As an internet marketer, I’m always looking for easier and better ways to get quality backlinks to my websites, so as to boost my search engine ranking.

In particular, I’m looking for a service that:

1) gets me hundreds of backlinks for EACH article I post, regardless of how small my niche is;

2) automatically builds backlinks to the articles that I post, which is the key in article marketing;

3) allows me to post unlimited articles and build unlimited backlinks to unlimited number of domains;

4) builds unique backlinks to my website automatically and infinitely, so that I can forget link-building!

So far, it seems that there is only one system that provides such a service. It’s called EzArticleLink.

Don’t just listen to me. Head to the website now at http://ezarticlelink.com?r=earlnetwal and check out its huge collection of testimonials (more than 150 of them on its homepage).

If you are still skeptical, there’s even a free membership that you can enroll in. The free membership can easily get you thousands of high-quality backlinks, not to mention its Gold membership!

Good link building system is hard to come by. If you are serious in SEO, you must add this service to your arsenal.

Get your instant access at http://ezarticlelink.com?r=earlnetwal.

[tags]ezarticlelink, backlink, backlinking,seo, seo backlink, seo backlining, search engine optimization[/tags]

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Technorati Tags: backlink, backlinking, EZArticleLink, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, seo backlining, seo backlink

This new plug in is selling like crazy as a WSO Special and for good reason. It simplifies the effective use of significant social media sites to drive powerful backlinks to your web posts automatically, once you have it installed and set up on your wordpress blog.

WP Social Pipes

Listen to the developer’s description below and then get your copy today.

I think this one is a winner. The developer has several more videos showing how this whole thing works on the WSO sales page. Take a few minutes to watch them all and I am pretty sure you will be impressed. I was.

WP Social Pipes

[tags]Social Pipes, WP Social Pipes, SEO Plug in, SEO Plugin, SEO [/tags]

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Technorati Tags: SEO, SEO Plug in, SEO Plugin, Social Pipes, WP Social Pipes

I admit that I have been a bit dismissive about Microsoft and its Bing initiative, but the facts are clear. While still a distant second to Google, Bing has been gaining at Google’s expense.  They now have about 30% of the market or 3 of 10 searchers. We can not succeed if we ignore that large a percentage of possible customers. Below is an article I found on ezine articles suggesting some tips for Bing SEO.

—

SEO Tips For Bing

By Jason Nyback

If you believe that Google is still the sole super power in the online marketing arena, you definitely have been living under a rock for the longest time. While Google still holds the big guns in online advertising and marketing, there are small budding search engines that are starting to join the league of online super powers.

It will only be a matter of time before minor search engines, such as Bing from Microsoft, becomes Google’s biggest nemesis. The works have already begun, and as you read this article more and more people are getting drawn by Bing’s aggressive $80 to $100 million advertising campaign!

Early last year Bing entered the online marketing scene thanks to the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. According to the rumors, just give Bing at least nine months to a year before Bing fully takes over the search market of the entire United States and becomes the first ever solid challenger of Google in decades.

The birth of Bing inspired a lot of questions in a lot of people’s heads – “How different is Bing from Google when running an ad campaign?”, “What happens to those have websites that are optimized for Google?”, “Is there a need to panic?”, “Should we start leaning the online marketing techniques of Bing?”, “What is Google going to do about this?”

If before Google set the standards of the game (a website that is highly optimized for Google need not worry about turning up in other search engines because Google have everything figured out), Bing decided to go against the status quo. Bing is quite different from Google and Yahoo, both in the way it ranks pages and the way it presents its search engine results.

That noticeable difference in Bing and Google could resuscitate to life the trend in the late 90′s where all online marketers running a business online had to create separate pages optimized for different search engines; there should be one each for Google, Yahoo, Lycos, and AltaVista. While that scenario is still uncertain, better prepare for the worst by familiarizing yourself with Bing SEO as early as now.

Below are some of the most effective Bing SEO strategies that you should know in order to impress the upcoming search engine giant that is Bing:

• Go for older domains.
• Bing has this certain affinity to older domains, compared to those who were just created in the last six months.
• Work on your titles; be creative and sharp.
• Just like other search engines, Bing also gets impressed by websites that have witty and compelling titles and headlines on its content.
• Elaborate more on your articles.

One unique thing about Bing is that it prefers contents that are much longer, with at least 300 words. So on your website articles, do not hesitate to elaborate more.

What if you can’t get more website traffic? Here’s a “secret snowball traffic system” that has generated over 1,175,000 visitors for my tiny websites. Click Here Now to get this free video that will show you how to make it happen for your sites. http://www.jasonnyback.com/ezine

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_Nyback
http://EzineArticles.com/?SEO-Tips-for-Bing&id=5883173

[tags]SEO, Bing, Bing Vs Google,local business marketing, Bing SEO[/tags]

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Technorati Tags: Bing, Bing SEO, Bing Vs Google, local business marketing, SEO

I blew it… I purchased a gold level membership in  EZarticleLink a while back, started to use it and then after a bit of trial and effort promptly forgot about it.

Recently, I’ve been surprised at the success I was having with one of my blogs was doing, despite pretty much ignoring it.  It was the one blog  I was working on when I joined EZarticleLink

I am now completely resold on it, now that I now am in a better position to see the results.

I have long known about the power and value of backlinks.  That’s one reason  I have been so fond of  SE NUKE X,  While not as powerful or flexible as SE Nuke, EZarticleLink is capable of producing a ton of good authority backlinks  for a lot less money than SE Nuke.

I still love SE Nuke and consider it my primary tool to get my chosen sites ranked well in the search engines.  Still, I found myself spending several days last week working with EZArticleLink.  I think the combination will rock.

