Thursday, August 21, 2008

What happenned to our PR rank?

I guess we will never know, too bad, too sad:-)

To Download our Wordpress SEO’ed blog templates, Scroll down to the Side Bar on the right and start downloading now!

bookcovermiacs-51008.png

Click on the Icon to the left to purchase our Marketing Book!

Join our Community Blogs @MyTypes.com Social Networking for bloggers. We chose the Wordpress blogging platform over the others like Movable Type, Blogger and Text Pattern. Because it has a great template system, it’s easy to use, and great for SEO. We’ve taken Wordpress from okay for SEO to super for SEO. Most Wordpress Free Blog templates were not fully optimized, therefore we decided to do it our self.

We also wrote a complete guide on how to fully optimize your copy of Wordpress including optimizing the templates, robots, click on the Menu Above, the simple SEO book, or click on the Orange Graphic to purchase Marketing Book Now!” by V.K. Singh and MyTypes.com.

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21st Aug, 2008
Free Icons and SEO Swag.

how about some SEO swag in the form of web badges.
here are some free SEO Badges from Mytypes.com
download it in Adobe Illustrator format for the pack or individually as .png below enjoy!

SEO Badges from mytypes.com

**sponsored by VRBO, Employment Screening, & Website Design St. Louis**

Get SEO SEO skills SEO Kills I love SEO
W3C Validated SEO Blog SEO SEO Compliant
jedi_seo.png Link to Me Google Loves Me! Link’d SEO
Got SEO bustin SEO Links Love Me SEO Hype Sucks

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20th Aug, 2008
Wordpress SEO

Theme Pack For Wordpress with SEO’d Templates!

Download Wordpress SEO Theme Pack

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* SEO and Blogs
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15th Aug, 2008
7 ways SEO consultants rip off their clients - iMediaConnection.com

7 ways SEO consultants rip off their clients - iMediaConnection.com

Ok this author is quite funny and actually makes great points of things to watch out for when looking at SEO service providers. What I like about his writing is the British humor, but he makes great points such as links and penalties by Google. He is clearly not one of the best SEO experts in the world, and he gently rips on India (not too cool in my book). Regardless it is a worth while article to read. We have a blog on SEO Truth, I started a few years ago, and we essentially want people to know about what people should focus on.

As some of you know we are too busy to blog a lot with our day jobs now days. But, we do blog for fun or vocation through out travel blog and vacations focus. We also have a client in the VRBO and Vacation rentals business. They were actually advisors to us in all things technical, and we do SEO for them. We also have been doing SEO for infrared heaters, for GreenIsBetter.org, but that is our own site. We actually were distributors of the comfortzone infrared heaters last year, and will probably sell more infrared heaters through our ecommerce and SEOed site GreenisBetter.org. The oil prices are certainly higher this year, and these Infrared Heaters actually help people save money, so we shall see how good of a year they have. And, i can’t leave this free blog, and simply not plug in our marketing book, do buy it and review it on Amazon. We are selling some copies on Amazon, so keep that up folks and thanks again for your support!

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13th Aug, 2008
Alt attribute Vs. title attribute in links and images

The title attribute vs the alt attribute which is the better choice for SEO? most individuals in the SEO arena know about the importance of the alt attribute for images. It describes what an image is to a search engine and is useful in creating better accessibly for text based browsers by providing information that make contextual sense instead of completely ignoring the image.

The title attribute is used to hold the “tooltip” in a link or image.

Title attribute in a link:
Title & Alt attribute in an image: ”ALT

tags. The reason for doing this is because engines have been known to index the “Keywords”

tag. By placing strategic keywords within the “Keywords”

tag, you’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose. When a search engine’s algorithm is programmed to give credit for keywords within this tag, you win. If not, nothing lost – since none of the engines are known to penalize for using it.

7. Optimizing Your page content/copy Optimize Each Page One of the most important things to understand is that each page is its own unit and has its own ranking potential and its own relevant keywords. Usually a home page has more value than the other pages since it is typically the easiest place to build links to. Home pages should generally be optimized for the most relevant competitive keyword phrases in your market that you feel you would be able to rank for. Interior pages should be optimized for other relevant phrases that relate to the content of each page.

Home Page Optimization Target your most competitive keyword phrase with the home page. Link to the major theme pages from your home page. Link to your home page from every page of your site. Include your site name and/or home page’s primary keyword phrase in the text links pointing to it. Use your keywords in your page title. Place the most important keyword phrase close to the beginning of the page title. Do not put your site title on every page of your site unless you are really trying to brand that name. In that scenario, it still is usually best to place the site name at the end of the page titles. Shorter site titles are usually better than really long ones. Sometimes I overlap related keyword phrases in the page title. Overlapping, keyword phrases in the page title can help you pick up multiple search phrases. Meta tags are not extremely important, but they can help some. The Meta description should be a sentence to a paragraph describing the page contents. The Meta description tag can be seen in some search results, so you want to write it for human eyes. The Meta keywords tag is probably not worth the time to make, but if you do, it should contain your primary keyword and its common misspellings and synonyms. Each keyword phrase in the keywords tag should be comma separated.

