The SEO News Blog from Pat Marcello

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Today, I was over at Digital Point, checking out what was going on and there’s a big discussion of a page rank update. People are complaining that their page ranks went up or down for no apparent reason, and it’s freaking them out.

But you know, … Does it really matter?

Here’s what matters: Your site showing up in the results pages. That’s what matters.

I’ve said this before: Page rank is a way for Google to play with your head.

If you have PR6, Google decides it hates paid linking and BOOM! PR0. Happened last year.

If you have a PR3, it’s better than a PR2… why? You have no more listings today than you did yesterday. Who cares?

What you should watch and care about are these things: continue reading »

Linking isn’t dead, though some think it’s not as important as it once was. Not true! Search engines consider that links pointing back to your website from other sites are “votes” for your site. They’re links from new content you’re putting out on the Web, they’re links coming from quality directories, and they’re links coming from people just thinking, “Hey, cool blog,” and linking back to you naturally.

Of all the types of links coming back to your site, the last kind is what search engines love best.

The links that aren’t as effective as they once were (though they probably still carry some weight) are reciprocal links, as in “I link to you, you link to me.” Just a couple of short years ago, this was great to do and webmasters were busy sending letters to sites in their niche trying to get all the reciprocal backlinks they could.

So, that’s no longer an option. If you want great search rankings, it’s OK to do some of this, but getting that natural “Oh, WOW!” link is the best.

How do you get them? continue reading »

I’ve been saying this for a long time: Tried and true methods of SEO are eternal. Really. If you’re doing the most important things for good ranking, you’ll find that they’re easy to implement and really, the most important things you can do.

Oh sure, there are little tricks popping up all the time. And the black hat stuff, well… it just doesn’t last.

Here’s a post at Search Engine Land that proves my belief: http://searchengineland.com/search-ranking-factors-shows-how-little-seo-has-changed-24363

Anchor text is primary. You need to have good anchor text for the links pointing back to your site. This will be a keyword phrase, and you should vary the text often. A whole bunch of links pointing back to your fishing blog that say “bass fishing” and nothing else is a dead giveaway that you’re doing most of the posting of those links yourself. Google wants to see “natural,” and want to see other people posting links back to your site, too. They won’t be using the same anchor text all the time.

Keywords in your title tag are just common sense. You need to use your most important keyword up front for the sake of prominence. And you should use your title tag to sell the click on Google.

Link popularity: How many links are pointing back to your site? This is very important to search. The more links back, the more “popular” the search engines will think your site is with the general Web population.

Diversity of Linking Domains: All of your backlinks shouldn’t be from one site. So, for example, not all of your article backlinks should come from Ezine Articles, though it’s a very good place to start.

Keyword in Root Domain: Well… This blog is a cardinal sin. Of course, I started it way back in 2005 when I didn’t even fully understand what SEO was. Always use your main keyword in your root domain. Really important.

And that’s it. I mean, those are the basics that SEOs from all over the Internet voted as the most important elements of SEO, and the factors didn’t change much from one year to another.

One element that was in last year’s survey was “Age of Domain,” which is still pretty important in the scheme of things. Google likes stability, and so, the older your domain, the better for SEO. For this reason alone I never changed this domain. I have almost 4 years riding on it.

The deal is this: If you’re not going to pursue SEO as a science, do these simple things. You’ll be amazed at how well they work alone. Oh, and add a good keyword-rich, readable META description, and you’ll be in better shape than if you used no SEO at all.

Do you know what the “Open Directory Project” is? If you don’t, and you’re interested in getting a really top notch backlink, you should. The directory belongs to Google.

DMOZ.org (AKA ODP) is an Internet Directory that is human edited, and the listing is free. And though it’s an awesome backlink to have, the listing is very difficult to acquire. In fact, one of the only ways that gives you an edge is to become a DMOZ editor. That means you have to select, describe and organize websites to increase the size of the directory, and it’s not easy to become an editor, either.

You have to apply. You have to select a few sites in the category you want to edit and supply descriptions for them. And you have to remain active. Any editor who hasn’t been active in four months will be expired. So, it’s not a “do it now and then” sort of thing.

So, what should you do?

Find the appropriate category for your site, submit, and keep your fingers crossed. You MIGHT get into the directory. However, it’s not certain. I entered Tellman’s Instant ADD Success site in there almost three years ago, and there is still no listing for that.

What’s the bottom line?

Don’t worry too much about getting a DMOZ listing. It’s great to have, but not critical. I’d still submit my site, but make perfectly sure that I’m in the correct category and that my site is quality enough to add. Who knows? You could get lucky and some smart editor will be happy to enter your site.

But don’t hold your breath.

And don’t try to get crappy AdSense sites, squeeze pages, or other sites into the directory that don’t contain good, solid content. That’s just bogging the editors down and not providing good content for the Web. Your site will probably never be listed, anyway. Use good judgment when submitting and follow the instructions carefully. Then, you at least have a fighting chance.

So, a friend of mine told me to try out Market Samurai, and gave me the link: http://www.marketsamurai.com/

Well, let me tell you, it’s a very powerful SEO tool, indeed. You can try it free for 40 days. After that it’s $149, which is pretty reasonable, and I’ll tell you why…

You can do some pretty intensive keyword research, which is cool, but really not better than SEOBook.com, at least in my opinion. SEOBook is free, so that’s not what would attract me at all.

But you get some pretty interesting and dynamic stats on your competition. I liked this very much, but it put me in mind of another program I have — WebCEO. But that cost me like $249 for the full version. Yet, it has reporting capability, so if you have SEO clients, that’s pretty cool, and I’ve used it quite a lot.

What Market Samurai has that WebCEO doesn’t is an ability to find content from all over the Web that includes your keyword. I searched for “how to blog,” a pretty generic term, not long-tail at all, but just messing with this software, right? So, it comes back with 10 Google blog articles, 9 Technorati items, 10 Videos on Google, 10 on Scribd, and 50 on Yahoo Answers, among other sites.

Now, this is cool. I can go and comment on the blogs that are worth looking at because Marketing Samurai also gives me the down and dirty SEO — page rank, age, backlinks and more. Very, very cool. I’m liking this more and more, right?

So, then I got to the “Promotion” tab and I can find backlinks! It checks Web 2.0 sites, Google sites, and even forums, and it analyzes them, as well. I don’t have to waste my time going to pages that don’t have much clout, and you know how important backlinks are to SEO, right? Very cool.

But in the future, Market Samurai will allow you to publish articles using the software, show you how to monetize your keywords, and even help with AdWords campaigns.

I’m liking it a LOT, and think that when my 40 day trial is up, I’ll be $149 poorer, but a whole lot richer!

Check it out: http://marketsamurai.com

Sweet.