A Guide to SEO

This Affiliate Summit West 2010 (ASW10) session was presented by Josh Ziering, whose contact information is as follows.

Email:          joshuaziering@gmail.com
Website:      Fullspeedseo.com
On Twitter:   @joshuaziering

Preface

This was the first class I attended, held on the first day of workshop classes, and true to the title given in the workshop guide, this was a good SEO Primer.  I have been eager to gain a deeper understanding of SEO and put it to better and more extensive use on my various content sites.  Imagine my surprise & delight then, when I discovered that I have already been ‘doing SEO’ for years (thanks to Ed Dale & the 30 Day Challenge)!  Still, I’m very glad I attended this class because in the end I still learned some new tips from Josh.

Where possible, I have taken the added step of creating links, with the intention of facilitating your (reader’s) access the resources and materials that were discussed during the classes.

Introduction

Josh’s early experience with SEO came about when he had his first website and he wanted it to rank.  However, in searching online for Josh Ziering (in those days), he found that the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) were cluttered with results linking to  Actor Josh Hartnett or to Playmate Nikki Ziering…

(OFF TOPIC)
You can read about Josh’s amusing Nikki Ziering misadventures here.  Just don’t forget to come back to your SEO lesson here in the forum.  ).

(RETURN TO TOPIC)
So, Josh then set out with the question:   How do I increase my ranking?  He discovered increased ranking could be achieved through the following cycle:

1.    analyzing his niche
2.    dominating his  niche
3.    tracking his niche

In presenting his SEO information to the audience, Josh tasked himself with the following mission.

    •    Provide us with enough knowledge about SEO that we will  not to be ripped off if we choose to outsource our  SEO;  and,
    •    Equip us to make adjustments to our own sites with positive ranking results, ostensibly to illustrate that we need not outsource SEO in the first place

What (ie ‘who’) to Optimize For
Josh is of the mind that we should optimize for Google, unless we have – in his words -“compelling evidence” to do otherwise.  He makes the case for following his advice with his own compelling evidence, as laid out in the following bullet points.

    •    Google gets 65% of market share
    •    Yahoo gets 16.2%
    •    Bing 8.8%
    •    AOL 3%
    •    Everyone else 7%
(Josh has cited the source for the data shown above as: June 2009 Nielsen)

SEO is Simplicity Itself
Josh related a story that hearkens back to the time period following the end of the Cold War.
The USA and Russia had moved into a more collaborative phase, and both were still focused on the Space race.  Evidently the US was not making much headway in their quest to develop pens that would write in zero gravity.  When the Russians were asked by the Americans how they had solved the problem of ink not flowing and thus pens not writing in Space, they replied:  “We give them pencils.” 

Josh maintains that optimization is equally simple, and that there is no need to get complicated or elaborate when doing SEO, either.  Use pencils.

On Page Optimization

Start with the Domain Name
Your domain is one of several hundred factors that can play into your SEO.  This means that if you already have a domain that you’re not willing to change/give up, you don’t need to sweat it.

There are a multitude of other factors that contribute to your rank even if your domain is not ‘relevant’ to your keyword.  You have only to think about Monster, Yahoo, Amazon, and other sites whose domain names are completely irrelevant to their services in order to see that a keyword specific domain name is only one piece of the equation.

Still, if you’ve not yet selected a domain name, you can choose a name that works to your SEO advantage.  Here is what Josh recommends for domain name selection for SEO purposes.

1.    Pick a keyword rich domain name.   Try using the Google keyword tool, and use exact match – based on global monthly searches

2.    Look for 8000 or more global monthly searches under exact match.   Remember this will exclude long tail traffic, but you should still use well-placed long tail keywords in the copy on your site.

3.    Pick a short domain name .   Josh’ negative example is DontMakeYourDomainWayTooLong.com

4.    Don’t get all happy with the dashes/hyphens.  But a few well-placed dashes are a good idea.  Otherwise who knows if expertsexchange.com is meant to be ‘experts exchange’ or ‘expert sex change’ ??

