SEO Tips #5, Blog a lot, don't need a SEO tool?

SEO Tips #5, 3 features of an SEO Tool?

Lately our blogs feel to be more sales and biased oriented towards our own products and SEO Services. We are cautious of trying not to be, and we are not journalists. We are a for profit company, and looking forward to the day we actually have profits:-). Things are much better than they were 9 months ago, it’s been the course of SEO services and selling some of our energy saving heaters and products that has elevated our revenues. We are pushing for a few more SEO Services clients, hence the focus on SEO related blogs the last couple of days. We do get a lot of comments on our blogs, so I do believe that we are providing good information.

Our SEO Tools at LinkMint.com are free, and we wanted to highlight some of the features, so below is a post from the SEO Tools overview. A lot of SEO services companies are getting in the SEO Tools business. We actually are coming from the SEO Tools in to the SEO Services business. Why? Because there are so many adequate Free SEO tools on the market, we felt that we didn’t want to charge for them. Also, we didn’t want to do SEO services, being a services company is hard enough, not to mention being a SEO Services Company. Before we talk about SEO tools features, I want to mention that blogging often with the most appropriate keywords in your blogs is the #1 SEO Tools you can utilize. So as always blog often!

Here are a few features that every SEO Tool should have:

1. Keyword Searches, no one can beat Google Analytics and Google Adwords, so in this case most SEO tools will never live up to the standards, they just don’t have the information.

2. SERP (Search Engine Result Pages), to see progress, we have to see our rankings even if they are not in the top 50. So instead of sitting their and clicking on Google and hitting next an SEO tools should have ranking checkers.

3. Submission Tools, automated submission should be done at a minimum, but having a tool do it for you is a lot easier.

**To be honest with you I can’t think of any more features, that are really imperative in a SEO Tool, so maybe that is why most SEO services companies don’t use one, and I personally don’t feel good about charging for it. I think providing SEO Coaching maybe a better way for us to do SEO Services in a scalable way, and we may offer than in the near future. I actually called up Rand’s Fishkin’s SEOMoz last year at this time, I spoke with his mom, who is a very very nice lady. Little, did I know at the time, that rock star of SEO blogs, was starting his premium services. And, still we have not launched our SEO Coaching, but some day, until than check out the free SEO Tools features:

Linkmint.com currently features 22 tools for SEO, SEM and Internet Marketing when you login to the linkmint tools page you will see 4 tool sections. Web site promotion tools, web site analysis tools, link popularity tools, and miscellaneous tools.
Getting started using linkmint Seo Tools .
1) Create an account – sign up with your email address on the linkmint tools page. After submission of your email address you will receive a confirmation email. Confirm your account and log in to linkmint.com by clicking the link in your email or by going to the linkmint.com homepage and clicking on the linkmint tools tab
2) Manage your account – After login to the linkmint tools manage your linkmint.com account by clicking the Manage Account link:
a) Input at least one web site in to analyze by clicking on the new website link under the manage account link
b) Input keywords or key-phrases, corresponding to the website you entered by clicking on the new keywords link, selecting the correct URL and entering keywords or key-phrases separated by commas. If you need some guidance in creating keywords selection visit our Keywords Search page.
3) Manage your search engines – click the Manage SE link under the Manage Account link. A drop down list of Search engines in our system are there. Select the search engines you are targeting for your sites then click submit
4) Manage profile – The Manage Profile link under Manage Account link contains all your settings for changing parameters on your account. You can make changes to your search engine selection, keyword selection for a given URL, and you password for your account.
Now that you are set up on Linkmint.com go ahead and start analyzing your sites to learn about the individual tools please click the pages on the left. For a general description of the uses of the tools in each category continue to read below.

