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SEO Exposed Part 5: How To Keep Your Search Engine Results Moving Up

by Andrea Kropp
April 17th, 2010

Achieving optimum positions in Google’s natural search results is a long term SEO goal. You will NOT get there quickly. I’ve given you a strong foundation to start with in terms of setting up your strategy and thinking to deliver positive, focused results. Here’s something you need to be aware of – following my instructions exactly in the beginning does not mean that your website will magically appear on the top page of Google.

You cannot do the things in my article series and say that “your SEO is done” or “my website is optimized.” Google is a dynamic, fluid entity that indexes, rates and positions web content on a monthly basis. They really only do a complete scan of the web once every 22 – 30 days. They’re continuously indexing, and no one knows the schedule or secrets of exactly what they do or when. While you’ve restructured and set up your pages in a manner that makes it easy for Google to scan and rate your content, you need to set aside time on an ongoing basis if you want to pass the competition.

Data is Your Best Friend

Hopefully you’ve kept your collected data handy. You need to look carefully at each keyword you are targeting. You also need to look constantly at where the competitor websites you study are positioned.

As you start to appear in the search results, you should always look ahead to the competitor who is closest to your current position for each keyword. They represent the next obstacle in gaining position, and you have to go after each position close to you if you want to move up.

Look carefully at their website. Study their Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions for the pages that are listed ahead of you for each keyword. Rewrite yours every month to be “richer” or more keyword dense than theirs. Increase the keyword density for your pages every month, and spend every month increasing the number of back links that have your keywords in the anchor text for the link.

Keep the Backlinks Coming

One way to get good, relative high score back links is to use the social networking websites, social bookmarking websites and the article marketing directories. Keep releasing good, relative content on a monthly basis and you will move up past the competitor who is next in line in Google. If you’re using social networking websites like Facebook or Myspace or Twitter, set up accounts for yourself as well as Business pages for your various activities. Release information on these sites linking back to your main site, but again make sure you use the keywords you’re targeting linked back to your website’s pages that best match.

Well written and focused articles submitted to all the major article directories using a tool like Automatic Article Submitter will bring in even higher quality back links. You’re only usually allowed one or two links in the Author Box for each directory, so use that link space carefully and again, tie it to the keyword or focal point of the article and drive it back to your website.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

I can’t stress to your enough how important proper SEO is. I also can’t stress enough how key it is for you to budget your time effectively. Schedule set days on your calendar EVERY MONTH where you will address, tweak and refine your SEO strategy. It’s the only way to ensure that, several months down the road, you start seeing a flow of organic traffic coming in from good positions.

Keep your core keyword focus consistent for 6 – 8 months. Don’t try to keep optimizing or adding new keywords to your mix, or your activities will get out of control. If you change your keyword approach at month 3, all your previous work those 3 months is pretty much lost. Successful SEO is all about focus and diligence.

Categories Search Engine Optimization
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Your PPC Is Only As Good As Your Copywriting

by Andrea Kropp
April 13th, 2010

Google is constantly changing and evolving to counteract unethical marketers trying to abuse the search engines. Over the years, they’ve created a huge marketplace for themselves with their Google Adwords pay-per-click (PPC) vehicle, and their latest revisions and changes go head-on at some deep problems created by internet marketers.

Over the last few years, online marketers have been using aggressive bait and switch tactics. Meaning they would run a variety of advertising making unrealistic claims or pushing products or services that did not match to the pages the ads routed to. And some of these marketers were doing very well at it, generating a good, inexpensive click rate to pages that would convert a certain percentage of traffic into indirect product sales or email subscription signups.

Quick Pay-per-Click History Lesson

Google, as they always do, caught on. At the same time the Federal Trade Commission started monitoring ludicrous income claims, bait and switch strategies and predatory advertising. The result is that the Google Adwords advertising medium is now a cleaner and more legitimate environment. It also creates both opportunities and challenges for the ethical online network marketer.

