: Read more
“How do I rank a page highly in Google”? If I had a dollar for every time I was asked this question I would be nearly a billionaire, I am sure. The answer isn’t as difficult as people would have you think, in fact Google tell you, just look at their philosophy statement and the words are clear as day: “Focus on the user and all else will follow.”
If you focus your website on user experience then the rankings will come. Now, of course, knowing how to do that isn’t particularly easy, but keeping that philosophy in mind will keep you Read more
We all live in fear of getting that dreaded Google notification that claims we have violated the Google Adwords TOS and our account has been suspended, indefinitely. Getting reinstated isn’t easy and is a huge inconvenience, potentially losing you massive revenue. To avoid the dreaded notification you need to be vigilant in not breaking the rules and avoid common AdWords crimes.
Crime 1: Too Many Ads
If your site is loaded with ads leading to merchant sites then you are walking the line. The way Google sees it is as Read more
Are you wondering why people aren’t signing up for an account on your site, or even just opting in for your great offers? Well perhaps you are committing cardinal sign-up sins. Check out my 5 essential steps to simplifying the sign up process.
Allow Email Usernames
Usernames are very hard to remember these days because of the amount of accounts we have all over the web. But on average people only have one or two email addresses. Therefore it is far easier for those signing up at your website to use an email address rather than create a new username, not to mention the fact that email addresses are exclusive which eradicates the process of telling a person a username is already taken and asking them to Read more
Outside of the work you employ a web promotion company to do, you should always be looking to further your SEO campaign where possible, and that means link building at every opportunity. Thing is, as much as people hype up link building as a multi faced, broad activity, once you have blogged, posted in forums, article directories, local business directions and retweeted/Facebooked all these links, what else is there? Fan sites…
Posting on fan forums…
Fan sites are ideal hot spots for leaving links that won’t be torn down by over zealous moderators, why? Because fans love finding new places that house info about their given interest, that is, as long as the links posted look genuine. For example, if you own an online store that sells home improvement products then target DIY Fan sites with gentle posts like “I am using the Bosch ZX45 Sander and it really does the job, this is the one I mean (url)”. Or, if you run a music store Read more
If you run an information resource website or even house a blog, the likelihood is that you will have be ‘scrapped’ at one time or another. Scrapping is an increasingly popular practice carried out by content farms and low quality sites intent on stealing good content rather than writing it themselves. This practice saves time and boosts rankings, helping to generate advertising revenue, make affiliate sales and build a popular piece of web real estate. One major issue with scrapping and copying is that these sites can get ahead of you pages in the SERPs even though you wrote the content to begin with. It’s totally unethical and really has a negative affect on honest web business owners. Read more
By the end of this month the Google social search mechanism will be completely rolled out. For those of you that don’t know what this is, let me give you the heads up. It has actually been in test phase for quite some time – the last quarter of 2009 I believe. Now, by social search I don’t mean real time results from random people on Twitter, I mean social search as in connecting you to content created by people in your social circle.
What is Your Social Circle?
Your social circle is people you are connected to through Googlemail, Twitter, people you follow in Google reader, Flickr and other social mediums. Google will now display blog posts, profiles, images and other content from members of your social circle when you conduct a search. Be aware though that you may be shown friends of your Twitter friends or slightly random people you wouldn’t expect to pop up – but this is intentional and will also be related to you in some way. The idea is to broaden your social circle and discover other people with stuff to share that you will genuinely be interested in.
To give you an example of how it works; if you were my friend and connected via twitter, gmail, etc. and you typed in ‘Search Engine Optimisation’, you might see the following:
Why Are Google Introducing Social Search?
Well, believe or not we like to follow each other, I don’t mean on Facebook I mean in reading, buying and browsing trends. For example, if I was buying a new mp3 player I would more than likely want to know what the people in my social circle thought about mp3 players and what brand of player people had been purchasing. One of my social circle may have written a “best mp3 players” blog post, and another may have recently purchased and reviewed an mp3 player on Amazon. This would surely help me to buy with more confidence, and with affiliate marketing and fake reviews making it all but impossible to source honest information, this is great news in terms of reliability. In a roundabout way Google social search is putting control back in the hands of the browser, allowing us to trust content again and operate within search boundaries. Or is it? I mean you can hardly trust friends of friends on Twitter or someone you liked on Flikr. I guess what this really means is, we now need to be extra careful who we ‘socially’ connect with.
As you probably are aware, content is becoming increasingly important to SEO strategy. Gone are the days when stuffing keywords and stringing long invisible phrases together were capable of fooling the search engines into high rankings. Nowadays SEO content writing is an art, and if you want to succeed online in 2011 you need to understand how to write good webpage copy, good articles, good blog posts and even good social media updates. Here are 13 lucky SEO content writing tips to get you started in 2011:
Take time to devise reader grabbing titles and sub-headings.
Pay attention to detail – do thorough research to make sure you look expert not amateur.
Be unique – don’t plagiarise other articles and bring new life to common subject matters. Read more
A little while ago a web designer I hadn’t seen for some time said to me during a conversation about that, “SEO is pretty basic stuff, it’s not hard”. Needless to say I had to correct this very misguided statement, not only because it isn’t true but also to save him from becoming one of those designers who promises a client that they can do design and SEO all in one package – and then fail miserably. On the face of it on-page SEO might seem quite easy, just copy what other successful websites in your sector of industry do, right? If only that were the case, then web designers would be instantly become Read more
There are a million and one gurus on the Internet all with their own take on what will make you successful, and when it comes to business we all want to make sure we are following the right advice. What tends to happen is, over the years we accumulate subscriptions to numerous newsletters and e-lists, either through sites we signed up to or products we bought, we then get lost in a maze of spam and fail to be able to recognise the fluff from the gold dust. If you are getting spammed with junk, confused by all the conflicting e-advice and don’t have a clue what system to believe, follow these 5 rules to avoid the bu**S**t.
Unethical SEO can get you banned from Google, just ask the BMW bosses who hired an SEO company that got them banned for cloaking, a practice that involves showing search bots different content than you show visitors …tut, tut!