General use for each SEO tool section

Web site promotion tools - This Section contains promotional tools for a web site. A webmaster would use this section to search keyword and keyphrase rankings and compare them to the number of pages that use the searched keywords and phrases. Calculate keyword density for each keyword given, get a percentage of keywords to other words in your site, optimize density for your prefered search engines standards. Create meta tags from keywords, That are ready to cut and paste in to your sites code. generate Submit a website to all the major search engines at once with a few clicks. Check a web sites ranking on a certain keyword or phrase on google***, yahoo, MSN, or other major search engines, see where you place. robots text telling a search bot to follow all your site pages or not to search certain pages. Optimize keywords / phrases that you have picked out for a site.

Web site analysis tools - Webmasters can use these tools to analyze various sites for meta tags of any given site, check out your friends sites or competitors sites. Check out the internal and external links in a site with a page link analysis. Use the website analysis to keep track of how many hits your site gets with a custom code generated for your site. Get a sites source code by using the page snooper tool. Want to know how your site will look in a search engine query? The search engine simulator will give you a good idea. Do a Whois search to find out who owns a domain. Is your site’s html valid? test it with the html validator tool.

Link popularity tools - This is a useful set of tools to see how a sites links compare relative to one another. It is also possible to see how friends and compeitors websites compare with link popularity. these searches are done specific to each selected search engine*** .

Miscellaneous tools - This set of tools is a webmasters mixbag of goodies. Get your domain name typos, and keyword / Phrase typos generated automatically. check how a search engine spider sees text on your front page. You can also access google dance. google dance can help webmasters figure out when google may be recalculating your sites PR ranking. google does this “dance” monthly where the servers www, www2, and www3 for google.com go through the calculation. you can determine when google is “dancing” with your site when the results within the three servers are not the same. Want to do a page rank search? use the page rank search to compare the page rank of web page results for a specifed keyword on google, or use a page rank lookup for a single domain on google. Use the site link analyzer to get how many links are external and internal on a site. then use the future tool to estimate where your site may end up for its PR rank in google next month.
***must have a google API Key to Search google for keyword / phrase ranking, get a google API Key. Check out FAQ questions on google API keys

Ten Questions to ask SEO Services providers

Can you believe I wrote to blogs on the subject of SEO Services? Well, actually these two are just for our SEO services business, I also wrote a third for our seattle wedding photographers friends at Northern Lights photography. I did not publicize that one here, as it had nothing to do with SEO. The Questions below are very important to get answers to before you start a relationship with any SEO services providers.

Before I start to rattle off some great insights from our SEO tips and Internet Marketing vault, I want to be clear that you understand that we are biased. We are in the business of SEO Services, but we still want to provide you the most information as possible, to help you make the best decisions to grow your business. The objective of this article is to convince you that we at MyTypes, Inc. are very knowledgeable about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and that we are one of the best SEO Services companies in the world. Proof is in the pudding (well actual Google results), and our results should already tell you what you need to hear. We have engaged in SEO services for years, and we can execute ethical SEO strategies to get you top results, as our proof is in the pudding. We don’t advertise, here is a little self promotion on a minor note, we never wanted to do SEO Services, and until recently have alway just advised clients to do their own internal SEO services in the past. We have always wanted to just focus on our Blogging platform. We have delivered top results for large companies such as ITEX Barter, which is a public company. And for smaller businesses such as real estate website BoatCommunities.com, and LoveRelic.com a designer Jewelry company.

While we continue to engage with large and small companies for SEO services, we only want to work with/for a handful of clients. In the last year, we have also started to SEO for our own products in silver jewelry and infrared heater market segments. We have been providing professional SEO services for clients since Jan of 2006, and we have done it for our own products since 2003. We are pushing forth with a professional SEO Services strategy, and therefore we came up with the idea of Ten Questions to ask a SEO services company:

1. What is the most important factor in your SEO Strategy to achieve top 10 Google Results?

2. How many major Keywords do you have in the top 10 in Google for SEO and/or other related keywords?

3. Providing SEO Services for major Keywords is very difficult, how many keywords for your client’s major keywords do you have in the top 10?