It may be a good option for those of you into article marketing, but not quite ready to pay for the higher cost SE Nuke.

Now be aware that both programs require a bit of a learning curve.  But once you got it, they are simple to use and very powerful.  The EZArticleLink has a Gold and Silver Version.  The Silver Memberhsip is Free, but I paid up and grabbed the Gold Version and  I am really I did. The perks of the paid version have paid off for me already.

http://www.ezarticlelink.com?r=earlnetwal

[tags]backlinks, back links, seo, authority backlinks, article marketing, article syndication, link building, SE Nuke, EZArticleLink, [/tags]

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Technorati Tags: Article Marketing, article syndication, authority backlinks, back links, Backlinks, EZArticleLink, link building, SE nuke, SEO

Here is an SEO tip I picked up from my Market Samurai friends. It concerns something called the First Link Priority, which can hurt your ranking chances without your being fully aware of it.

They suggest some options in the video.  Perhaps the simplest is to not link your images on some pages. But there are other approaches as discussed.

[tags]first link priority, seo, anchor text, image links, [/tags]

What does your web site look like on your Smart Phone? If its scrunched, or only showing a portion of your site, you are losing customers and money. We Can Build You a Mobile Appropriate Mini Website for Less Than You May Imagine. If you are getting business from your web site now, odds are you will get a significant boost in profits within days or our creating a mobile friendly site that makes you look good on your cell phone.

Technorati Tags: anchor text, first link priority, image links, SEO

I bet you have taken the time to search for your businesses web site on Google just to see where it ranked. When you searched for it by name using your url or most of the words of your domain name it probably did pretty well. However if you are a bakery, and search for “Bakeries”, the odds are that you are in the nether regions of the 13,900,000 listings.

A lot of small business people have given up on their websites as a result of this apparent invisibility. The gallop to the internet was all the rage before and after the dot com bust. However, for most small businesses, it has had little if any positive effects for their business.

The alternative that was easiest to figure out was to buy pay per click ads. They cost money, but at least they had an active prospect on the other end – usually. When some one did click on the ads, they were shown your offer and either did or didn’t buy.

At first a lot of keywords were real cheap, as little as a dime or less. Some still do, but many clicks these days run from $2-5 each and some go well beyond that into the $20 -$50 each and even much higher. You really need to know what you are doing to spend that type of money. And yet it can be well worth it.

Initially the pay per click ads were on the right side of the “organic” listings. The term organic listings refers to the free information that Google would find relevant to a searchers keywords. These free organic listings are the target we are shooting for when we try to get a top Google listing. Eventually, Google added some ads on the top of the left side as well, but we are still referring to the top organic listings.

When thinking about the value of this top organic spot, we can compare the value by looking at the equivalent cost of the top ads for the same search term.

It would cost $25 for 100 clicks to the advertiser. And this would be the equivalent value for 100 clicks on any of the organic searches.

Thus if a business were to get their organic site listed so that it got a hundred clicks a day, that listing would be worth the equivalent of $25 a day to them.

Now multiply this out for higher pay per click rates of say $2-5 each or much higher. Some keywords get a lot of searches every day, and this could multiply the value. The term “dog training” for example gets over a half million searches every month in the US alone. Dog training is a competitive word that would cost you $2.44 on average if you wanted to get the maximum pay per click volume for it. According to Google’s Traffic Estimator, if you were the top advertiser, you would expect to get 358 people clicking on your add every day, costing you $895.28. [Note that estimate of 358 people is 2% of the daily traffic.] (550,000 / 30 / 358) = 2%]

On the surface this would seem to indicate that have a top organic listing for Dog Training on Google would be worth almost $900 a day, assuming that the top listing got the same number of clicks as did the top ad.

It does not.

It probably gets a lot more.

Some time ago, as many as a fourth of all visitors would click on one on the ads on they typical results page. Recently, that number is closer to 18%

Industry experts suggest that a whopping 43% of people will click on the top organic result. This is significant.

It is even more significant when we understand that the percentage of people clicking on ads means those clicking on any of the ads.

Thus the top organic search result is getting between 8 and 22 times as many clicks as the top pay per click ad!

Calculating the results for our Dog Training example where the pay per click ad was worth about $900 a day, our top ranked listing should be worth roughly anywhere from 7 to 20 thousand dollars!

And that is why, getting to the top of Google’s Organic search is so valuable. As a result a whole new consulting industry has emerged to deal with this potential for value creation. Getting a listing to the top of the search engines is a worthy goal.

There are some additional caveats that need to be taken into account, but the central thrust of the above still holds true. People who choose the ads may for example be more actively looking to make a purchase compared to those who click the organic results who may be more interested in getting information.

Being the top organic listing may be meaningless, if the page people are taken to does not result in a desired action, etc.

That said, it should be obvious that getting a top organic search result is worthwhile.

[tags]Google, google Ranking, Organic Search value, top organic search, SEO, SEO Value, Why do SEO, Search Engine Optimization, pay per click[/tags]

What does your web site look like on your Smart Phone? If its scrunched, or only showing a portion of your site, you are losing customers and money. We Can Build You a Mobile Appropriate Mini Website for Less Than You May Imagine. If you are getting business from your web site now, odds are you will get a significant boost in profits within days or our creating a mobile friendly site that makes you look good on your cell phone.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Ranking, Organic Search value, pay per click, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Value, top organic search, Why do SEO

I’ve just completed a new youtube video in my ongoing series teaching main street and other businesses how to more effective set up their web sites for marketing purposes.

