The reason I think they’re going to piss people off is when they get to day 4 they’re going to tell people not to buy links and quit wasting all your time obsessing on inbound links.

I think links are important, but there’s no reason to obsess. Too many webmasters are scrambling from here to there looking for the right combination of links, buying into paid link schemes, and riding the next wave of stupidity to Crash and Burn City. If you’ve been there before then you know it’s not much of a sight and you’ll definitely not want to go back.

Inbound links are good. Some are better than others. But let Google tell you straight up as I think they will: They’re not gold.

That’s a good question. If you geotarget your SEO then you’ll find that the competition is a lot slimmer. But your prospect list is much smaller as well. I’d say you probably do not want to geotarget if the pool of potential prospects for your business is so small that even getting a respectable percentage of the local market isn’t worth your time and investment to build the website. You do want to geotarget if your business is a service business that provides services that can only be delivered in person or at a specific physical location - for instance, an auto mechanic.

Besides these obvious examples, are there circumstances that might tip the decision making process one way or another - toward geotargeting or against it? One thing to consider, of course, are your business goals. What is the point of your website? But besides that …

I’d say you might want to consider geotargeting if any of the following applies to your situation:

• You provide a product that will only appeal to be in your geographical area
• You only want to do business with people in your area and not “worldwide”
• You have a global aspect to your business but you want to explore a narrower geographical niche
• You want to run a specific campaign targeting a specific geographical region
• You know there is a high demand for your product or service in your specific area
• You are a local business and people in your area know you and respect you and will do business with you online
• You want a website to drive traffic to your local brick and mortar store
• You want to build a local brand

There may be other reasons you want to geotarget, but these are the general reasons why people set up a website for geotargeting. If your product or service is one that appeals to a global audience as well as a local audience then you might have two websites - one to target the local market and one to target the broader “global” market. Another approach is to set up a website where specific pages are geotargeted but the focus of the entire website is global. At any rate, geotargeting is a growing trend in Internet marketing and I see it gaining even more popularity as more businesses go online to do business.

• Break up your paragraphs with subheadings - If you write for more than three paragraphs, add a subhead. It should be short and contain your keyword. Make the subhead an h2 or use the font=”+2″ tag.
• Add a graphic or two - Graphics break up text real well. You can align left or right or place the graphics between paragraphs. Whatever looks good, man. Plus, add an alt tag to each graphic to give it some SEO juice.
• Don’t stuff keywords - Many bloggers are tempted to stuff keywords into their content. It isn’t necessary. If you write good content and include enough SEO elements, managing your keywords and links well, then you don’t have to stuff keywords.
• Add tags - The latest edition of WordPress gives you a Tags field below your content box. Use it. Add three to five tags that correspond to the content of your blog post.
• Chose more than one category - Put your blog post into as many categories as is relevant, not just one.

When it comes to SEO, long posts have a better chance of ranking well if they are optimized. Short posts can rank too, but optimization is the same. You don’t have to stuff keywords. Add the proper tags and you’ll do well in the optimization game.

There are plenty of people who say that keywords in domain names are necessary. Other people say they aren’t necessary at all you do effective branding. Then there are the people who say it isn’t necessary to include keywords in your domain name, but it is a good practice. I fall into that last category.

While I don’t think it’s necessary, I do think that putting your keyword in your domain name gives you an edge. It’s like the difference between using alt tags or not, or putting your keyword in an h1 tag or not. The more you use your keyword in your on page content, anchor text, meta tags, etc., the more of an edge you give yourself in the search engine optimization wars. And, of course, you know it will never hurt you so why not try to find a way to get your keyword in one of the most logical places?

Let’s say that you have a website dedicate to pitching horseshoes and a blog on a separate domain name with a forum in the same niche at a different URL. That’s three domains in the same niche. You should consider putting them on separate servers and IP blocks.

I’m assuming that you’re cross linking these sites because they are related. They are in the same niche. Keep them on the same server and Google will automatically associate them. Put them on separate servers and you run a better chance of Google considering them as different entities that link to each other from separate servers and IP blocks. Google will then give greater weight to the links for search engine optimization factors.

There have been other search engines try offer such incentives for using them. Remember BigDaddy?

It didn’t work. Now BigDaddy is using the kids. Ho hum.

Well, MSN Live Search started out with a bit more clout than BigDaddy in the first place. Do you think it will work for them? I say likely not.