If you’re completely new to this industry or relatively inexperienced at it, I have to give you one overall very important bit of advice. RUN A CLEAN, ETHICAL BUSINESS.  The only way you’re going to succeed long term is by operating with a policy of policing yourself and those under and around you. A few complaints or negative forum postings about you, and you’re going to lose a lot of traffic and potential income. You can easily operate “cleanly” just by doing simple things that you should be doing already.

For Google Adwords, all you have to do is be direct. The keywords you’re targeting for clicks must be relevant to your website’s overall theme. Your advertising message in the ads must match up to the keywords. And your landing page content must match very closely to the ads, or Google will no longer display the ads and you will probably lose your Adwords account.

Ad Copywriting 101

The key to this is in your copywriting and content production. If you’ve run Adwords at all before their changes, you already know which keywords produce clicks and conversions for your business. All you have to do is create super relevant and engaging content that matches up to your ads. Don’t use tactics like keyword stuffing or copying other’s content. Take the time to create real, relevant, coherent copy and text that is interesting and hopefully contains calls to actions. If you’re very wordy, just make sure you include several calls to action at various points in the content. If you’re writing 15 paragraphs on a page, trickle the calls to action in the beginning, middle and very aggressively at the end. Say the same thing several different ways, and give the reader a sense of the benefits they get from using your product. Be very clear and direct and do not make false promises. People are more savvy nowadays, and they will smell a rat. You may want to create your content with somewhat of a Problem – Solution slant.

Since you’re relying on traffic reading your content to make their own decision and conclusions without any live interaction from you, you’ll need ways to make sure you get your points across. One technique I  use in my in-person presentations that is derived from Fortune 500 salespeople is simple:

1. Tell them first briefly what you’re going to be telling them (i.e. outline what the topics are and give a hint of the overall benefits from the beginning).

2. Now tell them (i.e. provide details, full benefits, exposition and education).

3. Now tell them again what you’ve just told them (rehash #1 with the real benefits laid out tied to the initial topics).

Write the content naturally, then go back and review it and make some switches so that you’re targeted keywords appear throughout the text in a way that reads correctly and makes sense. You’ve now solved the riddle.

This all makes sense, right?  Google and the FTC want Adwords to be a viable, undiluted resource where traffic can find goods and services that match their needs.  If you follow simple rules in the content you produce, you will have no problem keeping your Adwords up and producing.

Categories Pay per Click and AdWords
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What’s Working Now? Hot Search Engine Tips (SEO) for 2010

by Andrea Kropp
April 8th, 2010

It’s a new year, and as ever, things are always changing with Google and how they tabulate and position the organic search results. If you’re new to online network marketing, you’re almost lucky, as you can get started out with a clean slate in terms of getting your website positioned well in Google. If you’ve already got a track record online, you’re going to have to take a step back and change some of your thinking.
For both groups, you cannot afford to be afraid of change. Make change a part of your business strategy and spend time continuously implementing change. The leading search engines like Google really work off of a monthly cycle for their updates and scans of content, so you don’t need to make addressing your search strategies a daily chore. Review your results and your strategies, tactics and methodologies about once a month and set aside time to make some changes. It’s probably best to put aside 3 hours a month on review and continuing education on the search engines and how they operate, and to allow about 5 – 15 additional hours per month to actually make any changes or adjustments.

Content is Still King

The core element driving Google and how they rate and position websites are related to content, content and content. Since you’re a small business and simply can’t compete on a number of pages basis with larger companies, you’ll have to find other ways to differentiate yourself in Google’s eyes. Here’s some tips on gaining search engine position. Some of these tactics are only good for short term results, but doing these things as part of your strategy will help Google to see and rate your website much higher than if you just sat there “waiting for something to happen” on its own.

Learn Keyword Targeting:

This is the number one problem facing small Internet marketers. You have to find the exact combination of keywords that fit your website’s themes and products. Use Google’s Keyword Tool to research the search volumes for various keywords you think are good for your website. Only choose keywords that have traffic hitting them! Don’t target the keywords that have huge amounts of traffic, as those will be saturated with websites going after them. You need to find the “sweet spot” for you – keywords that are relevant and targeted, but with medium to medium high search volume. Keep this list of keywords as getting top position is a long term goal, and you need to stay on track. These are the foundation for carving out your own niche in the online world.