For a site to be of value to any business it must of course be found by prospective customers.  Ideally, you want to be number one on the free organic listings.  If you are, you will get more people clicking on your listing than any other on the page, including those who are paying to have ads at the top of the page.

While every site is different, the most recent statistics suggest the top organic listing will get 43% of all the clicks on a search engine generated page compared to about 18% of the clicks that will go to one or another of the paid advertising ads.

The second highest organic site will get on average between 20-25% and the rest will go to those organic listings from positions 3-10.

For some reason, the 10th place listing does better than those ranked 3-9, presumable because some people like to start from the bottom up.

These numbers change from time to time, the most significant change appears to be that fewer people are clicking on the ads.  It used to be that they claimed a full 25% of all the clicks.  Some think that’s just a function of more people being aware of the difference between the paid ads and the organic research as more and more people gain computer literacy.

Now the first struggle is to get to page one. The second struggle is to get to the top of page one. But in the interim, what you have in your Description meta tag can help you wrestle a few more percentage points of clicks on your listing, wherever you are in the rankings from #1 to #10.

I hope you found this video and post useful. Please leave any comments, questions or suggestions in the comment section.

[tags]Meta tags, metatags, description tag, organic listings, seo, search engine rankings, page one ranking[/tags]

What does your web site look like on your Smart Phone? If its scrunched, or only showing a portion of your site, you are losing customers and money. We Can Build You a Mobile Appropriate Mini Website for Less Than You May Imagine. If you are getting business from your web site now, odds are you will get a significant boost in profits within days or our creating a mobile friendly site that makes you look good on your cell phone.

Technorati Tags: description tag, meta tags, metatags, organic listings, page one ranking, search engine rankings, SEO

I just completed the first in a series of studies I intend to do on local businesses in Minneapolis area.

In the study I look at the top 30 web sites on Google when searching for the term, “Plumbers Minneapolis.”

The objective for me is to develop clients for my SEO consulting services in the “real world” of day to day businesses.  Each of the participants will get an email informing them that their web site was mentioned in the study and provided with a link to the study.

While the report focuses on their specific results, a lot of it is boiler plate that applies to the topic in general. Thus I expect to re-use the bulk of the report for additional industries.

It turns out that there are several pretty good web sites in the area, but most are shall we say “less than optimal.”  Any experienced internet marketer should be able to assist any of those of page two or three of Google to win a first place showing.

Now of course that will vary keyword by keyword, but as the plumbing example seemed to show, the major term”plumbing” was better accounted for that was a second term I selected which had to do with one possible reason a person would call a plumber, ie Hot Water Heater Replacement Mineapolis.

For this term, the competition was very limited.  This points out a basic error of many main street web pages. To the extent they are set up to rank for  a term, at least in this case they were ranked for the term they may have wanted to appear under in the Yellow pages: ie Plumbing and Plumber.

This old way of thinking reflects the Yellow page tradition and not today’s likely web search that is more likely to be based on the issue on the mind of the searcher, in this case hot water heater problems.

The report I prepared can be viewed at http://microbusinessspecialist.com/IndustryStudies/Plumbing_Minneapolis.html

I expect to refine the report, and hopefully find a way of condensing it as I do repeats of the effort in the coming weeks and months.  If you happen to see any errors in the report or have other suggestions, particularly on making it clearer and more readable, please let me know.

I note that a new training program aimed at reaching out to Main Street Businesses is in the offing Called Street Fighter.  It will go into pre-launch next week, and are actively looking for affiliates to join them in the launch.  I’ve signed up and you may want to as well.

As this little study shows, there is a lot of room for improvement in main street business web sites.  If you aren’t making as much money as you would like online now, or better yet, if the people on your list aren’t you may want to steer them into this course and opportunity.  There are many wide open opportunities in your community. Street Fighter

[tags]industry report, Street Fighter, off line marketing, main street marketing, affiliate programs,SEO, search engine optimization,[/tags]

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Technorati Tags: affiliate programs, industry report, main street marketing, off line marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Street Fighter

The primary goal of writing articles for SEO purposes is to generate as many backlinks as possible to your web site or blog post.

Creating articles for backlinks is a long term strategy that will generate traffic to your site from people who happen to read your articles and come to your site for more information. This traffic can be substantial, if your article is attractive enough to get a lot of people, or even just one person with a large following to reprint your article on their site.

More powerful in the long run is the value of the backlinks these reprints generate. Every article directory that carries your article will generate a backlink to you, and thus help raise your sites ranking on the search engines.  That’s why some people use article submission services like Content Crooner to get their article posted on as many different article directories as possible.

Since many of these article directories have moderate to high page rank status, these are often valuable links.

The better the article itself, the more likely that it will then be reprinted on other blogs, ezines, etc.  And that is where writing articles for SEO really pays off.

Whether you have posted in many or few article directories, your goal is to get as many of these other blogs and ezines to post your article as possible.  To do so, you need to provide interesting topics for people to read.  Seems simple, and yet a lot of articles people post online are BORING, or pointless.

People go to the internet most frequently to find information. And while you may be mostly interested in selling them something as part of your business, that’s not what your article should be about.

For example, if you are a building contractor that specializes in remodeling bathrooms, you would be better off writing about new trends in barrier free tubs and showers for the graying baby boomer population.  An anecdote about Mrs. Brown who was having trouble getting into and out of the tub, will be interesting to thousands of Mrs. Browns and their children.

This potential interest by potential readers is the secret to getting other people to reprint your article. The editors and bloggers you want to reprint your articles are looking for material their readers will appreciate.

While your market may be local, the interest in your topic is more global, so you may get reprints from bloggers around the world. Their readers may be thousands of miles away from your market, but since you are writing articles for SEO purposes that doesn’t matter to you.

