The SEO News Blog from Pat Marcello

Way back in the Stone Age of  SEO (like in 2006), linking was the potentate of the country, “IWPR,” or “I Want Page Rank.” It didn’t much matter where the links came from. You could buy them or sell them, add them to a gazillion directories, or trade with other folks in your niche in link exchanges. It really didn’t matter much where they came from, as long as you and the site linking to you were in the same biz.

Then came 2008 when Google cracked down on linking. No longer was it a good idea to either buy or sell links, to add your link to a non-human edited directory, or to exchange links with all your pals in a forum.

Linking became less important, but don’t get me wrong…

It will still boost your rankings. Google, our 600-pound search gorilla in the room, says that it wants linking to occur “naturally,” as in someone comes to your site, likes the content, and adds a link to it from their own website. You don’t ask, pay, or even try to get the link, it just happens naturally because YOUR content is just that awesome.

We know that those kinds of links are gold. They are one-way, meaning you don’t link back to their site, and the more of this type link you have, the better for your search engine optimization. Google will raise your page rank because of your one-way links from reputable sites and directories, and they’ll place your page higher in the SERPs (search engine results pages), too.

So, how do you get more people to link to you?

Well… social links are important, so make it easy for people to link to you from their social accounts at Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, to Tweet your posts. When folks can just push a button and do something, they’re much more likely to do it. You’ll notice that I have several different types of buttons on my blog to help you to add my posts to many different Web 2.0 sites. (So, please do! )

Another way to have your stuff linked to is by making it good, solid content that people can learn from. I have different types of posts here, but each week, I try to post more information than chatter. I have to admit that I’ve been chattering for a couple of weeks here, mea culpa. That was because I was so busy with the ListBuilding Club launch that I had minimal time for much else. However, if you go back into my archive, you should be able to find more information than chatter. That’s important.

Folks want information, and they want a good time. If you can be funny while providing information, all the better. Who doesn’t need a good laugh these days?

Be sure (and I’ve already mentioned this) that you stick to your topic. Wandering off about your vacation is OK, if you do it once a year or so, but generally, if you have a blog about Depression glass, you should write about Depression glass and not much else. People who read your blog come to read about Depression glass, not about the latest marketing promo going around.

That’s really all you have to do. Encourage linking, and make it easy for people. Folks who enjoy what you’re providing for them will do it naturally because it adds value to their audience or their list.  And that’s exactly what Google wants. Use your time to create good, linkable content and forget actively searching for link opportunities and I’ll betcha that the great content will win out every time.

When I tell people to do that, I can usually hear the gears turning in their brain… EVERY DAY!?!

Well… yeah. Every single day.

The more you blog, the more subscribers you’ll get, the more traction you’ll have with the search engines and the benefits are HUGE.  That’s to get your blog started. After you’ve built an audience, you can cut back to three times a week and then, maybe once a week. It’s all in what your niche is and what your readers expect from you. But here’s the deal…

If you blog once a month or even once a week or you’re inconsistent with your posts, you’re training an audience to ignore you. People want fresh content, and if they like what you provide in your blog, they’ll come back regularly to read your stuff, if YOU are regular about getting it up there.

In terms of search engines, pages equal page rank. Since each post you make has its own separate page, you’re adding pages to your site. (This isn’t to confuse you with the “Page” feature in WordPress. Those are pages, too, but they’re more like static information, like “About,” calendars, and such. Posts are continually updating content.) Plus, you’re updating content often, and the spiders just eat that up.

So, how can you post every day and not feel like a gerbil on a constantly spinning wheel?

Simple.

Make videos. They’re easy to do. You can make them with Flip Cams, Camcorders, or cheap old webcams like mine and put them up on YouTube or Seesmic and then, just embed them in your blog. They can teach people something or you can just talk into the camera. Have you checked out “Dear Tellman” lately? All video.

Make voice recordings and post those to your blog. Podcasting blogs are great, and if you’ve ever been to Stephen Pierce’s blog DTAlpha Talkback, you’ll see how easy they can be to do. His stuff is killer! But then, he’s Stephen Pierce, right?

