How Much SEO Do You Need To Get Top Rankings?

By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009

Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions, perpetuated by

industry SEO experts, is that a website must follow perfect SEO

strategies to get top rankings. While adhering to simple common

SEO standards does help the search engines both find and index

your site more quickly, it doesn’t guarantee by any stretch of

the imagination that following those SEO guidelines will propel

your site to the top of the rankings.
If only search engine optimization was that easy!
No doubt, there are some SEO faux pas that will do harm to

your site’s rankings, especially in Google, the ultimate

hall-monitor all puffed up and ready to pounce on any

misbehaving webmaster. Things such as keyword stuffing, keyword

spamming or linking out to bad neighborhoods such as link farms,

pharmaceutical or gambling sites may get you blacklisted.
But how much SEO do you need? How much search engine

optimization do you need to get top rankings? Do you need a

whole lot or do you need very little SEO?
Actually, after 10 years of marketing online, the answer to that

question varies depending upon what you’re trying to accomplish

with your SEO efforts? If you’re operating an online business in

a very competitive (read lucrative) market, SEO will be high on

your agenda as you go about annihilating your competition.
Even if you’re an ordinary webmaster or website owner you’re

probably fussing over your rankings in the search engines. The

higher the rankings you achieve for your chosen keywords; the

more traffic you will get. Good quality traffic that converts

well into loyal subscribers and fans of your site.
Many webmasters and companies spend thousands of dollars each

month in order to get their keywords and sites up to the top of

the list. If you’re into affiliate marketing, your daily income

will rise and fall almost parallel to your rankings. Now, if my

earnings increase, I know automatically my rankings have gone

up, usually in Google. If my earnings go down, I know my

rankings have gone south. Some times even a drop or rise of one

place on the first page SERPs will affect how much you earn.
Obviously, because of this fact, SEO or how well I am optimized

for the search engines is extremely important to me. I am

constantly building quality links and quality content for my

sites. Some keyword battles you win, some battles you lose. I

have been fighting some keyword battles for over 3 or 4 years

now!
But how much SEO is enough? How much SEO should you do with your

sites? Many webmasters make sure all their on page set-up or

lay-out is done exactly to what the SEO experts say you should

do. This is not a bad idea. Make sure your Title, URL,

Headlines, Keyword Density… are all laid out right. These are

things we can control and adjust to meet the SEO standards.
Other SEO or ranking factors are much harder to predict, many of

them are simply out of our control. How other sites link to us,

what they put in the anchor text, what they say about us…

simply things we can’t control.
I believe the over-riding reason why your site is listed at the

top of any rankings has to do with the number, the quality and

the quantity of sites linking back to your page. The higher the

number of related quality one-way links you have flowing back to

your site, the higher it will perform in the rankings. Your

anchor text is very important (underlined part of a link); it

must contain your keywords or variations of it. The content on

the linking page should also be related to your chosen keywords.
Get this part right and you will get high rankings.
Or at least this has been my experience – all the other ranking

factors do count but this is the over-riding factor in my

opinion.
Another major ranking factor lately, has been the importance

Google is placing on social media links. Get your content to the

first page of Digg with lots of diggs and it will rank high in

Google. This is not surprising when you consider the nature of

these social bookmarking sites… it really is an actual “vote”

for the quality of your content. Getting Delicious bookmarks has

a similar positive effect.
Another prominent factor, from my observations, is having your

major keyword in your Domain Name. Use hyphens if you want but

having those keywords in there, does help rather than hinder

your rankings.
Now if you’re wondering about how Google ranks pages or your

keywords…. Google has around 200 ranking factors (with filters

and penalties thrown in to make all our lives interesting) which

it uses to rank your keywords/pages. This is still the best

online resource that lists all of Google’s ranking factors:

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm
Now the question still remains, how much SEO do you need? How

much time should you spend at optimizing, building links,

worrying your head off over the latest Google Itch?
The answer always comes back to quality content. Create a site

that has quality content and the SEO will take care of itself.

People will link to your site, you will get bookmarks in all the

social media sites, Google will find your content and rank it.