Use a single, keyword-rich H1 header on your page containing the same the primary keyword phrases. This helps reinforce the page title. Use keyword-rich sub headers (H2 or H3) before every paragraph or every few paragraphs. This improves usability and helps define what the page is about to search engines without making the page look like it was written for a search engine. Use bulleted lists and bolding to make content easier to read. Write your content for human consumption. If you write all your sentences for search engines, the pages will read bad and nobody will read them.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Blog on SEO Myths

Check the article that was recently published on MyTypes.com free blogs platform:

10 SEO myths and 10 net net answers — short and sweet

SEO Myth #1 - SEO is about secret tacticspeople that are in the know about SEO can tell you, there are no secret tactics in SEO, but they may not tell you all their methods the reality of doing SEO well is to cover your basics. using the information that your analytics provides you is a nice place to start. Start with your home page and work your way through out your site. Looking for SEO basics also look at Google’s Guidelines.

SEO Myth #2 - SEO means only optimizing for GoogleWhile we all know that google has most of the search traffic on the web, we shouldn’t forget about MSN, Yahoo, and niche/vertical search engines.how would one do that? CONTENT!! optimize your content for the audience you are intending to read it use the phrases key terms and catch phrases that your audience would use. these things are in addition to creating search engine friendly site.

SEO Myth #3 - Submitting your site to thousands of directories will help your rankingsWhile directory submissions can help your site rank better, be picky. Choose directories that are established, and are relevant to your site. doing directory submissions on a large scale can hurt your SEO efforts. here are some guidelines to use:

1) Quantity of inbound links

2) Quality of inbound links

3) Age of domain

4) Topical relevancy to your site

5) Human-edited is better than automated because editorial control tends to lend itself to quality

6) How frequently the directory gets crawled (check the Google cache)

7) The directory itself ranks in the search engines — this can be a sign of authority and can drive click through traffic

8.) Are their links direct, static links or are they redirected to your site?

SEO Myth #4 - SEO is free While SEO is not pay per click there are upfront and on going costs associated with SEO.possible costs include, SEO consultant, programmer, designer, link campaign and Most importantly YOUR TIMEdon’t forget about what your time costs to SEO your site your self. whether you hire out or do it your self SEO does cost. make sure your getting a good ROI by tracking your rankings, traffic, brand awareness, etc.

SEO Myth #5 - Keywords need to appear everywhereIn the past SEO protocol for ranking in a keyword called for the Keywords to be everywhere in the content. This is not true anymore because of relevancy algorithms. Google’s relevancy algorithm now favors more natural writing style. typically it’s not natural to have the same keyword appear in your page content 30 times all linked to your site. but it would be natural to add in modifiers to your keywords for example if you are tying to rank for the term “credit card” you might modify it in the following: “compare credit cards online”, or “apply for a credit card today” and then link these terms in your content in addition to your specific keyword. also try mixing in plural versions of your keywords. This strategy will help your site not to get filtered out and will broaden your reach to be found on multiple search terms.

SEO Myth #6 - SEO is a one-time event for a companyThe nature of SEO is a changing landscape, search algorithms, competitors, the current market “buzzes” are some of the things that you have to contend with. SEO consists of one-time and on-going efforts. Some of your one-time SEO efforts could entail keyword research, website structure and layout. On-going SEO efforts may include analysis of sites effectiveness, link campaign strategy, page editing and optimization. After you’ve set your site up to be search engine friendly make sure you are tracking your SEO efforts and adjusting them to create the best ROI.SEO Myth #7 - SEO will take years to return resultsThis not true, and SEO campaign could return some results within 30-90 days and lets qualify that statement. Results could mean moving up just a few spots in the rankings or even just showing up on page 100 for the intended search term when you were no where to be found. use common sense If someone tells you i’ll take years to get you ranked, get another opinion.

SEO Myth #8 - Page rank is the critical measure of a site’s successpage rank is 1 of 200 indicators that Google uses in search. while it does carry weight, if you are only focusing on page rank you are missing the boat, more importantly focus on your sites tools and content to being relevant to particular search terms you would like to be found for.