Build a Blog:

Rich text content is like flypaper for the search engine spyders. The way blogs are structured with long postings and a hierarchy of themed areas fits perfectly within how Google sniffs out content. Either put a blog within your website or set up a free blog outside the structure and link it back heavily. Use a unique domain if you do this, as the blog will count as an important, relevant back link to your website from day one of its launch.

Use Social Bookmarking:

Relevant, themed back links with traffic hitting them and coming through them is really the best way for you to move your relatively small website up in the results quickly. Sign up for a social bookmarking service like Social Marker, Onlywire or others, and submit EVERY single blog entry you create to the social bookmarking websites. If you make Digg or any of the secondary bookmarking sites, you will get A LOT of traffic hitting your posts. And that traffic will GREATLY help your website appear in the results.

Use the Social Networking Sites:

Create Facebook and Twitter accounts for your business and link them together, so one feeds off the other. That way you only need to ever update one of the accounts. Set up your auto-responder software so that periodically an email goes out to your list telling them to join you on Facebook or Twitter. Every time you create a new blog entry, release it on these 2 devices. Again, you’ll get traffic flowing into the website from relevant back links.

Piggy Back on Others’ Position:

This is complicated but take a moment and think about it. There are a lot of text rich websites that have very strong search position. Some of these websites are free article directories that will carry any themed or relative content submitted to them. Get yourself a program like Automatic Article Submitter. It makes this process easy, efficient and pain free. Take all of your blog entries that are relative to concepts or products (leave out any personal blog entries) and mix them using the software’s spinning software. This lets you submit unique, non-duplicate content with your name and links back to your blog to over 300 article directories online. For the directories that pick up your submissions, you get HEAVY back linking from sites that Google already rates very highly. You see why we call it piggy backing? This can get appropriately written articles with your name on them high up in Google temporarily. Think of the article directories like a trampoline that people bounce on; where they land just happens to be your overall blog and website.

Embrace Change:

Review your website’s position monthly in the search engines for the keywords you are targeting. Here’s something our friends in the SEO consulting business tell us. As you start to move in the results, look closely at who is one page ahead of you. Pick out the websites on that page who look like they do NOT belong there. Examine their website closely and look at their Title tags (the top of the browser window) and their Meta Descriptions (the description under their name in Google results). You’ll probably see the same keywords you are targeting in their Titles and Descriptions. Go back and tweak your website to match, then go into your content, particularly the homepage, and add more instances of the same keywords that you’re targeting to your text on the pages. Make sure you use them in a way that makes sense! And if you’re going to run any pay per click, or Adwords, now’s the time to do it. Make sure your landing pages within your website have the keywords you’re trying to “take” ladled throughout and hot link them to other pages in your website. Our friends in the SEO business call this “guerilla warfare.”
There’s a lot more to know. SEO is a complicated business and a huge consulting industry on its own. Doing the things I mention above can REALLY help you get results in 2010, so that you see some return on your time and resources spent. Running an online network marketing business is all about getting some success early, so you can keep your enthusiasm high and build upon the results.

Categories Search Engine Optimization
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Who is Clicking Where? Where You Need To Be On The Search Results Page To Get Traffic

by Andrea Kropp
April 3rd, 2010

There are a HUGE number of users searching for terms in Google every minute of every day. On a local, national and global scale, Google has built itself up to be number one in market share as the worldwide search leader. They get a lot of attention and of course businesses are constantly trying to get to be number one in the search results for a variety of keywords.

Let’s talk about search engine position. My first point is simple. Abandon your ego. Don’t worry about being number one for every keyword that is related to your business. It’s not a realistic expectation and you will just suffer constant disappointment. Change your focus to generating traffic. If you can carve yourself a  niche online for a few important keywords, then traffic will flow in.

Focus on a Handful of Keywords

Define your niche by looking at the keywords you think are best for you. Use Google’s Keyword Tool to research the keywords you think are best. Their suggestion tool will tell you the traffic for the keywords you enter, as well as the traffic for relevant or similar keywords and keyword strings. It’s all validated and generated by real traffic and search data. You should only target keywords that are relevant to your business but that still have a medium to medium high search volume. Target the keywords and keyword strings that have about one third to half the search volume of the most popular keywords in the set. It’s your best chance to get position somewhat quickly and to generate traffic.

