Archive for 'March, 2010'

Have you ever heard of the “first page of google ranking penalty”? Probably not – because I just made it up. I made it up to name a current trend that I’ve been seeing over and over again in regards to first page google rankings. I’m a professional linkbuilder and SEO, and in addition to WordPress work that’s what I do day in, and day out. People hire me to get ranked in google for their keywords – so I’m constantly watching search listings for a wide variety of keywords. In addition – I see a lot of web sites get on the first page of google (because I put them there) for the first time.

Google is smart. The algorithm is constantly changing to keep you from trying to “game the search engine”, or figure out the exact method to get perfect rankings every time. Google likes sites that naturally attain authority over time. If you do something that seems out of the ordinary, like get an unusually large amount of links in a short period of time, or add an unusually large amount of content to fast – it looks unnatural.

What I’ve noticed is that if you setup a web site properly, and start to build links – sometimes you can be surprised how fast you can make it to the first page of google results. It can be pretty easy at times to rank #8, #9, or #10 on the first page. But it never lasts. I’ve had half a dozen times recently where it only lasts anywhere from 3-10 days. Then it goes to the top of the second page of results.

SEO Scams

I want to talk a minute about what I call “SEO scammers”. These are the guys that claim to get you on the first page of google “fast”. They buy links, or build a few high PR links – or maybe some quick social media exposure. They can get you ranked on google’s first page of results….just long enough to get your money. Then, once you fall to the second page of results – they are long gone.

If you’re going to hire an SEO expert, the best advice I can give is to ask a lot of questions. How do they build the links? To they build them buy hand, or buy them? Do they comments on blogs? Submit to directories? Use Social Media? Submit to article directories and document repositories? Post links in forums? Can they help you get registered with search engines and setup an XML sitemap?

Sometimes (if you know enough) you can trick your “SEO expert” into inadvertently admitting they aren’t an expert at all. Have they researched your keywords? Can they tell you what your SEO competition is? Can they give you examples of how many searches per day/month your keywords bring in for broad, phrase, and exact match results? Can they give you an actionable list of items that need to be done to actually compete with and beat your competition on the first page of google?

Google’s Preventative Measure

Online authority is an ongoing and arduous task that never ends. It can take 3-6 months to get “consistently” ranked on the first page of google, and then regular work to maintain it. I think that what I call the “first page google ranking penalty” is really more Google’s own ‘preventative measure’ to ensure you can actually maintain a first page ranking. Now that google has switched to it’s new algorithm (caffeine) as of Jan 15, 2010 – the index is a little more “immediate”. Google likes to show you some of it’s latest and greatest results, but I think the algorithm also has a little followup script I like to call “15 seconds of fame”.

In other words, if you get enough authority to push you to the first page of google – you’ll get your 15 seconds of fame. But without supporting elements, your fame won’t last. So if have an article that gets 400 tweets, or 100 diggs, or you get a big pagerank link – you might make the first page of google. If it’s the first time you’ve been on the first page some time after a week you’ll get swatted down to the second page of results. I don’t think of this as a penalty, as much of a “holding period” – where google is waiting to see if your site is really growing (or not). If you continue to get organic links, quality traffic, and have new content released regularly – you stand a pretty good chance of getting on the first page of google in a permanent spot. If your online authority isn’t naturally growing – odds are you “online fame” will fall from the second page of results right back into search engine obscurity.

JTPratt is available for hire as an Online Marketing Consultant and SEO.

A lot of people overlook the fact that you can can use video to get backlinks, online authority and brand exposure online. I have to admin, I haven’t used it nearly as much as I could have over the years – but I have used it enough for myself and for my clients to know that it shouldn’t be ignored, and should be part of every online marketing plan.

Where do I Get the Video From?

I think this is the one problem holding most people back from online marketing with Video promotion. A lot of people think that the video has to be of “you”. If you have a web cam – or flip video, or even a decent cell phone or digital camera (or camcorder) you can can easily make a video of yourself or of something to use for promotion.

One way most people forget about is what we call a “screencast”. That’s where you record your computer screen while you’re talking about providing an audio commentary. This is one of the easiest ways to quickly made a video, and there are so many things you can record. Show “how to” do things in WordPress, various online marketing or backlink building techniques, or even how to use different features of your own web site. For one of my recent clients, I just did a walk-through of his web site in a video with an audio annotaion.

Most of use have been using Camtasia to do this for years, but there are many in-browser free screencasting tools now available.

Screencasting Tools (for free!):

ScreenToaster
Screencast-o-Matic
AVI Screen
CamStudio
Jing

Editing the Video?