SEO Myth #9 - Accessibility doesn’t really mattercreating accessible webpages should be a forethought when creating a site. If googlebot and users cannot access your site because it is too slow or too much multimedia then the best SEO will not help. consider a user browsing from an iphone, can they use your flash navigation? nope. or the business user that is on the go and connects through a low bandwidth to make a purchase. If a site can’t be seen or loaded properly then no actions can take place. some best practices are:

1) make the bulk of your content and navigation text with multimedia dispersed throughout

2) test your page in mobile and a text base browser such as lynx, more details can be found on the google webmasterblog. check out these two links. Best uses of flash and a search engine spiders view of web 2.0

SEO Myth #10 - Google has an adversarial relationship with webmasters and publishersGoogle has done a great job with their webmasters central blog to help webmasters and publishers make the most of their sites. take a look and Webmaster Central, and take advantage of support from google.This was a summary of Michael Estrin’s article 10 SEO myths debunked from imediaconnection.com**sponsored by Rent Expert.com’s VRBO system, People Search and background check services by Peoplefinders.com, and website design St. Louis and web design St. Louis.Do something good for the enviroment, Air Purifiers @ greenisbetter.org. If you are interested in learning more about Internet Marketing, SEO, and the power of blogs, don’t be afraid to buy our Marketing book, and definitely create a blog on our free blog platform at MyTypes.com main page.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Don't be afraid to reuse old content, but

you have to spice it up, and change it or duplicate content issues will get to you. Here is an SEO blog we just republished to make the point: Spice up your content, if you are going to reuse it. Just like our food tastes better when we spice it up, so does our old content. If you like the content below about SEO for bloggers, don't hesitate to check out our marketing book "Marketing is a contact sport" from Amazon.com. Here is a SEO blog from our blogging platform, enjoy:

Recycle old content for SEO value, spice it up

It’s not always easy to blog and write fresh content. But it’s important to keep writing and blogging for SEO effectiveness, therefore you should spice up the old content with creative insights. Or the other option is to just update the old content with fresher data or recent news or events, that can often make a blog obsolete. If you are looking for ways to Blog for your SEO effectiveness, read the following article. If you are looking for SEO Services, or want smart marketing insights, buy our marketing book. Good luck and be spicy!

SEO for Bloggers: The Summary (Part 6 of 6)

Blogging is uniquely suited for search engine optimization, because the search engines definitely favor websites that have lots of relevant, easily updated content. However, there are ways you can maximize your blog’s promotional abilities - SEO techniques you can use to “blogcast your brand”.

Here’s a rundown of my SEO for Bloggers series:

Part 1: Getting Started with SEO. Start here to learn exactly what SEO is and the basics of how to use it to promote your message, including choosing your keywords properly. If you only read one of these posts, read this one (but you really should bookmark them all!).

Part 2: Link Building and Link Popularity. This post covers a key component of any blogger’s SEO strategy: getting tons of incoming links. Search engines love websites that lots of people are linking too - after all, popular blogs are popular for a reason, and that reason is simple: people like ‘em.

Part 3: Link Baiting for Fun and Profit. Link baiting is the art of getting other bloggers and webmasters to link to your site by creating interesting posts that benefit your readers in some way, shape, or form. After all, people link to content they find compelling.

Part 4: Building Your Cornerstone. Strong flagship posts are the pillars of blog - they are your most compelling content, they bring in the links, and they naturally have an ultra high keyword density.

Part 5: Off-Site SEO and the Social Media. This post describes how to use the social media networks and the user-driven aspects of Web 2.0 to enhance and promote your blog. There are a whole lot of amazing tools and communities out there, so use them to your advantage.

There’s one more point to remember about SEO, and that point is that the results generally don’t happen over night. Yes, content can go viral, but building a popular blog with lots of readers takes time - you have to develop your keyword-dense cornerstone content, to build link popularity and generate incoming traffic, and to make a name for yourself in your niche.

All of these articles are in our SEO for Bloggers category!

Don’t forget these free blogs are supported by our clients at MyTypes and the SEO Services clients for Keith and Bennett. Our original co-founder Vipin Singh no longer works with our projects. He is off working full time at a high-tech company. Our clients include PeopleFinders for Background Check, VRBO for RentExpert.com, Web Design St. Louis, and Air purifiers by Steril Air Purifier. We also promote the marketing book our company published that has the simple SEO and blogging strategies for the average person. It’s for sale on Amazon and we would love for you to buy it. We are also launching a Vacation Top Spots blog as we are focused on the Vacations business not only through the VRBO services of RentExpert, but love to write about travel related topics.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

SEO Marketing & Advertising Size

The Online Ad Market size - SEO market size too?