Shoot for Page 1 not for #1 on Page 1

In terms of the organic search results for your set of keywords, you need to get onto the first 3 pages of results if you want to see ANY traffic. Google and AOLSearch, which is driven using Google’s same search scripts, accidentally released search engine usage data to the public back in 2007. Here’s some information you might find very interesting.

The #1 position on Page 1 of Google will result in about 42% of the traffic for that keyword clicking on your website.

Spots #2 – #10 on Page 1 will result in between 27% and 3% of the search traffic clicking on your website.

Overall, spots #1 – #10 account for 97% of clicks deriving from search traffic for a keyword.

Pages 2 & 3 split up the remaining 3% of traffic for a given keyword across all 20 positions on Pages 2 & 3. If you’re past Page 3, you’re not getting any traffic at all.

You see the problem. Page 1 of Google is worth a lot in terms of traffic generation. If you’re picking medium to medium high volume keywords, however, you can still get some return off of Pages 2 & 3. 3% of 40,000 traffic per month is still a fair amount of targeted traffic that may be ready to buy your products.

Moving off the first (Search Engine Results Page) SERP the rate of decline in clickthrough picks up considerably. The clickthrough rate for listings with #11 rank dropped to 0.66%. That’s an almost 80% decline in clickthroughs from the #10 SERP position and shows that being on the first SERP page results in far greater SE traffic than lower listings.

Use Interim Strategies

There are other ways to get short term results and high search placement within Google. You could try Google Adwords and buy sponsored positions in the right column and beige box above the organic results. Every click is going to cost you money, so you’ll need to make sure the pages you are routing to are engaging and generate some return on investment. In the long term, your cheapest and most effective source of traffic will come from building a good organic Google position.

Categories Search Engine Optimization
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SEO Exposed Part 4:SEO Tactics for Single Page Websites (aka Capture Pages)

by Andrea Kropp
March 29th, 2010

Single page or landing page websites have unique challenges when it comes to the search engines. We’ve shown you a lot about proper SEO for your website during this article series, but there are some built-in obstacles that single page websites face that we will address directly.

The main issue is from a content and navigation standpoint. You really only have one page that Google will see. And you can’t use any of our navigation coding tricks that we explained, since there is no navigation!

You should still go into the landing page and make sure you have 10 – 15 instances of your keywords appearing correctly within the text, subheads and headlines. You should also use the H1 tag wherever possible. And of course get your Meta Title and Meta Description as ideally related to your overall keywords as you possibly can.

This is about the best you can do in terms of OPTIMIZING the landing page website. You’ll need to put some other measures in place that also exploit Google’s search algorithm, since you can’t match up on a content standpoint.

1. Take advantage of changes to the backlink rating system:
If you’re a home based business or online network marketer and have several landing page websites, you can do certain things to help yourself. In a small inconspicuous place usually under the page footers in each landing page, set up navigation linking your pages together. KEEP IT AT THE BOTTOM BECAUSE YOU WANT TRAFFIC HITTING YOUR LANDING PAGES TO STAY FOCUSED ON YOUR MESSAGE AND OFFER! Use keywords from each landing page’s SEO strategy as the anchor text for the navigation links. Call the area “Other Resources” or “Sites You May Be Interested In” so that it seems to belong or have a purpose on the page. Ideally, you’ll have each landing page assigned to a unique IP address or host, so that Google doesn’t know all your landing pages are owned by the same person. In this way, you can get high relative scores for the quality of these backlinks between your own websites!

2. Build an “About Me” paragraph as a secondary or tertiary component of the page.
Carefully write a 5 – 7 sentence paragraph about you, your mission/vision/philosophy, areas of specialty, etc. and build it into the bottom of the page as part of the footer. You can relatively small in terms of font sizing and structure when compared to the rest of the page. Get your targeted keywords for your main website into this paragraph and hot link those keywords to your main website. Do this for each landing page that you control BUT REWRITE THIS PARAGRAPH EACH TIME IT APPEARS. Keep the hot links but make sure the sentences and content are not duplicated exactly. It will deliver better results for your main website in Google.