The reason I don’t think so is Google. We saw Google rise to prominence by just being good, not by offering incentives. When people want to find useful information, they want a search engine that will return quality results. They don’t want one that will return inferior results and offer something else of a little value. I might like the perk, but if I want information then I want the information I’m looking for.

MSN Live Search may be using the incentives program to boost its revenues. If that’s the case and it works then it could be a useful business model. But they won’t buy my loyalty.

For instance, Sarah Palin knows her target market and what it takes to win their hearts. You must write your SEO content so that it reaches your target audience. Here are Sarah Palin’s talking points:

1. Be “folksy” - You don’t have to be Bob Dylan to create a folk artist identity. Just speak in the language of your audience. Do they say “betcha” and “darn”? Maybe you should too.
2. Smile for the camera - Like that old Steely Dan tune, “Peg”:
   

   I’ve seen your picture
   Your name in lights above it
   This is your big debut
   It’s like a dream come true
   So won’t you smile for the camera
   I know they’re gonna love it (Peg)

   When you smile for the camera in SEO, you are simply showing your best side. Keep it positive and let them see your light shine.

3. Identify with your target audience - Speak directly to your target market. Make them identify with you.
4. Play to your strengths - Instead of trying to impress, stay within your element. Sarah Palin made sure not to get out of her comfort zone. That could lead to embarrassment.
5. Support your team and team leaders - When Sarah Palin speaks, she makes sure she supports her candidate, John McCain. If you have partners and affiliates, use them to your advantage by speaking positively about them. Too much talk on your differences can spoil the party.

Sarah Palin’s talking points can teach you something about good search engine optimization, if you are listening. Keep it simple and keep it real.

Before answering that question, let’s examine what each is supposed to do. Your meta tags define important elements of your page. The title tag appears in the top left corner of your site visitor’s web browser and is also the top line in the search engine listing. Your description tag is used by search engines to give a summary of your page in the SERP and appears right below the clickable title. The keyword tag simply defines specific keywords that appear on your page so that search engines can narrow down the scope of the page in their listings, but not all search engines put equal weight on the keyword tag because it has been misused by spammers and uneducated SEOs in the past.

The alt tag is a single tag that is used for your photos. Without the alt tag, search engines have no way to know what your photos are about because they can’t scan photos. This is true of any image. Alt tags define what they are for the search engines.

So which is more important?

I think that depends on whether you are using images are not (and you should). If so, then the importance is really equal. It might actually even be tilted slightly toward your title and description tags, although the keyword being included in the meta tag category tilts the importance back down for the meta tags. It is the least important of the three.

I highly recommend that you include all your meta tags on every page of your website and alt tags for every image. You’ll have a better chance of ranking for the keywords you want to rank for.

Many a webmaster have spent hours working on their website only to see it go live and get an e-mail weeks down the road saying that something on the site isn’t viewable or “looks funny.” When the webmaster goes up to take a look they don’t see anything but a pretty site. This is caused usually by one very common mistake that new web designers make. They don’t cross check their work with other browsers.

There are several browsers on the market that are popular enough that you should ensure your website can be viewed the way you want it to be seen by site visitors. Here is a list that I’d start with:

• Internet Explorer
• Mozilla Firefox
• Safari
• Opera
• Flock
• Google Chrome

There are several more browsers out there, but these are the main ones you should concern yourself with. Google Chrome is the latest. You should make sure that your website is viewable for the latest edition of each browser plus the previous edition. Most text editors will allow you to program several browsers into their preview feature to allow you to see what your site visitors will see when viewing your site with that browser. It’s a simple check that you can implement and ensure that your site is viewable by the most people possible.

Remember the KISS principle? Keep It Simple, and I won’t call you Stupid. But it’s a simple little thought process that you can use to help you stay on track where SEO is concerned. Don’t try to make it difficult.

SEO is about keyword and link management. Most of what you need to know is wrapped up in how you build keyword structures into your on-page content and how you structure your links, both internally and from off of your site. Of course, you can’t control every inbound link you get, but you can control some of them and by focusing on the things that you can control, you can influence the things that you can’t.

Instead of focusing on pretty web designs, thousands of dollars in sleek new interfaces, Web 2.0 cool thingamajiggies, and paid link schemes, how about focusing on things that are proven and time-tested? Keep it simple. Otherwise, you’ll fail in the school of hard knocks.

Why is that, you ask?

Spam sites are notorious for registering short term. Google has figured that spammers will register a site for a year then abandon the site because they want to avoid detection. Therefore, to combat spam, Google has added to algorithmic formula, a website’s registration term.