You don’t have to write every day.

But you can get people to write for you. Hire folks at Elance.com and have them write for a small fee.

Or, here’s one I like a lot… get guest bloggers. You don’t have to pay for them, and it’s a win-win situation. They get exposure on a different venue and YOU get a blog post. Sweet! You link to their site from your blog and the guest blogger has a backlink, too. Nice! Plus, their working with a new audience to get readers for their own blogs. It’s great!

You don’t have to make videos, either. You can grab videos from YouTube or another directory and just post them.

The caveats are:

1. Be sure that the content is is consistently about the niche your blog lives in. Don’t have a fishing buddy post something about fishing to your Internet marketing blog. Bad, bad, bad.

2. Don’t use other people’s stuff ALL the time. Just now and then to take the load off. People are coming to your blog to learn about YOU and what you have to say. Don’t always be leaning on others.

3. Mix things up. Unless you’re going to have a pure video blog or a pure podcast blog, then try adding different types of content at reasonable intervals. You’ll notice that most of my posts are written because well… I’m a writer. But I do add videos now and again. When I’m really busy, those are a godsend.

So, see? When you think of blogging every day in those terms… it’s not so overwhelming, is it?

The question that gets asked most by new Internet marketers is, “What niche should I be in?” I think. They have ideas about what they’d like to do, but are concerned about whether or not it will be a “good” niche, and rightly so. Selling clothes for racoons probably isn’t a great idea.

What to do?

Research.

The first thing to do is to think about what you really like to do and what you can work on for hours and hours without becoming tired or bored. What’s your passion? That’s really important. If your heart isn’t in it, guess what, neither will your mind be.

So, your first step is to sit down and to make a list of things you really enjoy doing, no matter what those things might be. It’s amazing that there are markets online for some things you’d think will never sell. And then again, things you think are a sure fit might totally suck. Or, they might be seasonal. Or, they might be so over.

Once you have your list, take your search for a niche over to http://SEOBook.com. Plug each word into the search bar and see how many searches a day are happening in Google. If you find that 3,000 to 10,000 searches are being performed each month, you’re on the right track. But that’s just the first step.

Move over to the column that says “G Trends,” and see whether the trend for whatever you’re searching is rising, falling or consistent. Rising and consistent is good. Falling isn’t.

Then, move over again to “Google TE” and see how much people are playing for clicks at Google AdWords. Anything over $1 is promising.  Anything under that is iffy.

So, there are some general rules of thumb. SEOBook, also has a great blog. Peter D, who  wrote “How to Spot Keyword Trends,”  pulls Twitter into the mix, and some other factors that you can track to decide on a good niche to be in.

The whole idea is… do it! Why waste a lot of time working on things that nobody is interested in? You’ll lose time and money chasing something that just won’t work.

Do you love social media as much as I do? I mean, you have to know I enjoy Twitter. I write about it often enough. But I also love Ning, where I have set up various sites, HubPages, and MyBlogLog, just to name a few. Why do I love them? Primarily because to me, they’re the FUN part of the Web. The friend making, and content adding and finding out what people like instead of just what search bots find interesting is really important to me, and I love it.

You may love it, too. Or, you may be one of those Luddite types who see social media as a waste of time. I got that comment about Twitter once. The person who commented on one of my status updates about Twitter said that it was nothing more than a time waster.

Duh.

I agree that playing around with social media CAN be a time sink, but not if you’re doing it properly.

Everyone who wants to be noticed online needs to remember something very, very important… it’s ALL about the keywords. The more you use keywords associated with your niche, whether that niche be ROI- or personal-centric, the more people will find you online. It’s just that simple.

Go to a keyword discovery tool like SEOBook or WordTracker and do some frickin’ research, dammit! People usually skip this step and don’t even realize how vitally important to online success using the right keywords in everything you do is. They think it’s boring. Or, they think it’s hard. But it’s not! And worst, they may think they don’t have to do it at all. That’s really dopey thinking.

If you don’t use the right keywords in everything you do, you’re destined to be just another 1 of the 8 gazillion pages online and NOBODY will ever find you. You’re a cyber-ghost. POOF!