3. Use Pay Per Click to generate targeted traffic to these cross linked landing pages.
If you can afford it, drive some traffic via Pay Per Click from the search engines. Keeping a small presence in Google via Adwords on the right and top of the pages will keep you in the search results while your landing pages catch up on an SEO basis.

4. Store relavant content BEHIND the landing pages.
You may want to consider archiving your emailer or auto-responder text in html pages behind the sites. Don’t do this if you are using pre-made or pre-written emails as you will get no benefits from duplicate content. Link your auto-responder and email samples together with simple navigation and put a link somewhere on your landing page into this “directory” you have created. DO NOT MAKE THE LINK COMPLETELY INVISIBLE OR IN TOO SIMILAR OF A COLOR TO THE BACKGROUND COLOR IT IS PLACED ON. You will get penalized for this. What this technique does do is give the impression to Google that you have more pages with deeply relative content.

5. Use techniques like social networking, social bookmarking and article marketing to build up high levels of relative back links.
All of these techniques can actually drive real traffic as well as improve your website’s organic placement substantially. Using article marketing in conjunction with a tool like Automatic Article Submitter can get you HIGH, PAGE ONE placement in Google for good quality keywords on a temporary basis. You can get 50 – 100 high quality back links for every properly structured article that you submit!

These techniques can help your individual landing page websites perform better in Google’s natural results. If done exactly as we noted, your individual landing page websites can greatly help your main website perform better in the search results.

Categories Search Engine Optimization
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SEO Exposed Part 3: Revise Your Website’s Content To Match What Google Cares About

by Andrea Kropp
February 3rd, 2010

Those following this series now know how to spy directly on their competition and how to develop a direct, aggressive SEO strategy based   on that data.

You’ve now laid the groundwork and are targeting correctly in a smart, strategic manner that actually matches how a corporate SEO consultant would analyze your situation. I left off last time telling you that you must make sure your targeted keywords appear 10 – 15 times on each page of your website and that they had to be used in a semantically correct manner to avoid any trouble.

There’s more that you’ll have to do to your website in order to match up and perform like your competition. Everything you’ll read below is super-easy to do if you are using WordPress for your website with a plug-in such as All-in-One-SEO. You can do all this things from one screen at the same time that you create your page or post. If you are not using WordPress, not only are these tops harder to implement, but you may actually have to pay a pro to do it. WordPress is free so if you haven’t started your website or have only taken baby steps in getting it started, switch it today!

 These recommendations are synergistic with some of the key things that Google currently looks at on websites that are part of their index.

1.       Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions and Meta Keywords – (Controlled via the All-in-One-SEO WordPress plugin.) Each page’s Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions and Meta Keywords must contain the keywords you aretargeting. While Google does not really look at the Meta Keywords embedded in the top of each page any longer, other search engines like Yahoo do. Your pages’ Meta Titles are very important as they tell Google the purpose of your website and page. Don’t waste space repeating your company’s name or domain name; just get your keywords prominently in that space. Use the Meta Description to establish your identity and purpose from a human standpoint, and try to use your keywords there as well. In WordPress you’ll create meta titles, descriptions and keywords for EVERY new page or post. Do not skip this step or do it sloppily.  Your visitors may or may not ever see it, but the search engines definitely do. The place where your visitors are most likely to see it is in the search engine summary. Check out this example.

 

These are the #9 and #10 results for “MLM Drop Cards” for a search I did today. (Mine is the #10 result). Notice how the Title is clear, succinct and contains the keywords. Then look at the two lines of text below. Notice that mine is written in complete sentences. This comes from the Meta Description field. This is the place where in 2 lines of text, you entice the searcher to click on your result. The #9 result clearly doesn’t have a meta description. In its place, a random block of text from within the page is displayed.

