5 Steps To A Great SEO Campaign

The first step to consider is the niche you are in, and the products or services that you are promoting. You should come up with a list of potential keywords that your customers would use to find you on the web.

After that you could use the Google keyword search tool to analyze your list, checking the competitiveness, number of monthly searches and the strength of the competitors currently on page one.

A competitive market analysis is the next important step you should take. After you have your final keyword list, create a spreadsheet with all the keywords, and then list all the competitors from page one of Google.

You could use a program like SEO quake to collect some of the data that you will need, such as their page rank, number of indexed pages, inbound links, whether or not they have a site map and much more. This will tell you how difficult and how long of an SEO campaign you will be embarking on.

Next step should be the on page SEO factors of your website.

First and foremost is content, if you are not providing quality content that solves people's problems then your efforts will be in vain. Great content will keep your visitors coming back on their own which will greatly assist your SEO efforts.

Make sure all the on page dynamics such as header tags, meta tags, alt tags for images and HTML code is done correctly.

These are the simple things that improve your 'findability'. You also want to ensure that you have a proper site map created and submitted to the search engines, this will increase your chances of all your pages being properly indexed.

Number four is off page SEO strategies.

The biggest and most important overall here is back linking. Google views every back link your site has as a vote for your site from someone else. The best back links you can get are called one way links. One way links are where another website links to you without you having to link back. Good examples of this are article marketing, blog commenting and directory submissions.

Reciprocal linking is where you link out to website a and website a in turn links back to you. These are also good links but you should only focus on the ones targeted to your niche and those having a higher page rank than you. Good back linking takes time and effort, this cannot be accomplished over night.

You should also avoid any link scams, link farms or questionable linking strategies. If you have to stop and wonder if it's ok to do it then it probably isn't.

The last step that is very crucial to your SEO success is the overall promotion of your website. There are several ways of effectively promoting your products and services via the internet.

1) Video marketing
This can be promoted in conjunction with your website or separately for added exposure.

2) Email marketing
This allows you to keep track and communicate with your customers and potential customers.

3) Web 2.0
These are blogs, hub pages, wikis and such. Also a great source of quality back links for your site.

4) Article marketing
If done correctly this will establish you as an expert and help you to generate back links and additional traffic to your offers.

5) Local search marketing such as Yahoo local and Google places
If you have a business in the offline world you certainly want to use this method to promote your business. Google places for instance typically will come up first in the search results.

These are just a few of the strategies that you can use to begin a successful SEO and web promotion campaign. The most import step you will take is to take action. Everything you do should be with the intent of growing your business.

About the Author: Byron Cole Smith - Learn how to take your website to the top of all major search engines, contact Columbus SEO Services. Click here to see how Professional SEO Services can help you achieve the results you want.

Testimonial Trust (A Biggie)

E-books are quickly becoming a dime a dozen. If you would like to
make a profit with one of your e-books, you will need to set your
e-book apart from all the rest.  One of the easiest ways to do
this is through positive recommendations and reviews.  People are
more likely to buy a product, especially a new product, if it
comes highly rated and recommended.  If you would like to know
how product reviews and recommendations can help you, you are
urged to read on.  A number of helpful tips are outlined below.

As it was mentioned above, there are a number of different ways
that product reviews and recommendations can help you.  It was
also mentioned that e-books are becoming a dime a dozen.
Essentially, this means that there are so many e-books available
for sale; it is often difficult to make a sale.  With so much
competition it is hard for even with one of the greatest e-books
ever written.  Getting reviews or recommendations from your
previous customers, which are also referred to as testimonials,
may help increase your sales.  Positive testimonials help to
create a name for yourself; a good name.  They can also create a
sense of trust; trust that many consumers go searching for before
making an online purchase, even an e-book purchase.

Although it is important to know just how helpful customer
testimonials are and how they can help you, you may also be
wondering about getting them.  There are many e-book authors who
mistakenly believe that they have to sell their product first,
before receiving any customer testimonials or reviews.  This
isn?t the truth.  If you are looking to boost the appearance of
your e-book, through customer testimonials, you may want to think
about giving your e-book away in exchange for reviews.  It is a
known fact that many consumers love free products, even free
e-books. You will also find that many would be more than willing
to give your e-book a positive review, just for receiving it free
of charge.  You can often find these individuals on online forums.


Once you have a collection of customer testimonials, it is
important that you put them to good use.  In fact, you will want
to make sure that you use them to the best of your ability.  Not
only will you want to display your customer testimonials on your
webpage or your e-book sales page, but you will want to take it a
step further.  It may be a good idea to use customer quotes in a
press release or even in a newsletter that you send out to other
internet users.  To effectively help you increase your sales,
customer testimonials need to be seen and prominently displayed.