The Online Ad Story in a Picture - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

The article above from the New York times discusses the trends and facts of the Online Advertising numbers, Why? The talks of Yahoo and MSN is not just important to SEO Services people, but to all advertising and marketing people. Here is a quote from the article, we are covering this as the SEO landscape will dramatically change if Microsoft and Yahoo combine.

“Of course Google is booming and the traditional portals are struggling. But the numbers are stark: Last year, Google’s advertising revenue of $6 billion was roughly the same as that of Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft combined.

Google’s growth is slowing, but it continues to be a juggernaut. EMarketer estimates that ad revenue at Google will increase by 32 percent this year. That makes it the only one of these four companies that will grow faster than the ad market as a whole, which is estimated to expand by 23 percent this year. (To be sure, the uncertain economy makes any predictions especially suspect this year, but the relative trends appear stable.)

So as we try to second-guess the mating games of the big Internet companies, this graph raises the question: Does combining two past-their-prime giants that are both losing market share really solve any problems?”

The reason we are covering the recent news about the Microsoft and Yahoo is that this combination could greatly impact your SEO, SEM, and Marketing strategies. The combined search advertising and organic results, if that is what the solution will be, will be difficult for most small marketing people to ignore. Large marketing departments and advertisers do advertise on Microsoft and Yahoo, not just Google. They could quite possibly be the driving force behind another big option, not just being too dependant on Google. So our hypothesis is that a bigger advertising network other than Google is needed, and we support Microsoft as we are from Seattle.

As always we are just trying to provide you simple information for marketing your blogs and web sites. And, mixing in some shameful self promotion of us and our SEO services clients and marketing products of our strategic partners. Reminder, that is why I like blogging so much, and we created this free blogs site MyTypes.com. We found SEO advice all over the place, but we wanted to provide people a blogging tool, that would them actually SEO their blogs and websites. That is also why we finished our Marketing book, about the power of blogs for SEO and search marketing.

So we are going to plug in our web design St. Louis client, ArtWorksDesign.com, and we are also launching a sister blog at MyTypes.com/WebDesign where we will talk about the web design techniques especially as far as they relate to SEO. Last year we launched, GreenIsBetter.org for the energy saving infrared heaters, and air purifiers by Steril Air purifier. We think the web design blog will essentially lead to a portal or blogs or forums of sorts for SEO savvy web design topics. We have incorporated our end to end SEO and blogging techniques in our marketing book, so this should just be a continuation of those topics, only with more focus on web design.

As we started to sell SEO services a few years ago, we knew that we had to work with third party web design firms. The owners of the website simply did not have the capabilities to make the small changes needed to SEO the site. These minor changes have to do with proper Meta Tags, content and footer links. The majority of the web design companies now days know the basics of SEO, but SEO Services provide a lot of off-site services such as content and link popularity assets. This is why most companies large and small need to use an SEO services firm. Usually off-site SEO work will yield better results faster, once the basics are done. But, that is coming from Internet Marketing experts at MyTypes.com, we did write a marketing book on blogs, SEO, search and Social. But how well do we rank, you ask? We are only ranked top 10 in Google and other search engines for very competitive keywords, such as “Create a blog“, “Blogging”, “Free Blog“, “Wordpress SEO“, and we are usually ranked #6-#13 for “SEO“.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

High Page Rank Links are weighted higher than ever

We have been blogging about SEO strength and links, but never have the high PR links mattered more. In the recent past, sure volume of quality links could have improved your rankings, not as much any more. It really is more about the High PR links. Therefore, we are promoting our own blogs and marketing stuff here. Can you blame us?:-)

Not thinking about heaters in May

So why am I promoting blogs below on the marketing of our marketing book? because this Infrared Heater and Air Purifier blog has a page rank of 4 and it’s a valuable property, and any links from here help to rank other sites. Getting powerful links from blogs to your website is one of the key’s to getting high rankings. But, you already knew that, if you read our marketing book:-), enjoy the blog and buy the book if you want to promote your business on the Internet and especially Google. Don’t forget to buy air purifiers or Infrared heaters from our sister site at GreenIsBetter.org.

We are doing a test of a couple of titles of our marketing book, here is a blog I wrote about it in our SEO blogs. We know a thing or two about SEO services, SEO, blogs, and internet marketing/advertising and marketing, but we still don’t know what to name the marketing book. Here are the two names we are testing, one at Amazon, and the other on Lulu.com. I am very upfront, my favorite is the first, “Marketing & Motivation; in the Internet Era, learn the secret powers of blogs, search, and social marketing“, second is “Marketing is a Contact sport: make contact through blogs, SEO, search and social marketing“. Which one do you like better?

