Are No Meta Tags Better Than Bad Meta Tags?
You've likely heard that you need to add meta tags to every page of your website. There are some things you need to know about meta tags before you write them (and they are very important). First, DO NOT - I repeat, DO NOT - create the same meta tags for every single page on your website. That will not fair well for you at the search enignes. Some CMS systems (Joomla comes to mind) will automatically generate your meta tags for you, but most of the time these automatically generated meta tags will be the same meta tags on every page. If that's the case, you'd be better off without meta tags. When I speak of meta tags in this manner, I am specifically talking about CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
What’s The Best SEO Tool?
The question comes up often, "What's the best SEO tool?" I suppose that depends on how you define tool. In my book, a keyword research tool is an SEO tool. So are keywords themselves. And hyperlinks. As can be bullet lists and h2 tags. In all, there are literally hundreds of SEO tools in the SEOs tool chest. Which is the best one is a question that doesn't have an easy answer. I think the answer to the question largely has to do with what your goals are. Are you targeting the search engines for a specific keyword to rank a particular page one time or are you trying to boost your overall trust factor or targeting the search engines for long term? Each goal has CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
What’s So Special About SEO?
Talk to some people and you are a spammer the moment you use your keywords, or link to another website, especially if it yours. Some of the crazy things people call spam truly amaze me. I mean, it's SEO. You would think that everyone would want to learn it and get good at it. But some people would rather just call you a spammer and hang you in town square. If these people are right, what's so special about SEO? Are you sure that what you are doing is legitimate SEO and not spam? Here's a short list of some of the things I've heard people call spam despite it the obvious SEO benefits: Linking to your own website from an off site blog Using keyword-rich content that CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Brick Marketing Launches Online Publicity Journal
Yesterday, we discussed our latest blog in the Brick Marketing family, Email Marketing Journal. That's take the Brick Marketing family blogs to five. OK, make that six. Yes, we've added another blog, which we started posting to October 6, 2007: Online Publicity Journal. Online Publicity Journal will cover all the ways you can use press releases and other content to influence the media in covering your story. We'll cover how to write press releases, how to attract media attention, strategies for creating a buzz, getting sales from your online publicity efforts, press release distribution, how to SEO a press release, and using RSS feeds for your online publicity. So far we've posted to Online Publicity Journal three times and we'll be adding our fourth post CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
What SEO Is All About
I loved this article by Jill Whalen at Search Engine Land: Sometimes I think SEOs have lost the plot. Not all SEOs, mind you, but many, especially the newbies. It’s like they don’t understand the reason for doing the SEO things that they know they need to do. I think many walk around with a checklist of SEO-type duties and set off to do them, yet they have no clue as to why. Yes, I often feel that way about my colleagues as well. But without knowing the ultimate reason for doing the things they do, they don’t get it done correctly. You don’t create titles for titles’ sake. You don’t get links for links’ sake. Everything that we teach people to do in SEO has a CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Local Search Presents Some Unique Challenges
(Source) Local Search: Keyword-based and location-based. User provides a query and search engine matches documents to both the keyword and the location. To rank for “seattle green widgets,” develop great content and links about green widgets, and be located in Seattle. In theory and practice this is not simple, nor is it easy. Here’s why: The addition of geography screws everything up. It complicates everything. This is the first time I think I've read anyone succinctly state the challenge behind ranking a local business for local search. Yes, small businesses need help with SEO. But even a weakness in SEO can't overcome the geography challenges. Another aspect of local search that is rarely looked at are the different needs of rural businesses to those located in CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
PR Web Press Release Distribution PR Newswire Review
If you aren't aware of PR Web Press Release Newswire you should be. This service is perhaps one of the most essential services for achieving high value publicity online that includes strong link building and brand awareness. One press release uploaded to PRWeb can be distributed online to best sources of publicity anywhere in the world, including Yahoo! News, Google News, PR Web and a variety of social bookmarking sites. This is the best place to go for instant online publicity, bar none. The features you are allowed with each press release distributed through PRWeb are nothing like anything you've ever seen. There is no off line equivalent. In the old days, you'd write up a press release, fold it up CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Should You Put Your Keywords In Your URL?
Kalena Jordan over at SiteProNews has this on her list of myths. In fact, it's myth No. 1.
I'd have to say that this is a myth, but she doesn't exactly do a good job of explaining why. She gives an awkward example and borrows another from Matt Cutts to illustrate her point - something ridiculous like www.buy-cheap-viagra-online-while-consolidating-your-debt-so-you-can-play-texas-holdem
-while-watching-porn.com. OK, that's funny ... and just plain off the richter scale of moronic. But that's the point.