If your site is an older site and you are still registering your domain from year to year then you can increase your search trust factor overnight just by registering your domain for 10 years. At just $10 per year, you can register your domain for 10 years and not have to worry about it again. If your site has been operational for three years or longer then there is a strong chance that you are intending to stay in business. You might as well prove it by registering the domain for a longer period of time.

There is a growing interest within the online community, particularly bloggers, for a newish article directory by the name of Qassia. This directory is a little different. To start with, every article you submit has dofollow links from within the directory itself and there is no limit to how many articles you submit, or which page you want to use as your backlink.

Where Qassia is a little different is in the style of article they recommend - or rather, don’t recommend. They understand the power of SEO so their primary interest is to provide a vehicle for article submission that will provide at least one guaranteed link.

They will rarely reject an article except for certain taboo areas. However, articles that are pure promotional material, whilst not rejected, won’t offer of a lot of long term potential. Helpful articles is the recommendation and the writing style, imagine your telling a friend is the advice.

Qassia is not for everyone. Is does offer some valuable benefits in the way of back links and perhaps a trickle of traffic? Back links are back links and everyone helps in the overall strength

While there has been mention around the forums, the conversation has been fairly light. As with all updates there are winners and losers with the losers generally having the most to say. Not this time. Even the losers are shrugging their shoulders and getting on with life. It may be a sign that many website owners have finally woken up to the fact that Page Rank has little to do with their long term search engine optimization strategy - what counts is where you appear in the search results and how much traffic you receive.

In fact, over the last couple of days there has been more talk focused on Yahoo!’s search results update than on Page Rank. It makes sense since results are the primary focus of any optimization campaign.

Hopefully we are starting to see a maturing of the online world and a realization that stats like Page Rank are no longer relevant. SEO will always produce results that fluctuate as websites compete for narrow search results.

Microsoft Office makes it quite easy to include SEO related meta information such as title, category, keywords and a description of sorts.

To include the right information, access the Document Properties section. There you will find areas where you can include the documents author; document title; subject; keywords; category; and comments.

When filling in these details, think about putting in relevant information. The document title should be keyword related. Be precise with the keywords and don’t stuff. Match the category to either the keywords or a category from your website. You can treat the comments section in a similar way to the meta description tag, sell the document.

Save the document with an appropriate name, remembering to include keywords where appropriate. If you publish documents to the web on a regular basis then it makes sense to optimize those using good SEO principles. This means your documents will be found and indexed by the search engines.

The biggest barrier to employing an SEO expert is not cost. It is distrust. Cost then comes a close second. If you stop and think about it for a moment, how much money would you hand over for what is essentially a marketing campaign if your told the results may take a month or three too appear? It would take some convincing for most people, and it is understandable.

You can start to see results a lot earlier if you do incorporate a pay-per-click campaign, but of course that requires a larger budget to begin with.

What is important is that any search engine optimization campaign begins from very early in the businesses development. The older a business is the harder and more expensive it can cost. However, compare traditional offline marketing against search engine optimization and over time, SEO comes out well in front.

A newspaper or magazine ad can cost up to $2000 for a single day. Settle for a much smaller ad at $300/$400 and multiply by that by say 20 days you run the ad each month. That’s a tidy $6000. Believe me, you can run a good SEO campaign, a business blog and a PPC program for that sum, and probably have some lunch money left over as well.

It is all about simple math – the numbers tell the story. If you are current selling an item worth $100 each day, what would it be worth to sell 10, 20 or 50 or more? If you run on a margin of 20%, which is a small margin, being able to sell 50 per day would generate a profit of $1000 per day. Can you now afford to spend $200 per day to achieve that - you would still be left with $800 per day?

Sometimes, whilst the whole prospect looks daunting, and you may have to pay more than you receive initially, a good optimization campaign with some targeted PPC advertising can over time turn your business into a highly profitable enterprise. Unfortunately, whilst we can deliver the customers, it is your service and the product quality that will ensure your ongoing success.

Can you afford search engine optimization for your business? The question should be - Can you afford not to?

Take the following quote for example:

The key to SEO: selecting 50 to 100 key words most relevant to your products, services and target audience. The more those words appear on your Web pages (within reason), the higher up the stack your site will tend to appear

“The more those words appear on your web pages”. Hmm, by that logic, I should be able to fill my page with keywords and I will rise to the top? Oh, of course, I forgot the ‘within reason’. While the intent is not meant to be harmful, statements like those above can lead the unwary into a lot of trouble. The following quote from the end of the article sounds good too.