Your targeted web site is getting the backlinks you want, and they in turn will help you raise your standing in the search engines. Since you compete locally, you don’t need to have more backlinks than anyone else, you need to have more backlinks than your local competitors.

And in most fields, that is still relatively easy to do. Thus when a local Mrs. Brown starts searching for a barrier free shower or tub, the odds are better that your website will appear on the first page, where she may actually see it.  And that’s when the payoff of creating articles for backlinks begins.

[tags]articles for seo, articles for backlinks, seo, article marketing, more backlinks, backlinks, Content Crooner, article submission, article submission services[/tags]

What does your web site look like on your Smart Phone? If its scrunched, or only showing a portion of your site, you are losing customers and money. We Can Build You a Mobile Appropriate Mini Website for Less Than You May Imagine. If you are getting business from your web site now, odds are you will get a significant boost in profits within days or our creating a mobile friendly site that makes you look good on your cell phone.

Technorati Tags: Article Marketing, article submission, article submission services, articles for backlinks, articles for seo, Backlinks, Content Crooner, more backlinks, SEO

Strategies to Increase Backlinks

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been working on a new report that outlines 10 strategies to increase backlinks.  Backlinks are critical to getting a better page ranking for your keywords and pages.  I am pleased to say the report is now finished, and I am offering it for sale for a mere $7.00.

To Rank High on the Search Engines You MUST Get Backlinks,  and Usually a Lot of Them.

This report outlines 10 basic strategies you can use to generate all the backlinks you could ever need, without having to pay a dime for them.

Full 30 Day No Quibble 100% Money Back Guarantee

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Technorati Tags: add backlinks, backlink review, backlink seo, free backlinks, how to increase page rank, increase backlinks, pagerank backlinks, SEO

How and why one web site gets ranked on the first page of a Google Search and another is on page 23 is a mystery to many small business people. And even experts will disagree on the details.

The exact formula used by Google is a closely guarded secret that changes from time to time. However enough is known to provide practical guidance to anyone who wishes to improve their overall ranking for any given keyword phrase.

There are a number of “on page” factors that matter a lot in this ranking process. This includes a proper set of meta tags, and the effective use of keywords on the page and if possible in the URL of the site. But once these basics are properly completed, the focus of search engine optimization shifts to the creation of backlinks.

A backlink is any link from another web property that connects (or links) to the target site. These can be links from other pages on the site, but most importantly include links for other web entities.

In the simplest way to think of it, you could consider each such link to be a vote. The site with the most votes wins.

And while in general this is true, it is only part of the story.

In the internet world, not all votes are created equal. Google in particular give the votes from your cousin Susie’s occasional blog far less value than a vote from the Smithsonian. Different web sites are assigned a page rank value which is a rough estimate of its standing in Google’s eyes as an authority. The higher the page rank, the more weight in has in the equation to rank a site.

In a recent report released by Ryan Deiss called the Authority Codes, he suggests that a single link from a site with a Page Rank of 5 is roughly equal to 555 links from sites with a page rank of 1.

While I cannot verify his information, I use the example to point out that the differences in page rank are significant.

That said, one backlink is better than no backlink, and the more links you get the better in terms of your sites ranking.

Because in the final analysis, the fight for a high ranking is very much like the old story of two hunters who have a bear chasing them. One stops to tie his shoe. The other says, Don’t be silly, you can’t outrun a bear. The other says, I don’t need to outrun the bear – I just need to outrun you.

In the page ranking game you are striving not to be the highest ranking site in the universe. You just need to be the highest ranking site in your particular niche. And for most local businesses that means being the top ranking butcher in Peoria, or St Louis or what ever geographical reference point that applies to you.

Now you still do want to get the high value links when you can. Among the better values are links from .edu or .gov sites. Educational institutions and governmental agency rankings carry more weight than those of a standard .com. Why? Because the search engines tend to assume that such links are more authoritative and less likely to be “Commercially” motivated.

Google also appears to look at the relevance of the referring source. If your site is all about elephants and you are getting links from a petting zoo and a veterinarian, the links will likely help you more than a set of links from a poker site and a car dealership.

These effects are magnified on some popular web sites like Squidoo. Many know that Squidoo carries a fair amount of weight due to its relatively high page rank. However, the real power of link from Squidoo come when the referring lens is part of a group of similar lens on the same topic.

Thus a link to the elephant site from a single lens on Google may have some decent weight, its likely to loose out by a single link from a lens that belongs to a group of circus animal related sites on Squidoo.

All of this conversation on backlinks is preliminary to a series of posts I will be adding to this blog from time to time in the coming few weeks.

I am in the final stages of preparing a report on back linking strategies.
With any luck I will have it available in the next day or two.

In the meanwhile, I invite you to leave any questions you have about backlinking in the comments section. Also feel free to copy this post in its entirety to repost on your own blog or to provide a link to this.

And one quick tip. When you leave a comment here you will be building a backlink to your web site. So it pays to comment in the form of gaining a backlink. Now I do moderate the comments on my blog, and will delete any spam or irrelevant comments. But if you ask a legitimate question, or leave a useful comment, you win a backlink.

[tags]backlinks improve pagerank, improve pagerank, backlink, backlinks, seo, authority codes, Ryan Deiss, Squidoo, meta tags, page ranking, [/tags]

What does your web site look like on your Smart Phone? If its scrunched, or only showing a portion of your site, you are losing customers and money. We Can Build You a Mobile Appropriate Mini Website for Less Than You May Imagine. If you are getting business from your web site now, odds are you will get a significant boost in profits within days or our creating a mobile friendly site that makes you look good on your cell phone.