5.    If your business is geographic – work that in – it will be easier to rank.   Use your country / city / state / county / province, or a combination of them - for example not just AutoParts .com but DenverAutoParts .com – adding some geographic info narrows down the field you’re competing with for ranking.

Don’t Forget the Optmization Basics

1.    Main keyword in the title tag
2.    Use H1 tags – put the most important keywords in H1 tags, not ALL the keywords
3.    Meta description – work your keywords in but don’t make it spammy
4.    Have a site map
        -- A sitemap is an XML file that you then submit by using Google Webmaster tools.
        -- This will help Google crawl your site

5.    Make sure the first 250 words of your content are keyword rich (without being spammy)

PRO TIP:  A good Content Management System (CMS) – like Wordpress – will do all or almost all of this kind of optimization for you.  All YOU need to do is install & configure the right plugins...

    •    Google sitemap generator
    •    All in one seo pack
    •    Popular posts .   Josh says be sure to set this one up in “for the last x days” format and use only a short number of days – otherwise it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as people will go into a “default” mode and start clicking on what’s popular instead of reading your new posts. 

[ Tangent #1 begins ]:  Josh’ advice echoes my concerns over the Acme forum ‘popular posts by votes’ concept that was recently implemented.  I believe that after a while people start letting the rankings determine what they read, instead of letting what they’re reading determine the rankings. [Tangent #1 ends ]

    •    Lose the default Wordpress theme.  Instead try:
           -    Elegant themes.   At $20/year this is a great price for access to alternate WP themes
           -    Woo themes.   It costs $20/month, but the price is worth it if you have the business/traffic for it
           -    Page.ly   This is managed WP hosting with premium themes, automatic upgrades, patches and backups, for $15/mo w/free domain and no setup fee; can you beat it?

[ Tangent #2 begins ]: these theme providers do accept affiliates, so if they’re too pricey, you do have a mechanism for earning back your fees:  recommend the products to others interested in SEO… (no, those are NOT affiliate links in my post ) [Tangent #2 ends]

More On-Page Optimization Tips:

1.    Use Google keywords tool for additional terms to rank for.  Remember you were advised to use this tool for domain selection using ‘Exact Match.’  This time you’ll use the “broad match” option.

2.    Use the ~ tilde operator before Google queries for related terms.  ie ~dog ~collars

3.    Make sure the page loads fast – this means within 1 – 1.5 seconds.  Google webmaster tools can help with this, as can the Wordpress supercache plugin

4.    To increase time reader spends on page, try these – placed at the end/bottom of the page:
       -    Use “related posts”,  or
       -    “additional products” (only if you sell products & if they are relevant to the post, of course)

Off-page Optimization

Off-page optimization is all about credibility – doing off-page optimization correctly gets your site the ‘street cred’ (Page Rank) you want it to have.

    •    Page Rank (PR) was created by Larry Page, which is where the name comes from

    •    PR determines how authoritative a site is. 

    •    But don’t freak out about PR  - it’s macro metric (‘big picture’) stuff
           -    you should be focused on building high quality, one way links
           -    PR0 (PR zero) sites regularly outrank PR5 – better to be a “zero” with lots of visitors
           -    Trust in the SERP rankings, not in your Page Rank

    •    You need two types of links to make your page an authority:  Relevant, and Authoritative

           -    Relevant:  This is more important than authoritative for PR incoming links.      For example if your site is about cars, an inbound link from a PR7 site about cars is a good thing; a link from a PR7 about cell phones is not so good 

           -    Authoritative:  Think about “Johnny Football Star” and “Sally Homecoming Queen” from High School.  Everybody knows who they are and trusts their opinions over “Stevie Math Club Guy.”  This makes them credible – so having them “vouching for” you with links from their site makes YOU more credible, meaning…  ***It’s better to be friends with (get incoming links from) 1 Johnny Football or Sally Homecoming than 30 ‘regular guys’ like Stevie Math Guy ***

How to Get Links for Off-page Optimization

    •    Guest posting
    •    Social bookmarking (digg, stumbleupon, etc)
    •    Profiles (youtube, Slashdot, etc)
    •    Twitter aggregators
    •    FaceBook fan pages
    •    Sites you make (mini nets) – if you’re interested in something, make a site about it.  Link these smaller sites to your main site.