Speaking of being displayed, there are also a number of different
ways that you can have your customer testimonials displayed. The
most common form of customer testimonials, even for e-books, is
in printed format, like a small paragraph.  Of course, this is
okay to do this, but you may want to take it a step further.  If
it is at all possible, you may want to think about having your
customers give their testimonials in video format.  This is
relatively easy to do as many internet users have webcams.

If you are unable to do a video format, you will at least want to
include pictures with your written reviews or customer
testimonials.  Having a picture, even just a headshot, of the
person who gave the review, puts a face to it.  This is something
that many consumers search for. Although a picture really doesn?t
mean anything, it gives consumer a sense of trust, a feeling that
it is a real, legitimate review.

Customer testimonials are a great way to prove the quality your
e-book and even increase the chances of it selling.  One
important thing that you always need to remember is change.  You
never want to edit or change your customer testimonials without
permission. In fact, changing your customer?s testimonials may
land you hot water; hot water that may bring negative, unwanted
publicity to you and your e-book.

It isn?t really as hard as it sounds. Let?s get rid of all those
things that are hard to do by using our shopping cart software
Digital eCommerce Shopping Cart that makes it very easy for anyone to put
up their own professional eBook sales website.

Free Search Engine Traffic

If you would like to make money selling e-books, you must first
create yourself an e-book. After your e-book has been created,
you will then need to sell it.  Many e-book authors, when selling
their creations, use an e-book sales page.  An e-book sales page
is a page that outlines the e-book available for sale, as well as
its price.  Although an e-book sales page is a great way to
advertise your e-book it won?t help you get sales alone.  You
also need traffic.  If your e-book sale page isn?t seen, no one
will know that you have an e-book available for sale.

When it comes to generating traffic, to your e-book sales page,
you have a number of different options.  For the best success,
you are urged to take an ?organic,? approach.  An organic
approach is one that is considered all natural, versus ones that
are forced or made up.  An example of a non-organic marketing
approach is participating in a pay-per-click program.  One of the
most popular types of organic internet marketing approaches
involves the use of articles, namely distributing them to article
directories.  The use of an organic traffic increasing tactic,
like the use of articles, will not only help to increase your
traffic, but it will also keep you, your e-book, or your business
name in good standing. This is important because many online
sellers have started turning to back-hand marketing techniques.

As it was mentioned above, the best ways to use articles to
generate organic traffic is by distributing them to article
directories.  Article directories are websites that host a large
collection of articles.  In exchange for allowing an article
directory to display your article on their site free of charge,
you will be rewarded with a link. That link is often referred to
as a back-link.  If properly set up, readers who find your
articles in article directories will be able to make it to your
website.  If you choose the right link, they can be directed
right to your e-book sales page!  Essentially, this means that
you will not only increase your website traffic, but you may also
increase your e-book sales.

Although your best bet is to create articles and distribute them
to article directories, you may also want to think about
including content, or articles, on your own website.  Whether you
have a whole e-book sales site or even just one simple web page,
you can get a large amount of traffic from internet search
engines, but only if your site is optimized for them.  Search
engine optimization, which is often referred to as SEO,
encompasses a number of different things, but you may want to
focus on content, as it is one of the easiest methods.  You will
want to have content on your website; content that search engines
will pick up.

When writing articles, whether you plan on using them for your
own e-book sales page or article directories, you are urged to
examine programs that are known as keyword research tools.
Keyword research tool programs allow you to determine what
keywords or keyword phrases internet users are searching with. If
any of these keywords apply to the subject of your e-book, you
are urged to use them.  Using applicable keywords or keyword
phrases will not only generate organic traffic, but it may also
help to increase your sales, by brining in customers who are
interested in what you have to sell.

In short, articles, whether they are displayed on your own
e-books sales page or distributed to article directories, can
help you generate organic traffic.  As previously mentioned,
organic traffic is more likely to result in a high number of
e-book sales.  Organic traffic is all natural; therefore, website
visitors actually want to come to your e-book sales page, not
just because they are being paid to do so.

It isn?t really as hard as it sounds. Let?s get rid of all those
things that are hard to do by using our shopping cart software
Digital eCommerce Shopping Cart that makes it very easy for anyone to put
up their own professional eBook sales website.

Creating Linkworthy Content

Creating Linkworthy Content

Here are some tips on creating webpages that other website will want to link to—to save you from having to do loads of legwork requesting links.

Buying Links is Getting Expensive

The Google AdSense program (which pays publishers for placing contextual links on their websites) and automated spammy "can I buy a link on your site" emails have made virtually every important online publisher aware of the value of links.