Just to do a plug for our SEO Services, Keith and Bennett are looking to get a few SEO services clients, if you know anyone looking to get ranked in the top 10 in Google check out our SEO Services area by clicking Here at SEO, or do a search on Google for the keyword “SEO” we are currently ranked #12, was #7 for a few days last week. We are obviously one of the 10 best SEO and search and Internet Marketing companies in the world.

A Marketing Book or book marketing ?

Book Marketing - Research Competing Title Sales And How To Market Books Online

The article above covers the topic of Marketing a book, which is dramatically different than “A Marketing Book“. It’s amazing how sequence of words can make a big difference. Some times keywords confuse us and don’t provide the proper search results, especially regarding “Marketing book“. So we have a marketing book, as titled above by our blog title, “Marketing & Motivation in the Internet era“. We just published it through Lulu and soon it will be on Amazon, within days, well actually it’s already there for it’s Kindle ebook format. That marketing book title is “Marketing is a Contact Sport; make contact through blogs, SEO, search and social marketing”. You can say we are doing a marketing research test to see which title sells. We are also promoting the book, to see what works, and looking for testimonials for the marketing book. We wanted to position the book not just for Internet Marketing, SEO, and Search marketing, but for the wholistic marketing view.

The article linked above on marketing a book talks about promotion via your website, and another top book marketing expert talks about blogs as a way to promote a book. Back in 2003 when I started blogging, I had heard of a woman getting a $Million+ contract for publishing a book. Maybe that was one of my motivations for blogging and working on my writing. I can’t express the value of blogs not just in book promotion, but in SEO and Internet Marketing as a whole. That is why we created the MyTypes blogging platform, and turned it in to a blog promotion and social marketing site to help people promote their blogs and build community. We really do go by the saying “No Blogger left behind”. We have been busy, providing SEO services to clients, and they all want to be #1. The cheapest and the best thing they can do is write smart blogs and do quality linking, you don’t need an SEO Services company to rank you high, unless you really have a very competitive keyword.

So many people ask me the secrets to SEO and search engine rankings, especially as we are ranked in the top 10 in Google for some major keywords. My answer is always to start blogging, and of course to get links. There really are not too many secrets, but there is a lot of work building content and links. Page Rank is becoming more and more important in the quality of links. So start blogging, keep blogging on our free blog system, and get others to provide link to your quality content. And, do yourself a favor buy the marketing book, it really will be the investment you will make. I mean it, well you will be doing me a favor to, so thanks!

Oh, it wouldn’t be a promotional SEO blog, If I didnt’ plug in one of our hot clients such as the Air purifiers from Steril Air Purifier, these are a hot item folks.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

SEO Truth is that Blogs drive content and SEO

I have not been blogging much lately, I was too busy finishing up our book, and publishing it. This is what I wrote on our free blog platform at Mytypes.com yesterday. The introduction to our Marketing book is included below, enjoy:

Sidney Poitier Writes a book, “Life beyond Measure”, one of my favorite actors, and he is on Larry King Live at this exact moment, wow.

We all love National Geographic in our family, and we just finished watching the special “Battle of Kruger”. This was the video of the Calf escaping the jaws of a crocodile and 6 lions. Type in “Battle of Kruger” in YouTube and you could watch the 8 minute video. It’s all about “No Buffalo left Behind” the mentality of the buffalo herd, incredible video of showcasing the Buffalo will”. Well that is what the narrator said on the NatGeo channel, said and of course we say “No Blogger Left Behind”, I had to mention this on our blogs. I also wanted to plug-in our newest SEO Services client, ArtworksDesign.com, and our self. The premier “web design St. Louis” firm, has already started to refer client to Bennett, our SEO Services sales expert. Obviously they are very happy that we got them ranked #5 on Google (for the keyword “Web Design St. Louis” ) within days of providing SEO Services, how did we do it so fast you say? You have to read the marketing book, and you can buy it on Amazon’s kindle. The paper back copy will be available soon.

Why NASCAR again, you ask? Well, I watched my second Nascar race this weekend, and my favorite driver one this one too. It was my kids favorite M & M Car, owned by favorite ex-NFL coach Joe Gibbs, and Kyle Busch, is the driver. Nascar is fun to watch, but it really is an example of how marketing and advertising are hammered home on every inch of the car, the hat(helmet) of the driver, and even their driving suit.

So that is my report, I am still in the final revisions of the marketing book. It did get done last week, but we have some time before the first copy gets finalized to ship. Well update for you I am writing this blog mainly because we published the marketing book, and our proof copy is on it’s way. Here is the Final Introduction, in case you want to read it:-). We are obviously very excited about it.