2. Footer Navigation Links. – (Controlled via the themes section in WordPress.) Develop key paths for Google’s spyders: Remember how I told you in Part 2 that outside links driving to your website should ideally have your targeted keywords as part of your anchor text? Your website should have the same technique for its own internal content. If your website is more than one page and has primary navigation at top or on the side, DUPLICATE that navigation in the footer of each page. However, rename those links to match your keywords and point them to the pages in your site that most closely match. This tells Google a clear path to index and scan content for information tied to keywords and search terms. In my next article, I’ll touch on the challenges facing single page websites or landing pages. Here is a quick screen shot of one of my capture pages. Notice all the small hyperlinks down below the copyright info in the footer. These are not for the visitor, they are for the search engine. Fortunately, if you are using MLM Lead System Pro all of this is done for you.

3. Image, Document and File Names – (Assign names at the time of upload in WordPress) Name your files to match your keywords. Go into your website structure and rename your files to include the keywords from your strategy. Make sure the keyword you use in each filename matches the content and Meta Titles for that page. Don’t just jam the words together in keyphrases; use a hyphen between words. (Examples: Instead of Pic2017.jpg name your file Mount-Saint-Helens-in-Fall.jpg and instead of Video Clip 11 name your file Interview-with-Michael-Jordon.wmv). Get it? Even though your visitors don’t see the names of your images or video files, the search engine does. The names of your files should contain all your keywords and be separated by hypens. This takes only a few extra seconds when you create the pages and will greatly help your search rankings. It’s a pain in the **** to have to undo and redo later so do it the first time.

All of the items above are similar to what a professional SEO would do upon first taking on a project with you. Your website must have the proper foundation for you to ever have any chance of doing as well as your competitors in Google.

This series has now made it clear how you should develop your strategy based on real competitor data. I’ve shown you how to carefully develop your keyword targeting so that you are pursuing good volume keywords that match your products and services. You’ve learned how to adapt your website and content to match up with some of Google’s primary search algorithms.

Categories Search Engine Optimization
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SEO Exposed Part 2: Develop a Focused SEO Strategy Complements of Your Competition

by Andrea Kropp
January 28th, 2010

backlinkDuring Part 1 of this series, I explained how you could spy on your competitors’ websites using free tools like Alexa online. Now I’m going to show you exactly how to develop a focused Search Engine Optimization strategy for yourself that will have you starting to catch up to those you envy in no time.

If you followed my instructions in Part 1 carefully, you’ll now have a comparison chart showing your website versus others in terms traffic rank, the sites linking in, the keywords that drive traffic to your competition, and their position versus your current position in Google.

Take the keywords driving traffic to your competition and plug them into a tool like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. It’s readily available online and will give you the EXACT average Monthly Search Volume for each keyword online. Store that data in your spreadsheet  for reference later. Also, use the Keyword Tool’s synonym and relevant keywords suggestion feature to find the search volumes for other keywords that Google ties to your set. Highlight the ones that match exactly with what you’re offering online.

This overall set of your competitors’ keywords and the keywords you liked from the Google Adwords Tool gives you a basis now to select the keywords YOU will target. Only take the keywords that have medium to medium high search volume when compared to the top producing keywords on that list. They’re going to be easier to take position on. To under the interplay between search volume and search results placement read How to Get 1000 Visitors.

competitionNow go and look carefully at the Sites Linking In data for websites on your list with the highest traffic ranking. Pick the top one and go visit all the links from their data. Mark which ones are free link resources or directories and start seeing if there are ways to get your own website linked. Try to get linked from as many of the same websites as your top competitor. The ranking and ratings they receive from inbound links from these other websites can be yours as well. HERE’S AN IMPORTANT TIP. For the websites that allow you to provide the link and anchor text as part of the link submission process, you must use the keywords you are targeting in the link! This tells Google something very important: your website is a destination and resource for information pertaining to that keyword.

Now go into your own website and revise your text content. Get those same keywords to appear about 10 – 15 times per page within the writing. Make sure you use them semantically and grammatically correct.

This is all a good start in getting your website to be in the same competitive space. In my next article in this series, I’ll tell you exactly how Google looks at other elements of your website’s content and how you can best optimize it to make Google’s work easier.