People edit their video in all kinds of ways. Some people add background music, titles, and credits. I’d say that whether you’re putting together a video of someone speaking, or a screencast – the most important thing is that it’s branded properly. You can some type of quick intro title telling where it came from, and credits saying the same – or some people have constant lettering in the corner while it plays with the URL or your site prominently displayed. Whatever tools you’re using to create the video, if possible take every advantage to ensure it’s branded properly because it could be online for years. Especially if you share it through free video sharing sites, because then other sites will pickup and share the video as well.

Can you SEO an Video?

It doesn’t matter what your market or niche is, you can benefit from having a video out there. Some people have limited visions about their search listings. They concentrate on their web site coming up on the #1 position or first page of google (which is important). They forget about the other 9 slots on that page. Why allow your competitors to be listed there for your brand keyword? Get video and social media listings on there with your main company listing so you completely dominate the first page of results!

I also find that many people don’t understand that you can SEO a video. You can give it a great SEO title (which is often enough for rankings). I normally try to SEO my video title for both my main keywords, and my brand (as I would on the web site itself).

I did this when I created my Smorgasbord.net Amazon Kindle 2 Review. It worked pretty good too, because now when people google my domain name the video comes up right under my domain listing like this:

The goal was also to rank for searches for “amazon kindle 2 review”, and had I built more backlinks I would have come up for that keyword phrase as well. It’s funny how the weight of a domain plays in ranking, because often if make a video SEO title you can rank in google for your YouTube listing, but not your own blog or web site. That’s where video promotion can really come in handy. Most video sites also allow a short description, and sometimes categories and tags – which can help a lot. At YouTube if you put in your domain name in the description starting with “http://” it will automatically be linked! It’s a nofollow link, but so what – many search engines don’t even pay attention to that, and people DO click on URL’s! Some video sharing sites like YouTube allow you to edit the video and add annotations (and links) online, without editing software.

Where should I upload my Video?

Well, due to bandwidth, the last thing you probably want to do is upload it to your own web site. That’s why YouTube is so popular. You can upload the video on their bandwidth dime, and still embed it within your blog or web site. You might think that some of your video would also do well if you uploaded it to some of the other popular video sharing sites, like Vimeo, Break, DailyMotion, MetaCafe, etc.

I recommend using a free tool like TubeMogul.com. You can upload your video ONE TIME to tube mogul, and then slingshot it to all the video sites online (kind of like a ping.fm for video).

Here’s a screenshot when I uploaded the Amazon Kindle review video:

You can see where I added in the title, description, and tags. In this next screenshot – you can see where I sent to various video sites. The little yellow dot turns green when it gets successfully uploaded to each video site. You can see where you can even send the update to twitter and facebook!

Conclusion

The online world is constantly changing, and the days of just getting a static web site and getting ranked in search engines for that one site ARE OVER. If your web site or brand is going to use online marketing campaigns for the greatest amount of exposure possible – you need to take advantage of all forms of online promotion. That includes video promotion, social media marketing, press releases, linkbuilding, and more.

JTPratt is an Online Marketing expert, to learn more about his services and to hire him click here.

Bill field was the first Online Marketing Intern I hired last Fall. I’ve posted some updates from him, but things have been so busy this year I’ve not had a chance to fully do justice to all the hard work he’s put in since he started. I have some reviews he wrote of ebooks that you’ll see in the future, but since his internship ended yesterday – I wanted to take the time to talk about his accomplishments now.

As a WordPress Consultant and SEO, I’ve developed a unique 4 phase system that I use when working with clients to take them from where they’re at to online success. I decided to start this internship program last Fall as a test. I wanted to see if I could write my system out in a private web site for just the interns, and have them follow my directions to build out a new web site. They would start with an empty brand new domain with a default blank install of WordPress and nothing more – and the rest would be up to them. I was looking for people with a working knowledge of WordPress and basic understanding of online marketing.

These are the “phases” of my system:

Phase 1: Security and Indexing – This phase is what I call the “foundation”, because making sure your web site is secure and indexable by search engines is the foundation of all your online success. I would say that 98% of all 150 clients I had last year had insecure WordPress web sites, and had no idea how to make them indexable by search engines.

Phase 2: Competitive Analysis – Most “online marketers” do some basic keyword research, but most don’t understand the difference between phrase, broad, and exact match – or know how to find keywords with lots of search traffic, but low competition. I also take these keyword phrases and look at the top 10 results in google for each so I can break down what the makeup of their authority is, and create an actionable plan to compete with them on the first page of google.

Phase 3: On-Site SEO – I call this phase “erecting the house on the foundation”, because we take the keywords from phase 2 and put them in the right places on the web site. Without the right keywords in the right places, what chances do you stand at getting good search listings?