Technorati Tags: authority codes, backlink, Backlinks, backlinks improve pagerank, improve pagerank, meta tags, page ranking, Ryan Deiss, SEO, Squidoo

One of the first eBooks I wrote from scratch was my Main Street Rises to the Top of the  Search Engines.  I’ve distributed almost 2000 copies of it over the past 16 months.  During the research phase I gathered information from many different authors, membership sites and more.

During that process, I was able to form judgments on people and their comments. Some were into black hat techniques to fool or beat Google at their own game.  Others were more interested in doing “natural” SEO tactics designed to promote their sites but not to “Game” the system.  These guys often sounded a little defensive pleading the case to do it right and not suffer the potential negatives of Black Hat techniques because despite the fact that the techniques work, they and or their sites will eventually be found out by Google and they will need to start from scratch.

Well, maybe its my temperament, but I have firmly joined the White Hat guys and encourage you to do so as well.

Now the truth is that there are a lot of people teaching and doing SEO the right way. But the other thing I found out when doing my research is that there are several major disagreement as to what is the right way.

One of the best new pieces of information I have seen on doing SEO the right way has just been released by Ryan Deiss.

He has issued several new reports as part of a new launch he is doing tomorrow.  Frankly, I wish I had taken the time to read his emails a bit earlier as I am getting on the bandwagon late.

I did however really enjoy his new take on the current status of SEO considerations in the current Google environment.

The new Caffeine rollout by Google appears to return to the key basics that underlined the approach I taught 16 months ago.

There are three major components according to Ryan, Page set up which includes all the meta tags, keyword placements on the page, etc. as one component.

Effective backlinks is the second part of the triad, and here is where Ryan adds some new free tools to the equation.  If you sign up for the free eBook in the link below, you will probably be able to get them as well, depending on how long Ryan leaves them up. (Word to the wise – These often come down once a launch goes live or shortly after so don’t dawdle. )

Finally, the third element in the equation is evidence of human activity.  I like this. I see so many people selling web site with gobblie gook articles, RSS feed only content all on automatic pilot, all designed so no one really bothers to read the articles, but may click on an adsense ad or affiliate ad.

The presence of human activity, blog posts, comments etc as well as content that people go to an actually read, is now being rewarded. And it should be.

These three things, page set up, backlinks and human activity are the foundation now of Google’s Ranking algorithm.  This third element is not fully discussed my me eBook, but the other two are and most if not all of what I have written there is still current and valid. Particularly the on page factors.

At any rate, I encourage you to sign-up and download Ryan’s Perpetual Traffic Report. It will give you a solid history of the Google changes to its ranking approach and will show you where you need to focus your attention today.

Perpetual Traffic Report

[tags]Ryan Deiss, perpetual traffic report, perpetual traffic, SEO, Google Ranking, Google algorithm, [/tags]

What does your web site look like on your Smart Phone? If its scrunched, or only showing a portion of your site, you are losing customers and money. We Can Build You a Mobile Appropriate Mini Website for Less Than You May Imagine. If you are getting business from your web site now, odds are you will get a significant boost in profits within days or our creating a mobile friendly site that makes you look good on your cell phone.

Technorati Tags: Google algorithm, Google Ranking, perpetual traffic, perpetual traffic report, Ryan Deiss, SEO

Some time ago I got interested in Squidoo as an inexpensive way to create a web presence.  It was relatively easy and free.  It wasn’t until later that I learned how valuable a site it could be for generating backlinks to other web properties.

Now knowing something and doing something with that knowledge don’t always follow. At least in my case.  It turns out I know how to do a lot of things that frankly I don’t always do. How about you?

I published a Squidoo eBook called Squidoo Basics and get a few sales every now and again, but haven’t actually promoted it in the past. I had a stray sale the other day that reminded me of its nearly orphan status, and I decided to give it a promotional push.

I’ve also been experimenting with Market Samurai a keyword research tool plus more and selected a series of keywords to focus on. The best in my estimation was the phrase Squidoo eBook.

So I went to my one page sales letter and added my new keywords, title and descriptions as I teach others to get the page itself set up properly for the search engines.

I then started writing. First a I did an article on my Home Staging Business Tips blog on Squidoo, making sure to create a Squidoo eBook  anchor text backlink to my sales page.

I then took the guts of that article and posted it on Active Rain, which is a real estate authority blog site that many homestagers also use.  I again used the same anchor text.

From there I went on to create a quick Blogger blog who’s one post is on Squidoo and yes with the same anchor text.  Then on to Hub Pages, and then Knol, and now back here to Micro Business Specialist.  You can fully expect to see a link in the coming paragraphs.

I intend to follow this up with a series of articles that I will post to the article directories.  With any luck the combination eventually gain me a first page listing on Google.

Anyone who searches Google for the phrase Squidoo ebook should be a pretty good prospect for an eBook Called Squidoo Basics, don’t you think?

Now, I’ve heard varying theories on how best to do this, so I am open for your comments. But my goal here was to create a circle of backlinks from a variety of high ranking web sites and some less so to start driving my single page sales page higher in the Google Search engines.

In the past, I have advocated linking first from one source to another and then to another to flow the accumulated Google Juice to one spot.  In what I did today, I did not link from one to another, but just to the sales page.

While I like to pretend I know everything, I’d be interested in readers comments on this.  I can always go back to each of these and create some cross links.  I do know that I do not want to have links going from a to b and b to c and c back to a.  That creates a circle and apparently negates the value of the back links. Same with a to b and b to a.