Simply ask your site host to attach meta tags–hidden programming code easily read by search engines–that include your top 20 keywords in order of importance to your business. The tags will drive traffic to your site when people search those keywords. Create a greeting that says something like “This site is under construction, but we will be up and running shortly.”

Google will ignore the meta keyword list, this statement doesn’t tell the full story, for example, the description tag.

There is no talk of keywords or any of the other areas of search engine optimization that need addressing. The article itself is not too bad when it comes to general advice for setting up a new web business. It just goes too far in the wrong direction and hardly ever goes in the right direction.

SEO is a complex business so if you’re not in it, it is almost impossible to write about it. I refer to my opening paragraph.

Called “In Quotes”, it will allow users to pull quotes based on keywords entered. At present, it is limited to politics (what isn’t) but if released to the broader content available it will help content creation a lot easier. Imagine being able to enter a keyword and receive a pile of links to individuals who have used that keyword. You should never be stuck for content ideas anymore - or references to support or argue your case.

Not only will you be able to quote the words of others, the quotes themselves should be keyword rich further reinforcing the search engine optimization elements on your pages.

Like all things Google Lab related, it is in its infancy and there is no guarantee it will ever move beyond the Lab. It is also prone to errors at present as with all new experimental technologies. Give it a try, if you are into politics, and see if you can find some reliable quotes related to your keywords.

What these individuals do is change the business information so it promotes their own affiliate sites. Finding unclaimed businesses these days is not terribly hard either. Mike Blumenthal on his blog he reported:

The spammers, using the end user edit tools, would change the phone number to another local number, change the location of the business slightly and then proceed to add a category, the URL and ultimately the name of the business. Apparently the small move in location convinced Google’s system that all subsequent changes were legitimate. The listing would retain the ranking and reviews of the actual business but redirect to a Canadian Florist fulfillment house via the affiliate’s website.

If you have a local business then be sure to claim it. The value in terms of traffic varies, however the harm in terms of reputation could be damaging. Trying to undo a hijacked site is not all that easy either so do yourself a favor and claim it quick - before someone else does.

Is a tag cloud a ’search result’ page is one of the first questions to be asked. It is probably a line ball call, however, Google does seem to be indexing and ranking these tag cloud pages so they are probably not considered ’search results’ pages at present - the future, who knows.

I don’t know if these pages actually offer any benefit to a user. I would certainly prefer a user to land on a page that was more relevant to their needs than a simple tag cloud. From an SEO perspective, perhaps a noindex tag could be considered.

My second question relates to internal links. Google have often stated that any more than 100 links from a page leaves that page questionable. It certainly heavily dilutes any possible link juice if the page is indexed and ranked. Larger sites can have over 1000 pages and a tag cloud could link to those pages using more than one tag - that is a lot of links leaving the one page.

For blog users, particularly those using WordPress, a sitemap generator may serve a more useful purpose for the user, and to prevent any search engine optimization pain, each page of a sitemap can have a limited number of links.

A tag cloud page may look good, however it does nothing for the visitor, except perhaps confuse them; they enter a search term expecting results only to land on a page of tags, it doesn’t look good from a business perspective. Tag clouds could almost fit into the gimmick class, their benefit is minimal if at all, so unless you really know what you are doing, there are far more important SEO and content related task that doing first.

You would have to wonder if an acquisition of AOL would really help Yahoo! at this stage of their business cycle. They are on the back foot when it comes to acquiring search market share and one would have thought that concentration in that area would be more appropriate.

Yahoo!’s biggest problem to date has been it’s inability to market itself has a viable search alternative. Relevant search results, accurate indexing of content and a friendlier face are needed if Yahoo! is ever going to match it with Google.

Buying out AOL will not do a lot for Yahoo!’s search bottom line. It may bring some peace to boardroom, but then a new broom could do that as well.

Yahoo! has a good base of dedicated users. In fact the demographic of Yahoo! users has enabled many SEO advocates to optimize suitable sites specifically for Yahoo! rather Google. Yahoo! should be capitalizing and developing, then expanding that existing base. If the purchase of AOL can help in that area then an acquisition may be valid - I doubt that AOL can deliver anything that Yahoo! couldn’t do through other means. Still, it makes for interesting discussions in many forums.