4. What is your overall SEO services strategy and plan for us, your clients, what will you specifically do for us?

5. How do you help us pick the best keywords to SEO for our business? This is probably the most important question of our 10, if they shy away from major keywords, this is where you want to look for clues. Why not go after the biggest most traffic based keywords, make sure you get a straight answer, if not ask us!

6. What SEO Tools do you use, and for what?

7. What is your process for Link aggregation?

8. How much emphasis do you place on Google Page Rank, and it’s value in the SEO Process?

9. How do you SEO for Yahoo and MSN, not just Google?

10. What are your thoughts on Social Networking, Wiki’s, Blogs, and Digg?

**Notice we are not going to give you answers to these questions as other SEO Services providers and competition will use that against us. We are obviously very successful, but we work with you at y our level, we utilize simple but powerful SEO strategies, and if you read our SEO blog, and business blog, at our blogging platforms, you will see that constant focus on content. Google and the best in the SEO Services business world will/should help you develop a comprehensive content strategy. We just happen to have some amazing blogging tools and social networking and internet marketing strategies that simply work. And, for the most part we are willing to be compensated based on a mixture of performance and set hourly work, so you always feel that you are getting the best value.

SEO Services Blog

A Marketing Social Network, and Google Now Selling SEO Services Via Performics

Google Now Selling SEO Services Via Performics

Check out the article above on Google and it’s acquisition of DoubleClick and the SEO services company that they now own called Performics. A lot of people are against Google offering SEO Services, but I am not totally against the idea. Read the Tech Crunch Blog above by clicking on the link above. Here are my reasons for Google to keep the SEO Services firm:

1 . If Peformics offers SEO services, it legitimizes the SEO services business as a whole for me. Some have said that SEO services should not offered as they are simply too unethical period. Obviously, being one of the best SEO consultants in the Internet Marketing world, I totally disagree. Ethical SEO strategies are part of good content development and web design strategy.

2. Google and Matt Cutts have always been forward and honest about what ranks well for SEO. Matt Cutts even shares in a video Ethical SEO Tips. They will only continue to be more honest with not only their clients, but the world, as they will be watched more carefully.

3. We need oversight and ethical SEO strategies right from the Google mouth, while I would like to think Google will share it with there peformics group, we all already know what ranks well. It’s the Title Tags, Keyword in URL, great content, and high PR links back to your website or blogs.

4. We need Google to continue and we need to watch what the clients of Performics are doing as far as their rankings. Whatever changes and they are doing it, we need to understand and emulate.

Why invent the wheel, let Google tell us what is the best SEO Tip, and let’s do it. For most of us that means we have to write lots of blogs, and get lots of people to write about our blogs or contents. On a side note, Did any of you notice a little more focus from us on our Internet Marketing and Social Networking lately? We are behind schedule in our launch of the marketing and business social networking site, but it got a lot closer today. Keith, did some amazing simplification of the front end and all seems to be working in our tech area.

Now the battle is between strategic position of the social network, should it continue as a business social network? Or should it position itself in to a marketing social network, a social networking site focused on marketing people, SEO consultants, and Search marketing, and Internet marketing professionals? Any comments, which is the best strategy?

By the way, did I mention that we are looking for a couple of SEO Services clients at the moment? We just had a large SEO Services contract get reduced as the project scope just changed, don’t worry they are still clients, and raving fans. If you know any one who need any SEO consultants or SEO Services, please pass on our information.