The topic of Squidoo is certainly large enough that I could easily go to any of these sites and add more content which will give me ample time to promote my Squidoo eBook.  I am also likely to go back to Squidoo and create some additional lens on the topic, rather than add to the existing one. That way I will have another backlink, rather than just a backlink from a longer Squidoo Lens.

If you are new to Squidoo I invite you to click on my link and join  Squidoo for FREE!

[tags]Squidoo, squidoo ebook, backlinks, seo, search engine optimization, hub pages, knol, market samurai,[/tags]

What does your web site look like on your Smart Phone? If its scrunched, or only showing a portion of your site, you are losing customers and money. We Can Build You a Mobile Appropriate Mini Website for Less Than You May Imagine. If you are getting business from your web site now, odds are you will get a significant boost in profits within days or our creating a mobile friendly site that makes you look good on your cell phone.

Technorati Tags: Backlinks, hub pages, knol, market samurai, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Squidoo, squidoo ebook

You’ve made your website, written your copy, and prepared yourself for the onslaught of visitors. But when it comes to launch day, they’re nowhere to be seen. It seems bizarre; you’ve written the content, created the product, and built the network of websites, but there’s nobody to be seen visiting them. Don’t worry — it’s not about your content’s quality or your ability to create a good website, it’s just the nature of the internet manifesting itself in poor traffic.

You see, without the great exposure that’s possible through search engines, your website may be doomed to failure from the beginning. Without a powerful traffic asset on your site, be it a link on a popular website, an article promoting your business, or a link appearing in search engine results, you’re not going to see the results that you want. However, by using some innovative SEO strategies, you can fight back against the powers holding you down the search engine rankings, and see your website shoot up the ranks and sit where it belongs.

You could be number one. It’s not simply a matter of age or size, as we’ve all seen corporate giants toppled on the web by smaller, faster and smarter competitors. It’s about strategy and technique, and the incredible dynamics that come from a small and incredibly dedicated team or keyword system. With just a fraction of the resources of your competitors, you can craft the strategies that shoot them down the rankings and put your website in the top spot, where it belongs.

So how to you accelerate your search engine rankings? For many of us, SEO is a static concept. It never moves quickly, it waddles forward at a leisurely pace and frustrates us all. Don’t let that shape your strategy. By using some simple strategies you can supercharge your SEO and have it move much more quickly that it normally would. This free report, packed with insider information and highly valuable SEO strategies, is the perfect place to start on your quest for the perfect search engine rankings.

Click Here To Download Your Free Keyword Report

Take a look at the front page, because that’s where you’re going to be. The days of scrolling through ten pages just to find your website are long over. With just a small amount of time, you’ll be ranking front and center for the keywords that you pick. Using this free report, you can guide your strategy, boost your rankings, and enjoy the income that comes with a number one Google ranking.

Click Here To Download Your Free Keyword Report

What does your web site look like on your Smart Phone? If its scrunched, or only showing a portion of your site, you are losing customers and money. We Can Build You a Mobile Appropriate Mini Website for Less Than You May Imagine. If you are getting business from your web site now, odds are you will get a significant boost in profits within days or our creating a mobile friendly site that makes you look good on your cell phone.

Technorati Tags: keyword report, keywords, SEO

Online Article Marketing

Online Article Marketing is a highly effective tool used to sell both hard goods and information products to national and international audiences.  But does it make sense for a small locally based business to use it as well. In a word, Yes!

Businesses use online article marketing to establish themselves as experts, to drive traffic to a sales page and to build back links.

While the first two are important, they are less valuable to the local business person, after all most readers will not be from your market place.  Nonetheless some will be, but that’s gravy.

The real advantage of online article marketing for a local business is to out rank their competitors on the search engines. And that does make a real difference for many.

Each time an article is listed on an article directory or published in an ezine or blog, a new back link is created which the author of the article can direct to wherever they choose.

These back links from multiple sites factor into how some search engines like Google rank your site. A site that has links coming to it from a wide variety of sources is more likely to be seen as highly relevant.

While there are many factors that apply to search engine optimization, in general, the web site that has a lot of  back links tends to be ranked higher than a comparable web site that has only a few. Online article marketing is one of the best ways to get a ton of such back links for free.

The key to your success is to identify a keyword that people search for, relevant to your specific business or a product you sell. Write the article about that keyword. Include the keyword in your title. And then use it in the resource box you prepare to go with each article you write.

In the resource box you will tell the reader who you are and invite them to come to your web site. You are usually allowed two hyper links by most article directories. You want to use your keyword in the resource box, and hyper link it to the URL of your web site.  Ideally you want it to go to a page on your site dealing directly with the product you are selling.

Such hyper linked keywords are called anchor text.  The search bots that roam the internet pay attention to them. By using the keyword, you are letting them know that the landing page you are sending them to is related to the keyword.

Thus when someone in your local market searches for “Primer Paints in Baltimore”, the odds are a little better that your shop’s web site will appear higher than your competitors. And that’s what you want.

Getting good back links is like naming your business AAAPaints in the old days when people used to use the yellow pages.  Now they use computer search to find almost everything. And that’s why you should be using online article marketing to build your search engine ranking, even if no one in your market place ever reads them.

For more information on Online Article Marketing go to my blog on Article Marketing. http://ArticleMarketingHint.com

What does your web site look like on your Smart Phone? If its scrunched, or only showing a portion of your site, you are losing customers and money. We Can Build You a Mobile Appropriate Mini Website for Less Than You May Imagine. If you are getting business from your web site now, odds are you will get a significant boost in profits within days or our creating a mobile friendly site that makes you look good on your cell phone.

Technorati Tags: anchor text, Backlinks, mainstreet business, resource box, SEO

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In my last posting, I spent some time describing Squidoo.com and how useful it can be as a source of quality backlinks to your site.