So, find the keywords that apply to your niche and use them in every social site you use. Eventually, the search engines will put it all together and say, hey! This guy is a writer or hey! This gal is a super-smart SEO or whatever…

Otherwise, get out the sheet… You’re just another grain of sand in the Sahara.

Wow! I just found an incredibly awesome and potentially valuable site today called “eKstreme.com” that has a whole section of SEO tools.

One of them is called, “What’s the Buzz?” and when you a keyword into the search box, it comes back with:

• popularity of the term on Technorati
• a Google Trends report
• blog posts tagged with the term
• blog posts with the term in their titles
• bookmarks for the term.

Just for the heck of it, I typed in “Twitter,” and was amazed to find that the popularity at Technorati has dipped dramatically over the past month. Not as many posts about Twitter as there once was.

Yet Google Trends says it’s more popular than ever.  But here’s news… it’s most popular in Ireland! Who knew?

Anyway, this is a quick and easy way to figure out whether there’s any interest in a niche, or just a good way to get more information from all the blog posts this returns. And if you read my blog, you’ll know it’s also a great way to get ideas about what to write.

Cool,  non?

What happens in an Internet marketer’s life when he doesn’t know what to do? I mean, what content can you create that will sell like hotcakes? What do people want to learn more about? And how do you find out?

Simple, run a survey or what Alex Mandossian calls an “Ask” campaign.

There are many ways to do this, and it really depends on the kind of survey you want to use to get the information. There are “fill in the blank” surveys and there are voting polls, right?

If you’re creating a new course, then the “fill in the blank” method is usually what works best. “What’s your most burning question about…” whatever it is you’re interested in promoting in your niche. But before you even get to that point, you probably want to take a poll.

MicroPoll is great for this. It’s a free service, and you can run a bunch of polls on your site for nada. You tell it what the topics are and it creates a radio-button widget for you where people can vote for their favorite topic.

Once you know what their favorite topic is, then you run the content survey. You can use services like ASK Database, Survey Monkey, or Survey Gizmo. These are all great for that type of campaign. The last two resources are free, ASK Database is not.

But what if you want to run a campaign that is more social? Then, you want User Voice, which gives you buttons that look much like Digg buttons for your site.

There are also many other ways to do this, and some of them involve installations. But for the simplest way to find out what your audience wants… these resources truly rock!

SEO is a huge consideration in everything you do for your business. Using a blog? Obviously, SEO is important. Creating a squeeze page? SEO… Writing a sales letter… SEO… Twitter… SEO. Everything you do online is about you and your keywords.

And yes, even Twitter.

I’m all about blogging and SEO and people are beginning to know that because of all the stuff I have out there in regard to blogging and SEO. As a joke, I bought the domain BlogQueenoftheUniverse.com, which redirects to this blog. It was a joke, and my friends thought it was pretty funny. But…

I actually saw someone refer to me that way on Twitter the other day. How cool is that? I obviously know that I’m NOT the be all and end all of blogging. Nobody is, but becoming a presence and “branding” yourself as one thing or another is a huge part of making yourself successful.

So, who do you want to be? What’s your niche? Are you the “Hunting King?” or how about “The JV Queen,” like Gina Gaudio-Graves? Or the “Niche Prof,” like Ron Capps? Try to position yourself as the expert in whatever field you want to conquer and then, back it up.

If I knew nothing about blogging or SEO, it would be stupid for me to try and be the queen of those fields. People would guffaw, and I’m certain that the people who DO know more than me in those areas most certainly are already.

But I don’t care.

Those aren’t the people I’m trying to impress and help along the way. My target audience are new bloggers and people who are new to SEO and this whole Internet marketing world. To them, I am the Blogging Queen of the Universe because I totally know a LOT! Certainly not everything, but enough that I do seem like an expert to people learning this whole confusing world of IM.

So, who are you? Who’s your target audience and who do you want to be to them? That’s what you should be striving to establish. Learn all you can about your niche topic and then, use the appropriate keywords surrounding that area in everything you do.