Introduction: Marketing is a CONTACT sport

Introduction:
Why Blogs, Search and Social Marketing
Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.
- Leo Burnett

I am surprised that most people don’t know about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), search engine marketing, and Internet Marketing. But, they all know about Google, Yahoo, and MSN, right? These terms and others like “Keyword” and “Adword” need to be defined for the ordinary individual, which we will do in the course of this book, but that is just the beginning of understanding the revolution that is taking place right under our keyboard. The field of Internet marketing has changed dramatically in the Web 2.0 era, and I wanted to write a book that would serve to bring people up to date on the subject.

This proved a challenge in itself though as things are changing so rapidly. In the short time I have been working on this manuscript I have had to revise as well as add significant things because of the rapid rate of change. This is why I realized that I would have to name the book version 2008.01, like a software release that is intended from the start to be updated. I saw that I had to make this book more interactive. I’ll keep it updated via my blog and then when enough material accumulates, or a really big event changes the landscape in a major way, I’ll release the next version, say v2008.02 or v2008.03. And, yes, I’ll also continue to re-write the existing work in order to sharpen and clarify it.

Beyond just keeping up to date though, there is a second, and more important aim of this book. Yes, I wanted to highlight the major trends such as blogs, SEO, Search and Social Networking, but I did not want to create a book just on the latest information on SEO, Blogs, or Social media. I saw the need for something beyond that. I wanted to show the comprehensive nature of the shift that is taking place on the Internet Marketing landscape. I call it Internet Marketing 2.0. Truly, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Only by understanding all these elements individually, and, more importantly, how all these elements interact to form something larger, can one begin to grasp the immensity of the shift that is Internet Marketing 2.0.

Let’s take a step back to how we got here. It’s been a struggle to name the book, as it can be for any author. In the first working title of the book, I tried to use the word “Secret” as in, “The Secret to your success”. I pictured using a beautiful woman in a veil on the cover. However, the word Secret has been over used a lot lately, and while I do love the movie, “The Secret”, my intent was not to play on it’s message. The idea behind using the word “Secret” had less to do with the movie than with the fact that the people in the Search Marketing and SEO worlds are very very, secretive. They always talk about SEO secrets, and the secrets of Google rankings etc. etc.

The truth is that these hidden secrets for attaining high Google rankings, overall search rankings and effective search marketing are simple, though the SEO guru’s want you to think otherwise. They’d much rather have you believe that it’s too technical for you to master with out them. It’s really not that hard though, and it’s time the secrets were unveiled! Read on!

There is no reason, you should have to pay thousands of dollars to techies and search marketing guru’s to do something you can do for your self. It’s as easy as blogging with the right keywords every day, though you do have to be willing to learn and implement the simple strategies on a regular basis. And therein lies a key secret: No discipline, no results. Another important area I wanted to help people to understand is that traditional marketing is not dead, but now that the new media of Internet Marketing and web 2.0 is not a pipe dream any more, traditional marketing must be understood differently. As you will later see that traditional brand building exercises such as Press Releases and write ups in major magazines and newspapers, can actually help with the best Internet Marketing 2.0 strategies. So really, it is not just the interaction between all the elements of Internet marketing 2.0, but also how they interact with traditional marketing. With out understanding all these in their combined synergy and power you can’t begin to grasp what is going on much less be an effective player in an emerging and rapidly changing field.

The biggest most powerful tool of Internet marketing is no longer email, it’s not the web 2.0 or social media marketing, and it’s not just blogs or websites either. If we keep it as simple and direct as possible, one thing stands above all else as the biggest marketing catalyst of today, that is: ”The Google Effect”. Search engine optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Internet Marketing in that order are subsets of each other. These will be the new measuring sticks and metrics of measurement used for every marketing campaign, and every marketing initiative.

But, wait Live Search from Microsoft and Yahoo got a big leg up this week! Well not really, their numbers are only getting smaller. But even if they do improve, they are just riding on the coat tails of the big G. Eventually Microsoft will likely come back. At present they are trying to buy Yahoo, and MS Live recently signed deals with Digg.com and Facebook.com, which are two of the top 5 leaders in the Social media giants of the internet.

While the world of marketing has changed dramatically due to Google and other search engines, the most important driver of change at present are blogs, which have changed the news landscape. Seattle Times the biggest paper in Seattle just announced that they are laying off 165 people this week. But changes like that are peripheral. Blogs and Social Media are going to make a much bigger shift. Watch as the multi-media convergence reaches into mobile phones with the iPhone and more. Consider live interactions that are not just one to one but one to many. Imagine getting your news, blogs, videos, audios, from other people down the street, not just CNN. All this will be have a huge impact through Google. Call it the “Exponential Google Effect”.