SEO Tip #4, Pick your Keywords wisely

SEO Tip #4: Business vs Marketing choose wisely

A fews weeks ago, I wrote a blog about why I don’t know as much about SEO, as I thought I did. This was just after I learned about the Matt Cutts video about White Hat SEO tips. At that point, I did this in a tounge and cheek sort of a way, as that day I thought about writing an occasional SEO tip blog and making that a regular column of this site. I have been humbled once again, and this time by my friend Mark, who is a SEM guru, and knows a ton about about Internet Marketing, Marketing and sales. Thank god he does not know about SEO as much as I do, but no matter how much you know, you can always learn more. This is what he helped me learn yesterday, yes on a Sunday, we met tod discuss why it is so difficult to measure the return on investment for SEO, especially when SEM or Pay per click ads work so well so quickly. No matter what you do, you have to SEO for the proper keywords with high enough traffic, otherwise you are just wasting your time. This leads us to our SEO tip #4, which is to use the Google Adwords Tool, keyword Estimator to see the size of the traffic. I have used this tool before yesterday for our SEM campaigns, but not as our SEO Keyword Tool, and I think everyone should use it to figure out the right keywords to SEO for.

So what exactly is the difference? We all know that we need to SEO our websites or blogs for the best and highest traffic keywords that target our customers. In the past to get accurate keyword numbers on a monthly basis, we use to recommend Overture/Yahoo’s Search Marketing tool. We stopped recommending it last year, as it was inaccurate and did not seem to provide consistent data. Most Keyword Search tools are still using it and are therefore inaccurate. So SEO Tips #4 is that you need to use the Google Adwords account, and go to the Tools section, and use the Keyword Estimator to see how many clicks you will get for your keywords. For our purposes of building the business social networking site for b2b lead generation for ITEX, we are contemplating targeting the keywords business versus marketing. We just saw some major differences in traffic, as the keyword Business could get a whopping 30,000 clicks in a day, while marketing can get about 6,000. These are still huge numbers compared to even keywords such as SEO and blogging, which we focus on quite a bit. Which get about 100 to 500 clicks a day, so which one’s should we target? Go ahead and comment let us know, I will tell you out bias, at the bottom of the post.

Not that I want to beat this keyword thing to death, it is important to discuss the far reaching effects of this SEO tip of targeting high traffic keywords. Folks you have to drive enough traffic for your business, that is the bottom line, and we all have to focus on driving sales for our companies. And, that usually means our SEO efforts have to lead to higher targeted traffic leads. This world of lead generation and business marketing usually has to do with b2b and b2c companies. We as SEO experts are dealing with the ultimate goal of any website, to get any many leads as possible for the business. Which ultimately leads to more sales. Some times and often sales are conducted on the website without having to lead to leads, sales are the ultimate goal, leads don’t matter as much, and that is usually the case with b2c sites. So other than the world of b2b business products for businesses buying and selling things to each other, things usually fall in to b2c, which deals with business to consumers, rather than b2b which is business to business. You have undoubtedly seen that SEO is discussed in many SEO blogs for both segments and makes a difference for both types of websites.

For our personal Internet Marketing business, we are trying to decide which keyword to target, both marketing and business related keywords are being discussed internally. As they are probably the top 5 most related keywords to grab business related traffic. So who is searching for this kind of traffic and why should we care? First of all, SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization is part of SEM, which stands for Search Engine Marketing, which is part of Internet Marketing, which is part of Marketing, which is one of the biggest components of Business. All of this makes sense if you are an SEO company which we are, so we belong in the world of business, but isn’t it important that we target the world of marketing first? Yes, it seems like I am thinking out loud, isn’t that the purpose of blogs, to make our journaling part of the interactive conversation with our self and our readers:-)?

So for marketing to be effective, it has to promote the business to sell products and services. And, for SEO to be effective it has to look at keywords from Google Adwords Traffic Estimator tool, and the bigger the targeted traffic the bigger your sales. I did need to confirm this SEO Tip and hammer it home, you need to target high enough traffic keywords.

So don’t get ranked high for the wrong keywords, as you won’t get the traffic, the leads or the sales. This is what will happen to you even if you did a great job as an SEO. I hope all of this makes sense, this is what I was trying to do to provide a wholistic view of SEO in the grand scheme of business and marketing. If you found this topic boring or too confusing drop me a line, I will go back and read and edit this article again, it was difficult for me to write.