Categories Search Engine Optimization
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Search Engine Secret Algorithms – The Things You Don’t Know

by Andrea Kropp
January 19th, 2010

google-algorithm
The Internet is a huge, infinite place of websites, data and information. The organic search engines are really the only way the average person can even have a chance of finding the things they are looking for. Understanding Google or Yahoo can deliver a lot of highly targeted traffic right to your website, if you’re showing up on Page 1 for keywords that traffic actually searches for. Let’s only look at Google, as they have an over 75% market share of all the total search activity out on the web.

Google is a huge institution, but don’t even think for a minute that thousands of people are sitting there indexing the Internet all day long. Every search engine is driven by algorithms – multi-layered formulas and equations that inspect, rate, categorize and sort content. Google’s search algorithms and processes are the most complicated and are kept so top secret that no individual employees know all the inner workings. And to make matters worse, they adjust and tweak the algorithms every few months in response to webmasters trying to figure out and cheat at the search engine optimization game.
Read More→

Categories Search Engine Optimization
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You Must Own Your Name

by Andrea Kropp
December 15th, 2009

nameThe absolute first rule of Attraction Marketing is to own your name and the brand it represents. You can have a personal brand by design or by default. Its your choice.

 You must own your name on the Internet. You can buy your name as a .com, .me, .net and others from GoDaddy for about $10 per year. That is a branding bargain and one you cannot afford to skip. If you have a common name and your name is already sold, you can try to buy it from the person who has it (not likely although you may discover a long lost relative this way). Or, you can include a hypen andrea-kropp.com, a middle initial, andreakkropp.com or both andrea-k-kropp.com. The .com domain will cost slightly more than the .net, .me or .info domains but it is worth it.

Once you own the domain for your name, work on getting it into the #1 slot on Google and Yahoo’s search engine. When I first started on the Internet my Twitter link, LinkedIn link and Facebook link were all listed before my domain name in the search results. That’s because these pages had existed for several months or years and time is one of the factors in search engine rankings. I set about building backlinks to the www.andreakropp.com site. Each of your social networking sites provides one backlink. Do signup for the ones you don’t belong to just to for the backlinks. I use a service called OnlyWire.

Why is all this so important? Because most people will Google your name before contacting you to start a business relationship. Whether they pick up your business card, read an article of yours or hear your name on the radio, you are a stranger. The quickest way to get the scoop on a stranger is Google. What’s the good? What’s the bad? Don’t let a small claims court case about pirated cable TV be what they find. Flood the Internet with good things about you and bury that experience on page 20 forever.

Categories Attraction Marketing
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Keyword Research Essentials

by Andrea Kropp
December 14th, 2009

seo-keyword-research-internet-marketing-dotaIf your marketing strategy has an online component, you better know something about keywords or you’ll quickly be swallow up by those that do. Here are a few things to know as you begin and a few resources to assist you.

#1 Know Your Searches – Don’t guess what people are searching for. Research it. Free tools such as Google’s external keyword tool and paid services such as Wordtracker will quickly tell you how many people per day or month are searching for your chosen phrase. These tools will also show you alternate phrasing that may have the same meaning. For example, “work at home” gets about twice as many searches in a day as “home business” at roughly 3300 vs 1700.

#2 Know Your Competition – You absolutely must know how many pages you are competing with for your chosen keywords. In the example above, just because “work from home” has twice as many searches as “home business” doesn’t mean you should go after it. You have to know how many other sites you are competing against. Wordtracker has 3,090,000 sites competing for “work from home” and 3,950,000 competeing for “home business”. These are both too big to get yourself on the front page of Google or Yahoo. By comparison, the phrase “10 best home based business” has only 23,000 site competing. With this phrase you stand a solid chance of ranking on the front page and with 445 searches a day, the phrase gets plenty of use.

#3 Mix It Up – In the land of keywords “phone”, “phones”, “telephone” and “telephones” are all distinct. So too are “Portland real estate agent” and “real estate agent Portland”. The way people search isn’t always consistent with the way they speak especially when it comes to locations. There are generally more searches written as “THING LOCATION” than the other way around such as ”Shaklee Meeting New York”.

Categories Keyword Research and Selection
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