Phase 4: Linkbuilding and Authority – This is where the rubber meets the road. Once your web site is setup to be indexed with the right keywords, without traffic it’s useless. Who wants a brand new store filled with products and no customers? This phase is all about how to create a long lasting and ongoing plan for building traffic and online authority.

So what happened here is Bill worked my plan for 4 months, he had to resign a month early for personal reasons. I can only imagine what he would have done with that last month had he been able to stay! Bills assigned site was “Best Gifts For“.

These are his accomplishments:

“Best Gifts For“.

• 47 posts
• 10 pages
• 46 comments
• 439 visitors/mo
• 1,264 pageviews/mo
• 326 indexed pages in google
• 85 pages indexed in yahoo
• 21 pages indexed in bing
• 13 article directory submissions
• 110 directory submissions
• 50 blog comments per week
• 2 out of 3 assigned keywords on the top of the 2nd page of google
• 11,153 backlinks in Yahoo (and growing every day)

I think what he’s done is nothing short of amazing, but it only shows that the only limits online are your own abilities and the amount of time you put in. In the next post I’ll reveal a few of Bill’s backlink building secrets. In the future, I will be opening up my 4 Phase System to everyone (once all the documentation is complete). Signup to my mailing list below so you are notified of the launch when it’s ready.

I’m using my interns to create an entire Online Marketing Course using the exact same principles and techniques I use with small business and corporate clients every day. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, signup to my email list using the form below. I’m not going to spam you with crazy “magic bullet” and “list control” offers. I will only send you email every now and again about techniques and products I actually use (there’s a small handful), and later this year my Online Marketing Course when it’s available.

Anu is one of my Online Marketing Interns, and she’s been working hard on her assigned site for a few months now. There have been a lot of things going on here behind the scenes, so posts here to the blog have been few and far between. Everyone has been working hard though, and I wanted to post this update from Anu that she wrote last month:

It has been just a little over a month. There has been plenty to learn and lots to do.

In the time since my last update, I have covered Phase 2 and Phase 3 of JT’s internet marketing course.

Phase 2 covers Competitive Analysis. To give you an idea, the topics covered:

What is Competitive Analysis?, Keyword Research, Identifying the competition, competitive intelligence gathering and Competitive Analysis wrap up.

I always thought keyword research meant looking up Google keyword tool or any other, researching keywords in your niche, looking up a few well ranking sites in the same niche to see what they are doing and using those keywords.

Yes that’s the crux of it but what JT taught us to do was so much more.

The site I am working on is www.traveldestinationsreview.com. I used the keyword tool to pick up keywords that have more than 5000 but less than 100000 searches. I end up with 3 main keywords. I then picked the top ten sites for each keyword and entered their names in a spreadsheet. I created 3
spreadsheets for all three keywords.

I researched their alexa rank, google rank and SERP and noted them down. I also noted down the number of backlinks, the site’s urls, title, heading and description. It took considerable time to complete the research on 30 sites but what it helped me achieve was get a good insight into what the
competition is doing, what I can replicate and what I need to do to get a high SERP – SIMPLY, HOW TO BEAT THE COMPETITION. This is one step I know I am never going to compromise upon. I also bookmarked all the thirty sites in 3 different folders that I created in firefox. Additionally, it helped me see what the other sites are doing, how they are designed and laid out etc. Gave me quite a few ideas. An additional bonus that comes with all that research.

I then used www.semrush.com and few other similar sites to research these 30 sites further – the keywords they are ranking for, where they are getting their traffing from etc.

Next was Phase 3 – SEO – Optimizing your site for Search Engine Results. This is the phase I have enjoyed the most.

I did a lot of reading. JT was also generous enough to send me a few good ebooks on the topic and I am still going through them.

I did know how to set up the site with the blog title and install the all in one seo plug in, however JT went over in detail in the lessons how to set up the plug in, the settings to use and why. I also learnt how to optimize my site content and use the keywords wisely, the importance of h1, h2 and h3
headings.

Through all of Phase 2 and 3 I also designed my site and have a halfway decent looking site. Feel free to take a look and comment. I would love to know what you think. Right now the content is spare but come back to visit. It’s the result of all my learning here.

www.traveldestinationsreview.com

Through all of this JT has always been there to provide support and answer questions.

I am now in Phase 4 and writing content. I agonize more and write less. But that’s an update for another day.

Talk soon.

- Anu

I’m using my interns to create an entire Online Marketing Course using the exact same principles and techniques I use with small business and corporate clients every day. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, signup to my email list using the form below. I’m not going to spam you with crazy “magic bullet” and “list control” offers. I will only send you email every now and again about techniques and products I actually use (there’s a small handful), and later this year my Online Marketing Course when it’s available.