At a more fundamental level, Google is the great equalizer. The biggest change in the world of advertising has been Google’s Adwords, it has actually turned the world of advertising upside down, not just impacted online advertising. Adwords, or pay per click, allow anyone to target a specific search term for their advertising dollars. When that term is searched for, two types of links come up on the page. One is the “Natural” ranking. These are not paid for directly but come up as the most valuable sites

according to the Google algorithms. This natural rankings is what SEO (Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing) is all about. It might as well stand for Search Engine “Ranking” Optimization, which is what it really means.

The same results page for a specific search will however also include paid for links on the top banner and along the side bar. These paid for ads incur charges from Google for each and every time someone clicks on those links. Hence pay per click (or PPC) advertising and Search Engine Marketing.

What adwords does is make it easier for small business to buy keywords to market it’s products to people searching for contextual information and products. And contextual ads being mapped to search results is the magic formula that makes everyone happy. Never has it been so easy for small businesses to target global markets, and that is the true power of Search Engine marketing.

However just because Google is the first to give the small business a chance by it’s adwords product, does not mean it will be the best. Ebay and Amazon have initiatives that are very successful for small businesses to market their products on their Mega Marketplaces. Ebay haa a great social shopping community, and Amazon has gone much further than just book reviews by it’s shoppers. Shopping is a social activity and you will see major players such as FaceBook and Craigslist, impact the Internet Marketing in a bigger way than most of your biggest traditional marketing investments. Think of shopping as a natural extension of social networking. Think of the highly coveted youth demographic, they go to the mall as much to socialize as to

shop. It’s a natural fit. Imagine even today, a Craigslist ad gets ranked higher for a specific product search than a major merchant or your own website. Why is that? We will explain all of this, but back to Google for now.

When an individual, a potential consumer, is looking for information and the search engine (Google or otherwise) provides it, that search engine helps by providing the right information. But it is also delivering highly targeted advertising to exactly the right customer.

Can you imagine how much cheaper and how much more accountable and measurable this is compared to TV and radio. Essentially the advertising is going to people who are asking for it! Traditional advertising is crude in comparison. People are less and less willing to have advertisements pushed down their throat or into their eyes, or their ears. People prefer to look for information, when they want it and if the advertising fills their need, they will voluntarily go for it. Deep down, we are all treasure hunters and want to find the most unique and personally appropriate stuff. And this is where Google made the search results better and created this huge adwords industry out of Search Marketing.

In fact, according to SEMPO.org the industry size is supposed to be at $7.8Billion dollars. We are not a member of Sempo, but we support its mission. SEMPO’s Mission: SEMPO is a global non-profit organization serving the search engine marketing industry and marketing professionals engaged in it.

So how do you have eSuccess in search marketing results? Well, you have to read the whole book first. Oh, all right, not really . Here are some quick and very powerful tips.

Search Engines want to provide the best contextual related results to consumers, so should you. They target news related websites first, and blogs are considered news. Blogs are considered news because (well you already know this, right?), each blog post has a time stamp on it, just like a news release. And you have heard CNN mention the word Blogosphere how many times a day? So for a blog to be found as a search result, it has to be written with the proper keywords that are being searched for. But, how do you write unless you know the targeted keywords? Well, that is easy once you know the “secret”.

What is the most important market research data you will ever want and need? You have to go back to the Search engines and start with what people are searching for. Go to Google Adwords to find out. Find their “Traffic Estimator” within their tools section, which will give you the forecasted clicks for those key search terms, also known as keywords. So it’s a full circle, search engines provide the information you most need to be an effective marketing savvy blogger in their keyword analysis tools.

Why do they do this? Because they want you to advertise and generate sales for your business, the better they do this, the more people click on your ads and the more you will pay them. Who does this better than all the rest? Who else? Google, of course. But you knew that, because now you are getting it!

But this is just one of the many tools required for your eSuccess via Search marketing and for Internet marketing. The tool sets as a whole are referred to as SEO and SEM tools. This is what the professionals use, and you as a small business can learn these too, especially for free SEO tools site such as our LinkMint.com, SEOMoz.org, and others such as Word tracker. We have a commercial site, and actually built our own SEO Tools last year, they have always been free, and will continue to be. Visit mytypes.com!

But remember the most important SEO tools you have are tools that help you generate custom content such as blogs, videos by YouTube, photos by Flickr, profiles at FaceBook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. As important or more so is to combine these with Social media sites such as Digg, Technorati, Delicious, and others which are essential to you promoting your content at the same time you are promoting them.

I have been studying search marketing and SEO since 2003, and have been blogging steadily since the same time. Why did I continue to blog, even though I had nothing to write. Because I knew the “secret” (here’s another one!) and that is that it’s easy to get over looked.