Squidoo offers you the opportunity to create your own backlinks that you can custom design. By that I am referring to your ability to use anchor text that uses precisely the keyword phrase you want to rank for, and the ability to direct that link to a specific page on your web site.

Since Squidoo is free to use, there is no reason why you can’t create multiple Lens, and add additional links to your site.  From a search engine optimization standpoint it makes sense to have multiple short Lens rather than one long comprehensive one. So if a home stager wants to create a lens on staging a bedroom and another on staging a living room and a third on outdoor landscaping you now have three sources from which you can send links back to your web site. Within each lens you want to include a couple anchor text links to various pages on your site.

The power of Squidoo comes from it’s internal grouping system. Once you have created your lens, you want to join your lens to every relevant group you can.  If you are a potter, you will want to sign up your lens with all the various pottery groups, as well as art and crafts groups and any others that make sense.

The search engines see Squidoo as a large web site with many different topics. Normally this would be negative as it’s not focused and many lens are not specifically relevant. However since your lens is connected and linked to internally via your group memberships and also by  Squidoo’s own internal tagging system you are seen as part of all the groups you are associated with.   The strength of your  individual link is a product of all these relevant association within Squidoo.  To learn more about the internal linking and groups within Squidoo get a copy of Squidoo Basics.

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A similar venue like Squidoo is the Hub Pages site. Go the www.hubpages.com. Set up an account there, and jump right in.  The set up is different but similar to Squidoo. You will need to create a title of 120 characters or less, which becomes part of your url. Just as with Squidoo, you want it to consist of the keywords you want your own web site to rank for. So if you are following my advice on using geographical keywords you may want to name your site, CincinattiDryCleaning if you are a dry cleaner in Cincinatti.

Just like Squidoo, you want to create anchor texts in your hub pages. You can use much of the same material in your hub pages that you did on your Squidoo pages, but you want to rework it into a different format so it is distinctly different than the way it appears on Squidoo or anywhere else. Make it unique.

Now while you will be including links to various pages on your web site, you also want to create some links from your Hub pages to your Squidoo pages. That’s why we talked about Squidoo first.

Remember last week when we talked about “link juice.” Hub pages have a little less link juice than Squidoo. But they are still a highly ranked site, just not quite a big. Your link from Hub pages pours link juice into your Squidoo lens. This link juice accumulates there and is passed via your Squidoo lens to where it links, ie. your web site.

It is important that you maintain the one way nature of this linking. As we also discussed last week, if you reciprocate links the link juice cancels each other out.  So for my purposes, I always link from my Hub Pages to my Squidoo pages and never the reverse. Since I have many different niches this rule keeps me out of trouble.

Which one you use to link to the other is less important, than that you make sure to keep the one way relationship alive. And please remember that means you cannot link from your web site to your Hub pages as this would create a circle and negate the benefit of all the links.

Next time I will begin to discuss why article marketing is so powerful.

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Two additional tidbits. I have had a lot of projects building up lately thus the delay in getting this post out. I am still doing my analysis of peoples web sites. But am now restricting myself to just four a week. These are very useful to people and I want to maintain my hands on service to as many people as I can. To get details go to http://cli.gs/7gH1Zr

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In addition to maintaining your web site and getting it set up for search engines, the most powerful thing you can do for yourself is to blog from your own wordpress blog. WordPress blogs are easy to use and free, but can be very bewildering because there are so many options in terms of themes, plug ins, widgets and settings. I have learned a lot about blogging from Mike Paetzold who is a master blogger. He just released a new “How to” eBook and video series Tuesday night and is offering $20 off until sometime Saturday.  It’s called Word Press Made Easy and is a “must have” in my opinion. He walks you through all the plug ins and settings he uses on his plethora of blog sites. If you are going to blog, and you should, it is a good idea to copy a master blogger, until you learn enough on your own to make specific variations. With his help you can have your blog up and running and or re-tuned in about an hour.  Well worth it, I promise you. http://cli.gs/mv5Whd

What does your web site look like on your Smart Phone? If its scrunched, or only showing a portion of your site, you are losing customers and money. We Can Build You a Mobile Appropriate Mini Website for Less Than You May Imagine. If you are getting business from your web site now, odds are you will get a significant boost in profits within days or our creating a mobile friendly site that makes you look good on your cell phone.

Technorati Tags: anchor text, hub pages, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Squidoo

Getting to the Top of the Search Engines XI

Squidoo – Who ever came up with this name?

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We have established that to advance up the search engines your site needs to be set up properly in terms of on page factors, and also needs to get Back Links from other sites to boost your credibility. Ideally these backlinks should be in the form of anchor texts that highlight the specific keyword you want your page to rank for. For most locally based businesses, it also makes sense to have these keywords and anchor texts include your specific geography such as Home Staging Atlanta or Minneapolis Best Meat Market, etc.

One point I should have made already and didn’t is that these back links need to be one way backlinks. I’ve used the term “Link Juice” before. Imagine that a web site by linking to you is passing on to you some of their Link Juice. If they are a high value web site the back link may be a gallon jugs worth, if it’s a lower ranked site you might just get a pint. That’s if the link is one way to your site from theirs. If you return the favor, you have a hole in your bucket, dear Liza. The Link Juice leaks right back to where it came from. Now if you have a higher ranking than the person linking to you, you may actually loose juice in the process.

At one time it was all the rage to build reciprocal linking arrangements, and one of our readers reported just that after my last post. Unfortunately these are no longer wise moves in terms of search engine ranking. That said, they may still make sense if they send traffic and business from one market to another as part of a referral system. If that’s the case, you may well want to keep them even if they cost some “juice.” But don’t build reciprocal relationships hoping they will help out your search engine ranking. They won’t.