In mid 2007 Google began editing toolbar PageRank scores and rankings for many sites that were selling links. It is getting harder and more expensive to buy your way to the top through link rentals.
At the same time, more and more people are writing online. Setting up a blog only takes a few minutes. There are hundreds or thousands of people talking about every topic imaginable, so if you create something remarkable and capture the attention of a few thought leaders who like it, you are going to get links. But how do you create content that people will like?

Passion = Market Knowledge = Links

One of the easiest (and most effective) ways to predict a future and to predict what people like is to immerse yourself in your topic. If you are passionate about a topic, know more about it than anyone else, and openly share information, then eventually people will notice and link to you. If you know what people are interested in, rather than asking them to link to what you have, create something that they would be interested in linking at. Express your world view and your bias in a way that matches their world view.

Become a Platform

Each of us is the most relevant thing in our own lives. It sounds selfish but it is true. If you promote other people they will be more likely to promote you. Popular bloggers search to see what people are saying about them. If you want someone's attention linking at them from a blog post on your site is an easy way to get them to notice you. This article about Paris Hilton explains how the concept works in the real world.

Though she hired a publicist to get her on Page 6 She never really talked about herself. She talked about other people. She would mention the designers of her clothes, the club she was going to, who made the sweater for her dog, all without any guarantee of any return. She just threw out links.
It didn’t take long for designers and club owners to realize that Paris Hilton was a walking billboard. So they embraced her. She paid attention to them, so they paid attention to her.
The most valuable commodity today is attention.

The Web is a Social Network

Social interaction of any type leads to links.

• Speak at a conference? Someone will likely blog about it.
• Want to get thought leaders to promote your site? Create a community project or contest and ask them to participate. Or give out awards.
• Lack the budget needed to go to conferences? Moderate forums, comment on related blogs, and build social relationships online.
• Track hot news in your space and try to get out in front of important trends.
  • As an example, when Google did a big update that promoted some big brand websites we were one of the first websites to analyze it.
  • Our blog post about that topic earned over 1,000 inbound links and brought in thousands of dollars in subscriber revenues.

Be Credible

But for people to take you credibly you need to make sure your website adheres to good web credibility standards.

• Is your domain name memorable?
• Does your design complement your copy?
• Is your content interesting and conceptually unique?
• Does your site have an editorial component and voice, or is it a boring low-value thin product database?
• Is your about page memorable?
• Is your site easy to use and understand?
• Do you have a brand people care about?

You do not need to "have it all" to get started, but the more credible you look the faster you will gain momentum.

Build on Your Success

Work to improve your site every day. Over the course of the year fixing or creating one thing a day will lead to a large advantage. Building up a leading market position can take years, but once you get at the top those years are the barrier to entry which prevent others from being able to replicate what you built up.

Markets Are Conversations

The Cluetrain Manifesto stated that markets are conversations. Blogs are the leading medium upon which those conversations happen online. If you are a blogger, read the Blogger's Guide to SEO to get the most out of your blog.
Even if you are not a blogger, the Blogger's Guide to SEO can help you understand the mind set of bloggers and why blogs quickly became a foundational part of the web. If you know a lot about blogs then getting links is a piece of cake.

Getting Started With Link Building

Link Building is a Pain in the Butt

Prior to creating the SEO Book training program I conducted a survey of SEO Book members. One of the questions was, "What is the biggest thing stopping you from improving your website rankings and traffic?"
The most common answer to that question was "link building". If links are so important how do you build them? Here are some great techniques for providing content that people will actually WANT to link to:

Quality Links You Can Build Today

One of the easiest ways to start building links is to submit your site to leading general web directories and directories in your niche.
Don't just think of directories as being places that accept websites. Some of the best directories represent business partnerships and exist on sites like manufacturers you sell for, local government sites, or your local chamber of commerce. For example, Google lists some of the most popular Google Checkout business partners
http://www.google.com/checkout/m.html

• Would some of your business partners be willing to link to your site?
• Are there any trade organizations or local business organizations you can join?
• If there are no relevant organizations, could/should you create one?

Web Directories

This video covers directory submission.


Here is a list of some of the most well trusted online web directories

• Business.com - $299 per year for commercial listings.
• Yahoo! Directory - $299 per year for commercial listings. Free for non-commercial listings.
• BOTW - one time $299 fee (SEO Book subscribers get a 35% discount coupon)
• JoeAnt - one time $40 fee
• DMOZ - also referred to as the Open Directory Project or ODP. Free submission, but it may take a long time to get listed as it is run by volunteers.

Here is a link to a $50 off promotional code for Business.com

SEO Book subscribers also have access to a list of a dozen more top web directories.

How to Influence Link Anchor Text

Link quality is one important factor, but another important factor is link anchor text. In this interview Google's Adam Lasnik highlighted the importance of using descriptive anchor text:

Useful descriptive Anchor text can be great, not only for the user who gets a better idea what he or she is going to be clicking through to, but helpful for Google to better understand what that page is likely about.