Blogging is the best way to SEO and search market for your products and services. So this makes Blogging the best SEO tool on the market, And to do it right, you have to blog often and with the proper keywords. Most people don’t know how to blog properly. We will help you write the best blogs and promote your blogs in this book.

Social Networking is a hot topic in the last 12 months due to the popularity of FaceBook. In the business social networking world, the leader is LinkedIn. Believe it or not MySpace has one of the biggest business groups, and it’s marketing power is certainly hot when targeting teens and the entertainment business. There are also other important social media sites, that have communities of their own, and are a subset of social networking such as Digg, Technorati, Mashup.com and Ning.

I joined my first Social Networking site called Tribe.net back in 2004, I actually got a couple of editors from the site to help me with this book. I have experienced the benefit of Social networking first hand. Social Networking as a whole is one of the biggest drivers of Web 2.0, and the degree to which it will help you grow you business is still unfolding.

But the most important thing is, that Social Networks will help you make friends, influence people and connect with prospects and customers. We believe blogs are at the heart of helping you develop community via content and helping you promote your business. And, Social networking sites are a great way to help you promote your blogs. Word of mouth, in the modern era is much more powerful and faster via these social networks, and we discuss “How to win friends and influence people” with the classic proven methods of Dale Carnegie, the author who first published a book on the subject. That book was required reading in my business school, and I recommend that you pick up that book, as the age old principles still apply and are just as important as ever.

That’s SEO, SEM, and IM in a nutshell, but we will go a step further. What you don’t remember those acronyms? SEO is Search Engine Optimization, which targets your ranking on the Organic (or Natural) Search Results and has nothing to do with ads. SEM is Search Engine Marketing, which includes pay per click advertisements such as Google’s Adwords. IM is Internet Marketing, and for our purposes it includes blogs, blogging, and promotion of your blogs and profiles on social networking and social media sites such as Digg, Facebook, and others. We close the book with the big Why? Marketing is really about motivation, motivating your clients to act on your proposition and to buy your products and services. We also talk about our motivation of why we wrote the book, to help you motivate yourself to achieve your dreams through the power of Marketing.

So, in summary, you need to know the particulars of how each of these aspects works and we will show you that in this book. But more importantly, you will learn what you really need to understand: the why and the HOW of making all these pieces fit together for the business and life altering marketing results you are after!

Thursday, May 01, 2008

SEO vs SEM we favor SEO obviously

I am working on a bigger post on SEO versus SEM, so be patient. But, I get this question from a lot of people, should I SEO first or focus on Adwords and SEM? The key difference between SEM and SEO is that SEM includes Advertising, and mainly advertising on search engines, which makes it Search Engine Marketing. There are main differences such as SEM is very expensive in the long term, SEO takes longer, but they both have something in common. Which is?

SEM and SEO both have to optimize keywords, and do a lot of keyword analysis. The ability to target keywords is the key, to change them, and to make sure the most appropriate keywords are being used. SEM has higher click through rates, and faster Return on Investment. But, SEO has a great returns if/when you get ranked in an ethical manner in the top 5 on Google. It's very important to know that the base commonality of SEO and SEM is the same, which is Keyword Analysis. SEM is very easy to execute, Google Adwords and eFrontier or Aquantive from Microsoft can help you optimize your Ad campaigns. SEO (search engine optimization) is a very difficult and time consuming process. It's very difficult to master, much more than SEM. Enough of the not so long SEO vs SEM post hunh? I can't stop writing, I love writing blogs:-).

SEO vs SEM here is the big key, when you rank in the top 10 for a keyword, and you advertise on the same page on Google for that keyword, guess what happens? My experience with the above example is validated and confirmed with SEM managers who spend millions on Google Ads.

Now for some shameless promotion of our friends companies such as thePS company,PF our clients such as Cross Jewelry and Designer Jewelry by LoveRelic.com, and our own Silver Jewelry properties. And, let's not forget the great Green Products site, Greenisbetter.org which sells energy Infrared Heaters and one of the best brands of Air Purifiers on the market. I can't believe I am involved in selling products such as air purifiers and infrared heaters, but since they are energy saving and good for our health, I am actually excited about it. For a not so similar reason, I am equally excited about my friend's company PS which has one of Web's largest PS databases. For a a very competitive keyword Silver Jewelry we are also inching up and moved to #14 on the big G.

Why are we promoting these sites on our blogs? Hello, we are an SEO Services company that is the business we are in? We have to SEO these clients and writing about them on our blogs is the what we get paid to do. But more importantly, we have to provide valuable content to you our readers, and I believe we do a good job of that. Thanks for reading!

SEO Truth, SEO Blogs, from SEO Consultants @MyTypes.com