    Link Baiting
    Link Baiting is another way to do off page optimization.  For those unfamiliar with the term, Josh defines link bait as follows: 

    Example:  13-year old steals dad’s credit card to buy hookers

       -- If you’re the one writing the link baiting content, you should know that it can be true or it can be a farce – just make sure that if it is fabricated that you say so very clearly. 
       -- Besides writing phony articles, there are other ways to link bait – viral videos, contests, etc

Exercises:      At this point, Josh offered some exercises as practice for creating ‘link bait’ content

    •    “The Downfall” – think about your niche and what would devastate your niche, and turn your world upside down (example – music industry sales eclipsed by services such as Napster & other file sharing resources)

    •    “The Savant” – take a normal person or child and make them really good at your niche while being terrible at everything else (think Rain Man)

    •    “The Dream” – think of something you wish existed in your niche and make it exist.  Brand it and sell it.  If it already exists, tweak & rebrand it (could you overclock your dual processor by using liquid nitrogen to cool the CPU?)

    •    “The Hero” – be the hero, make the hero, or even make the hero look like a douche (the Hero scenario is a la Reddit or The Consumerist)

Josh posits that with a little creativity there’s nothing you can’t write link bait for, which is why your website should have a blog, and why you should create a mini-net about your niche

    Link Building

    1.    Blog comments:
           -    commentluv – dofollow plugin for Wordpress
           -    look for footprints if you find something (sorry, I didn’t catch what he meant by footprints, but it may be related to tracking and this plugin)

    2.    Social Media:
           -    Submit great content (digg, etc)
           -    Digg’ers are snobs and rightly so

           -    Give your twitter followers great content and they’ll retweet.  Stay away from off-topic tweets – IE if you’re an affiliate marketer, don’t spend time tweeting about poker tournaments or the superbowl

           -    SiteSnatcher tools

                  -    Link excavator tool

                  -    Blog commenter tool (this is great if you have interns that you want to put to work)

           -    Link profiling – find out where your competition gets their links, using Yahoo Site Explorer (YSE), then export the data in spreadsheet format for further analysis.  [NOTE:  To research a site (even your own) -- go to the YSE and type  “site:” (without quotes) followed by the domain name.  For instance:  site:acmepeoplesearch.com  then hit enter.  Then, click the ‘inlinks’ button in the top left and set the two dropdown boxes for “except from this domain” and “Entire website”  See screen capture of example setup here. ]

Conclusion

Naturally now that you’re taking steps toward SEO (or now that you’ve outsourced it), you’re going to want to do some tracking to ensure you’re getting positive results, right?  Here are the tools for that

SEO tools

    •    Rank checker
        this tool is free from SEOBook

    •    Authority Labs
        they are web-based and provide white label reports
        cost $24/month for 10 domains with a 30-day free trial no credit card required

    •    SEO Information on SERPS
        great for assessing the competition in a niche

    •    NoDoFollow – a FireFox plugin (remember to check compatibility with your version of FireFox)

    •    Coda Development Software – not a SEO resource but helps you manage your websites so you can spend your time on other things.  Josh swears he couldn’t live without it.  If you have a pc instead of a mac, you WILL have to live without it

-- Class summary prepared and provided courtesy of Mary Payton --

Last edited by Mary Payton (2010-02-01 13:39:26)

Very useful Mary, thanks

Thanks for the thorough notes, Mary!  Got to start using them to get the benefit.  A saying goes, "to know and not to do is not to know"

Milton