Well, let's come back down to earth a minute. No one in their right mind is going to buy a domain name that long. If you'd even think about it, you shouldn't have a website. No one is going to visit a website with that many words in CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
The Difference Between SEO and SEM
Distinctions can be confusing, I know. SEO is the process of optimizing your website with keywords, web page relationships through links, and design so that you rank well in the search engines for the search terms you are targeting. This doesn't cost anything unless you pay a professional SEO to assist you. Organic rankings are free advertising. SEM, on the other hand, stands for search engine marketing. That one word exchange optimization into marketing makes a huge difference. When we talk about SEM we are generally referring to sponsored listings, which cost you money. It is an out of pocket advertising expense and the cost generally depends on where you fall in the sponsored line up. You've seen the ads at the top of your search results CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
What Is A Keyword?
After this morning's post it dawned on me that if you are brand new to Internet marketing you may not know what a keyword is. I don't want to assume. So here's the definition of a keyword: A keyword is any word or phrase that a searcher will type into a search engine search box in order to find information on. That's almost anything isn't it? Keywords And The Internet Economy In the Internet economy, some keywords are quite valuable whereas others are not valuable at all. Many new Internet entrepreneurs will look for the keywords that receive the most search queries, but this may not be the best plan. Many keywords that only receive modest attention could be more valuable as a niche. For instance, search engine CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Optimizing Your Blog Post Titles Before You Publish Them
(Source) While you should know it by now, the most successful post title describes the post content using keywords, search terms, and a little attention-getting techniques. As I edit my blog posts, the post title may change before I hit publish. Leave it to Lorelle to come up with another good one on WordPress blogs. These three elements of good blog post titles are things I've been telling people since I started blogging. You've got to make sure you get the right title. A good title has these three elements in abundance: Describes what the blog post is about Uses your keyword Sparks an interest If you don't do No. 1 then when people read your post they'll be disappointed. They likely won't come back and read your blog CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Cool Tools From SEOmoz
I love free tools. SEMmoz has some cool new ones and I think these should help most webmasters. If you'd like to know what is the strongest page on your domain or what other websites are hosted on your IP block, you can do that. These are useful tools. For instance, if you think you might be having a spam problem you can check to see who is on your IP block. If you live in a neighborhood where there are a lot of spammers present then that could be hurting you at the search engines, not to mention it could mean that your domain name is being blocked by certain ISPs without your knowing about it. A little bit of investigation and you CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Two Mistakes Bloggers Make With Blog Optimization
When I scour the web looking for blogs to read I run across to big mistakes that bloggers make. There are probably more than just two mistakes, but I see two extremes with regard to blog SEO, or blog optimization, that bloggers tend to make when writing their posts. The first mistake is the "too much" mistake and the second mistake is the "too little" mistake. In other words, the blog posts either look spammy or are written in such a way that you can't tell that the blog post is SEOd at all. Blogs are meant to be conversational. That is, it is really a sales tool, not in the sense that I want to deliver a hard sales message and try to close the CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
The Perils Of Some Real Estate Gurus Masquerading As Web Designers
Real estate agents like to buy the newest best thing. If I were a real estate agent and wanted to build a website, I would stay as far away from real estate gurus who claim to have the best method for building a real estate website. For one thing, if they're worth their weight in salt as a real estate agent they probably don't know squat about designing or building websites, let alone search engine optimization. It doesn't really matter what industry you're in; to succeed online today you need to have a firm grasp on search engine optimization and how to rank your site well at the search engines. I visited one real estate website and noticed at the bottom that there was a copyright CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How Google Creates Barriers To Entry And What You Can Do About It
Google is the Internet. Those of us who have seen the Web grow in various directions understand that Google has remade the Internet in its own image. Google founders were the first to introduce the importance of back links into ranking models and developed a web spider and algorithm to measure the back links of websites for ranking purposes. It is this algorithm that forms the basis of all search engine algorithms today, with a few minor exceptions. Just about all of the search engines consider back links important to one degree or another and the leader in search technology, Google, still considers back links to be very important. Google And Its Algorithms Over the years, the algorithms have changed. Every so often, at least a couple CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
SEO Journal is Written by
Brick Marketing Founder,
Nick Stamoulis:
Nick Stamoulis - SEO Bio.
Tel. - 877-295-0620
nick@brickmarketing.com
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