Nor can you set up a circle, where A links to B and B links to C and C in turn links to A. Such circles are readily detected by the search bots, even when inadvertent. So pals we may be, but mutual admiration societies are not the way to get ahead on the search engines.

So how do we get these one way links? There are a lot of ways actually. I mentioned a few to you last time and today we will take a closer look at one of my favorites, Squidoo.

Squidoo is one of many so called Web 2.0 sites, which merely means it is part of the recent wave of sites that allow visitors to interact with the site rather than just read it like a static web page.

There are four primary things I like about Squidoo. First it’s Free. Second, it allows you to put blatantly self promoting commercial messages on it. And thirdly, it’s relatively easy to use. A fourth factor is that is has a high page rank of 7, which means that back links from Squidoo to your site send you giant economy size bottles of Link juice, which is very nice indeed.

To get to Squidoo just go to www.squidoo.com. Once there, sign up for an account. It’s free and easy.

Once you have your account, you are going to create your first site, which Squidoo refers to as a lens. Perhaps the most important thing to remember when setting up your first lens is that what you name it is critical.

For my Minneapolis Meat Market, I want to name the Lens “Minneapolis Meat Market” – if that is the phrase that I want to rank for on the search engines. Now every lens on Squidoo needs to have a different name, so your favorite term may already be taken. If that is the case try adding hyphens between words, or an extra relevant word before or after your desired name.

Some times it is easier getting your Squidoo lens ranked high in the search engines than your main web site due to Squidoo’s high page rank and its tens of thousands of pages, many of which are new every day. The search engines are crawling all over Squidoo constantly, and they will find your new lens very soon after you publish it.

Once you have created your title, you need to fill in the introduction module. Here you want to repeat your keyword/title in anchor text with a link to the page on your web site you want to drive traffic to. So if you are Shar Sitter, one of my Home Staging Clients you may introduce your lens as: “Rooms with Style is a Minneapolis St Paul area Home Staging firm specializing is serving the South Metro Area etc etc…”

If you did a good job creating your web site’s meta tag description, you may want to use that here. It should have your keywords in it, and be a pretty good sales pitch while including the key geography you serve.

By using HTML code to create a link on “Minneapolis St Paul area Home Staging” as I did above, the search engine bots learn that the end link is about Minneapolis and St Paul Home Staging and they have good memories. This is called anchor text and we went over how to set up this HTML code a few messages ago.

This is one of the advantages of Squidoo. Since you are creating the link yourself, you can control the way the link is created. You always want to use anchor text links. The only exception is when you are specifically letting people know what your web site address is and even then, make sure you use anchor text elsewhere in the posting.

If you go to Shar’s site via the link above, you will see it doesn’t go to her home page. It could have, but instead I set it up to link to her page titled “services.” This is called internal linking because it links to an internal page on her web site. Google in particular likes this, and you get a little extra juice for your overall site because of it. Since you have control of the link creation on sites like Squidoo, it makes sense to create these internal links whenever you can.

At any rate, the goal is to use anchor text right away in the introductory portion of your Squidoo lens. That will serve as a powerful back link to your web site. Complete the first module with what other introductory material you feel appropriate.

I’m already at book length for this post. So let me quickly say that the rest of the lens can be simple or complex. It’s up to you. Squidoo uses modules. I tend to use their text modules and fill them with text and pictures. To insert pictures you will need to learn a tiche of HTML code, which is not difficult. You can search on Squidoo for a lens on HTML, there are several good ones. Alternatively, I publish an inexpensive ebook called HTML in Simple Terms for under $10. The advantage of the ebook is that you can print it out and keep it handy by your computer. I find it easier to look things up in print than online.

I also publish an eBook called Squidoo Basics. It costs $17 and will help get you acclimated to Squidoo quickly.

The thing to keep in mind about Squidoo, is that you can publish as many lens as you want. For link building purposes they don’t need to be fancy or even complete. But spend a little time on them and focus on one topic about your business. Create another lens to discusss another aspect. If you serve more than one town, you can be DryCleanersOmaha and OmahaDryCleaners or SouthOmahaDrycleaners. Etc. Each additional link of this sort will help increase your ranking for Omaha Dry Cleaners.

If you are a home stager, you might want to create a lens just for Realtors, and use the Lens as the place you make your special pitch to them. Just be sure to link back to the Realtor page on your main web site.

Once you get the hang of putting up pictures, and I promise you that learning the little bit of HTML code to do that is not difficult, you may want to create a before and after lens for each of your projects.

Just be sure to include back links in each new lens to your web site’s various pages and in no time you will discover than not only is your web site on the top of the search engines, so too will be a number of your Squidoo lens.

When your prospects find you not just on the top, but also number 2, 4, 6,7 & 8 on the listings, they get pre-sold pretty fast that you are the dominant player in your community.

Yes, it will take a little work. You may need to learn a couple new tricks, but with a bit of persistence you can do it.

Next week, we will look at a similar site called Hub pages and maybe a couple of others. If you have questions about today’s post be sure to leave a comment. As I did today, I will incorporate any questions into the next posting.

What does your web site look like on your Smart Phone? If its scrunched, or only showing a portion of your site, you are losing customers and money. We Can Build You a Mobile Appropriate Mini Website for Less Than You May Imagine. If you are getting business from your web site now, odds are you will get a significant boost in profits within days or our creating a mobile friendly site that makes you look good on your cell phone.

Technorati Tags: anchor text, html, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Squidoo