You’ll be amazed at how people respond to your expertise. It won’t happen overnight. I’ve been at this 5+ years and only now are people starting to know who I am and what I do, and it’s pretty sweet. I love working with folks, and so coming to them with some credibility is very, very important. I never want to disappoint them — evah.

Wow! We just gave a Ferrari computer monitor away to one of our ListBuilding Club members. He joined the Easter JVGiveaway and got like more than 1,000 people added to his list. That’s hot! Plus, he sold $1,500 in products.

Are giveaways worth messing with?

Absolutely! I had a product in the Easter JV Giveaway myself, and they have worked pretty well for  me. You get a share of people who download your gift and then unsubscribe right away. Kind of cheesy, but people do it. And you get your share of people who give bad email addresses.  So, be sure not to give away your product until after the people have confirmed to be on your list.

But overall, I have to say that I’ve had a lot of success with building my list through giveaways.  Try them, and if it makes sense, upgrade your membership so that your gift gets higher up in the list of gifts. Some of these have thousands of gifts in them.

Here are a couple that are just opening:

Jason James’ Greedy Giveaway : He’s looking for established marketers with lists. So, if you’re just starting and have no list, this one won’t be for you.

Reed Floren’s Free IM Giveaway

I did one with Reed last year that really paid off. Made money and got subscribers, so that was pretty cool.

But what if you’re not in the IM niche?

You can find giveaways in health & fitness and in relationships. Or, start your own! Jason James’ JV Giveaway Riches Software is killer.  Set up a giveaway for your niche if you can’t find one. They’re even better for the Giveaway owner. They build an enormous list, and with all the OTOs and upsells, you also make a pile of cash.

Giveaways are often bashed. People say that you get unresponsive lists from them, but I don’t find this to be the case. If you write to your list often, and make them aware of free stuff or give them lots of cool instruction, they’ll love you forever, regardless of where they came from.

Try a giveaway… They’re easy to do and they work like gangbusters.

If you read this blog, you know that I think what Jeff Johnson does is pretty interesting. I’ve watched scores of his videos, and have always planned to do something with all that knowledge. He’s a powerhouse of an affiliate marketer, and I need the time to find a niche where I can rule. Time is the enemy in my world. Anyway, I think Jeff is a pretty smart guy.

So, today, I got about 6 emails from him. (I think I’ve joined his list at least a dozen times.)

He was advertising this new SEO-friendly plugin for WordPress. Pat is all eyes.

I went over to his blog and read more about it. What it does is find plugins for you that are important to your blog’s SEO profile, and it tweaks the settings to match Jeff’s. I thought, hmm… I need to check this out, just because — SEO and all.

I downloaded it.

I let the blog install it and activate it from the zip file. No problems.

It was pretty happy with me because I already have most of the plugins Jeff recommends, but there were a couple, like the CAPTCHA code plugin for comments, which I had mused about but never installed, and the Google XML sitemaps. I had the plain Google Sitemaps, but hey… If Jeff wants to give me his settings, I’m going to download the right plugin, eh?

Once I had them all, I told Jeff’s plugin to change the settings, and bingo! I’m 99.96% optimized.

I had to go in and change the number of posts to show setting because he had it at 5. It left a bunch of white space at the bottom of the blog, so I changed it back to 10, hence my not perfect 100%. Oh well… Not changing my theme. Sorry.

The drawback?

Well… You have to agree to allow Jeff’s blog feed to sit at the top of your dashboard. To me, this isn’t a big deal. In fact, it’s kind of a blessing. I read his blog anyway, and now, I can come here and read from here. Nifty.

I’d recommend this plugin to you, especially if you don’t know what plugins or what settings to have to make your blog SEO-friendly. Two caveats…

First, you must be using WordPress 2.7. You should be anyway, but don’t use Jeff’s plugin if you don’t have it running now.

Second, not all plugins work with all themes. If you install it and something goes glitchy, just deactivate the plugin. Or worse, if your blog goes away, just rename your plugins folder and it will come back. then, delete the plugin and you should be back to normal again.

With those two things in mind, it’s a great free tool. I’d check it out: http://budurl.com/jeffj