You can't always control how other people will link at you, but you can guide them. Most people refer to things by their official name. If your domain name is ChicagoDentists.com, and you are aggressive at marketing your site, then many people who mention your site are going to link at your site with Chicago Dentists as the anchor text.
Beyond your domain name you can also guide anchor text with the names you give articles, tools, and other content published on your site. If you want people to reference something on your site using a specific set of words then make sure those words are in the page title, file name, and in the product name. Creating a product logo helps influence anchor text even more.

Tons of Link Building Ideas

Beyond directories, there are many blogs and other websites that discuss your topic. Are there ways you can appeal to their editorial interests?
We made a list of 101 different link building ideas. Rather than publish them again here, we figured it would be best to give you a link to the list. As you can see from the list, many of the ideas are creative, others are weird, and some are downright profitable! :)
Tomorrow, we discuss easy ways to create content that others will spontaneously link to — to save you from having to do loads of legwork requesting links from other websites.

Killer Link Building Tools

Hub Finder

One of the research papers we referenced yesterday (Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment [PDF]) discusses topical hubs and authorities. We created a premium SEO tool for subscribers named Hub Finder, which helps you locate sites that link at many top ranking competing websites. The theory behind this is that these pages are often industry resources, and if they link at many competing websites there is a good chance they will be willing to link to your site as well.

LocalRank Tool

One of the research papers we referenced yesterday was a patent from Google about re-ranking search results based on how they interlink (LocalRank: Ranking search results by reranking the results based on local inter-connectivity). We created a premium SEO tool for subscribers named Local Rank, which helps you understand how the top ranked sites in Google cross link, in an attempt to help you estimate how competitive your target keywords are, and what sort of promotional strategies competitors are using.
Cheers,
Aaron Wall

Want to Learn More?

P. S. This free training module offers background information on link building, and links into more specific areas of interests for our members.
P. P. S. Every day we discuss exciting new link ideas in our community forums
http://community.seobook.com/link-building/
P. P. P. S. (can you do that many P's?) Subscribers also have access to our 12 week link building roadmap.

Keyword Research Strategies

Use the Most Relevant Keywords

Yesterday we discussed the precise targeting offered by keywords. But even if a keyword is valuable, it might not be valuable to your business. For example, if you are a dentist in Chicago, it is not worth the effort to try to rank for the word dentist. Why? 99% of the people searching for that phrase do not live near Chicago, and are irrelevant prospects. What you would want to rank for, if you were a Chicago dentist, would be things like

• Chicago dentist
• Chicago dentists
• dentist in Chicago

Understanding Searcher Intent

Even within a niche like dental work, there are more specific types of dentists people search for, like implant dentist and cosmetic dentist. If you offer these types of services you would want to rank for keywords like

• Chicago implant dentist
• cosmetic dentist in Chicago
• etc.

Free Keyword Tools

There is a wide array of free keyword tools on the market. My favorite keyword tool is the SEO Book keyword tool - it is fast and free, powered by Wordtracker, and allows you to quickly export your keyword data.

Every keyword tool has some data errors or anomalies. Don't expect the tools to give you exact numbers, just rough ranges. If you are in doubt as to the accuracy of one keyword tool you can compare it against other keyword tools. And you can use an AdWords ad campaign to test keywords - a topic we will discuss tomorrow.
Here are some additional cool keyword tools

• Google's Search-Based Keyword Tool
• Google's Traffic Estimator
• Google's AdWords Keyword Tool
• Microsoft's Ad Intelligence (which is a plug-in for Microsoft Excel)

If you have any questions about any of these keyword tools and are a subscriber please ask in our keyword tools forum.

Gather More Keyword Ideas

• Anything people would likely search for to want to buy your services is a potential keyword.
• You can look at emails from customers or customer questions as potential keywords.
• If you have been publishing a site for a while and have analytics data you can use the analytics data to find keywords.
• You can analyze competing sites looking for keywords.
• There are literally hundreds of ways to come up with keyword ideas.

Group Similar Keywords

After you get a list of keywords start grouping related keywords together...

• You should be able to target related phrases like 'Chicago dentist' and 'dentist in Chicago' using a single page.
• Chicago cosmetic dental work is a different concept than 'Chicago dentist' is, so you should create a separate page targeting that term and why prospects would want to buy that service.
• You can use Microsoft Excel, Open Office, or Google Docs to start aligning keywords and related modifiers with your URLs. We have an example spreadsheet in our member's area here
  http://training.seobook.com/site-architecture-internal-linking

Tomorrow, we cover how to use PPC ads (such as Google AdWords) to discover the value of keywords to your business.