As online marketers, the most important job we have is building our lists. To do that, the generally accepted tool is the squeeze page, which is nothing more than a headline, a few benefit-laden bullet points, and an optin box. Some squeeze pages might be fancier (as Frank Kern would say), and some are just really simple and still get the job done. But even if you have video, two optin boxes, and a really snazzy looking page, it’s still a squeeze page.
To search engines, it’s that proverbial sow’s ear.
Search engines live or die based on the quality of content it delivers. So, that’s what they’re most interested in seeing — good, quality content that enhances their users’ experience.
So, how can you turn your squeeze sow into an elegant purse? continue reading »
Anyone in search has heard about Google’s new technology that is supposed to put Google’s indexing into hyperdrive. It’s like taking Google to Starbucks for a double espresso, and it will make this very fast search engine even faster.
Who wants to complain about that?
Well… you might, depending on how quickly your pages load. If you have an e-commerce store that is graphics inundated, for example, you want to be sure that your images are compressed and sized to be as small as possible for a faster loading time. Google, it seems, will be taking your load time into consideration when evaluating your rankings in their search results.
Matt Cutts talked about the rollout here:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-caffeine-update/ if you want to check it out. What Matt says is that the rollout isn’t scheduled to happen until after the holidays, so you have some time to get your pages in order. Here are some sites you might be interested in using to evaluate the changes to be made: continue reading »
Here’s a video I made for Spider Language. It’s just one of the many videos in this 40-week course. If you want to learn natural SEO from the ground up… even if you have NO experience with search, this is the course for you. But let my video do the talking:
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.
I was over at SEO Book, reading Aaron Wall’s post from June 16, entitled “Expert SEO Testing: Usually Worthless,” and was surprised to learn that rel=”nofollow” no longer works. Matt Cutts, Google’s spokesperson, admitted that was true at the recent SMX Conference.
Page rank sculpting is the practice of adding “no follow” to links going to your overhead pages, like your privacy page, your terms of service, or other pages that you don’t want ranked in the search results. It used to be that if you had 10 units of page rank and each link on your page was worth 1, when you added “no follow” to 5 of those links, they would transfer their page rank to the remaining links, right? So, then, each of the bare links would be worth 2.
What Matt Cutts is telling everyone now is that “no follow” no longer transfers page rank to the bare links. So, basically, by using no follow, you’re merely wasting PR. The “no follow” links will be worth zero, but the bare links will still only be worth 1.
I should say, “Is,” because apparently, this has been true for about a year and nobody noticed.
Great.
If you’re using “no follow,” don’t run around trying to change the links back to bare links. It’s not worth the time and effort. Just understand that you don’t need to do that anymore. It’s a waste of time.
Why did Google decide to institute the practice in the first place? Basically, to stop blog comment spamming, and yet, it didn’t really stop anything, so it “no follow” means “bupkiss.” It’s like the keywords META tag. Another useless convention.
Put your time into more important things like developing good, unique content and solid keyword research. Those should always pay off. I say, “should,” because there’s just no accounting for the whim of the Google ghods.
Keep your eyes and ears open to what’s happening, and try not to get caught up in the fads or fancies. Nobody truly knows the algorithm but Google, and they’re changing it all the time. Even the few people who claim to know it probably have no 100% clear idea.
So many folks are unaware of how devastating a domain name change can be… if it’s not handled properly. The search robots will freak out when they go looking for your website or blog and POOF! It’s gone. (At least to them.)
There is a way to handle a domain name change so that it doesn’t affect your rankings, and it’s known as a “Mod Rewrite.” For example, if you change the permalink structure in your WordPress blog, the blog automatically writes a small file to explain to robots what happened and where they can find the content presently.
This concept isn’t an easy one, but I found a great description and “how to” today in the Search Engine Journal blog by Sherice Jacob, entitled appropriately, “How to Change Your Domain While Keeping Your Search Engine Ranking.” This article explains .htaccess and what you need to do to appease the spiders. Very good explanation that is bound to help you if you’re planning to take this step.
If you’re a regular reader, you know that I think Jeff Johnson is a pretty smart guy. He’s got some smooth tactics going with SEO, selling affiliate products from Amazon, and using blogs to run the whole shebang. I know. I’ve been through just about all of his free videos, and let me tell you… they’re KILLER.
But there are pieces missing. Jeff ascribes to the old Jimmy D. Brown adage: “Give them incomplete information,” apparently, and good advice that is. Jeff really knows how to whet your appetite for learning his systems. I wouldn’t say they’re for newbies, but…
I think that with his help, people could get this all together pretty quickly, even if they knew very little of Internet marketing and how it all fits. Don’t get me wrong. Jeff’s stuff is advanced strategies, but as a member of his Underground Lab, I’m sure anyone could pick it up and run with it.
Only problem… your price is right, but only for 1 month. It’s introduced to you at $4.95, but to continue monthly lessons it’s $47 a month.
Otherwise, thanks for the 4 stars. What could have made it a 5-Star product for you? Just wondering. Always looking to make things better.
We’re working behind the scenes to improve some things at Spider Language, so sign up now while the first month is so inexpensive. You’ll be glad you did!
One of the ways that SEOs stop page rank bleed from one page to another is by using the “no follow” tag in URLs.
For example, on your home page, it does you no good whatsoever to have search engine spiders follow links to your terms of service or privacy policy pages. Do you really want those ranked in Google? No. So, rather than allow your home page to distribute some of its page rank to those pages, you add a “no follow” tag to the URLs, like this:
This way, the spider sees the nofollow and stops right there and your home page PR is more concentrated. That means that important links to other pages in your site get greater benefit.
No follow is also used on websites to prevent spiders from following the links to other websites. For example, if you look at Wikipedia, all of the outbound links from there are “no follow” links. They pass no PR goodness on, and so, it prevents spammers from bothering with the site. Good idea, right?
Yes and no.
“No follow” also prevents comments on your blog. If you use the standard WordPress configuration, it makes every comment link no follow by default. You need a plugin like “Do Follow” to change that. I have “Do Follow” because I think that anyone who comments should get the benefit of that comment, and have good spam checkers in place so that I don’t get spammed too radically.
So, it’s up to you. My advice is to definitely use no follow tags for any pages on your home page that you don’t want indexed in the search engines, and to leave all others alone. Unless you get as big as Wikipedia, anyway.
Sounds weird, huh? Are you valid? Well, of course, I’m not talking about YOU, you… I’m talking about your web pages.
What is validation?
There are several places where you can go to have the code on your web page validated. The one I use, and the standard is http://validator.w3.org/
When you run your code through there, using your URL, via file upload, or by direct input, you’ll be amazed to find all the things that can make a spider stop or run.
Just for the heck of it, I ran http://EasyBlogTricks.com through and came back with 72 errors! Hmm… I might be fixing code this weekend.
Here are some of the issues:
there is no attribute “name”
there is no attribute “src”
there is no attribute “width”
there is no attribute “height”
And so on… I won’t bore you with all of them. But you can see how little things like leaving off a tag can make your HTML invalid. Crap. This is a mess!
And why is that important? Well… the cleaner your code is, the easier it is for the spiders to navigate. Still, it’s not critical. Search engines really care that you have good, unique content, and though they may not get through every bit of your page, they’re pretty smart. They can figure out what the page is about and index and rank it, anyway.
Yet, if you really want the spiders to crawl all the way to the bottom… Let’s say you have important stuff after all the messy code, then, you may want to rethink and retool. Use W3C to see what your errors are and whether or not they’re important enough to spend time fixing.
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