Your SEO will grow naturally as your site grows. Keep building

more pages, keep targeting more and more related keywords in

your niche or subject area and you will get higher rankings.
Now, of course, some webmasters are a little more aggressive in

how quickly they want their rankings to rise to the top of the

search engines. Here’s something you can do if you want to go

into the SEO battle full-force.
1. Download SEOquake (http://www.seoquake.com/) and place this

free SEO toolbar plug-in on your Firefox (or I.E.) browser.
2. Go to Google and type in the keyword or keyword phrase you’re

targeting with your site or content.
3. Click on the number one ranking and observe how many pages it

has indexed, PageRank, how many backlinks it has, age of the

site… and so on.
4. Then click the page info button and study all the on-page

factors this site has and notice what it’s doing with its page

and keyword density lay-out.
5. Check all the backlinks this site has in the different search

engines. Copy or try to get the same backlinks for your site

that your competitor has acquired. Then get more backlinks

and/or higher quality backlinks than your competitor.
6. Watch your rankings rise…
Just a few more words of wisdom and we’re done. Some battles

will be too tough to fight, the competition will be so stiff you

just can’t compete. Other battles will take a long time; months,

even years before you rise to the top. Your best bet is to

choose long-tail (multi-worded) keywords that have little or no

competition. You can rise to the top within days, even hours.

The sweet thing is this: long-tail keywords are often the most

lucrative and bring in the most sales. For in the final

analysis, you just don’t want SEO, you want smart SEO. And you

will quickly learn, most times you can often out-smart your

competition, even if you can’t out-rank them.

Blogs, WordPress and Google

It’s no secret that a continually updated website with new content being added regularly stands a good chance of doing well in Google. One of the long standing methods to regularly expand a site’s content is through the use of a blog.

While there are numerous platforms to choose from for managing a blog, few can compare with the immense flexibility offered with WordPress, and at a cost of free, the price can’t be beat either.

Google likes fresh new content, and setting up a blog on your site, assuming it is updated often with interesting and relevant material, can be one of the best things you can do to help out your search rankings. The beauty behind WordPress is that there is a wide array of totally free plug-ins you can easily install that will make your blog totally search engine friendly.

The following are some basic guidelines and essential plug-ins you should consider when you install your WordPress blog.

Template Design

The first configuration you need to do is work on customizing the design template to match your existing site. I suggest finding a template that matches as closely as possible to the look you are going for then work on tweaking its graphics, colors, and other particulars till you achieve the desired appearance.

Most of your changes will occur in the header.php, footer.php, index.php, and page.php files in the theme editor, however, the theme you install will dictate which files actually need to be updated. You will also need to make some adjustments to your CSS file. These changes all involve working with code and graphics, and are most likely left to a professional.

Once you have your design set up, the rest of the customization is considerably less technical. The following are suggestions that most people can do themselves and you probably will not need an expert to help you here.

Settings

Permalinks
The next thing you need to do is customize your URL’s. You do not want the default post URLs (”pageid=#”) as they are simply not search friendly and you want your default names to have some meaning to them. While you can customize your URL’s with various plug-ins, you may not always think to do this, so be sure to have a default you can live with.

Under the settings tab in your dashboard, clíck on permalinks. Here I suggest choosing one of the settings that includes the post name. Including the month and year is totally optional as it will have little to no impact on your search rankings, but you definitely do want to include the post name.

WWW or no WWW
With WordPress, there is no need to worry about the www vs no www redirects. It is handled for you, but you do need to select which variation you want, and it’s very simple to do. Under “General Settings” you will see two fields; one for “WordPress address” and the other, “Blog address”. Ensure that both these fields include the “www” (or not), whichever you prefer, and that’s it. (I always recommend using the “www” version of your URL as most people linking into your site will use it, and this will help keep a consistency among your site.

Required Plug-ins

There is an almost endless supply of free plug-ins out there that you can add to your site ranging from photo galleries and spam protection, to social media integrators for Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and others. While many of these others will benefit your blog and search rankings, the XML Sitemap, and SEO plug-ins are truly essential.

SEO Plug-in
When setting up your new installation, the first plug-in you need to install is one that will allow for totally customized title, meta description tags, and page URL’s. There are a number of tools that do this ranging from the widely popular “All in One SEO Pack” to a relative newcomer “HeadSpace2″.

While I personally have yet to try HeadSpace2, it is high on my líst, as it has been recommended by many industry professionals as the best WordPress SEO plug-in. For any new blog installation I highly recommend this plug-in be installed right away.

XML Sitemap Plug-in
To the best of my knowledge, HeadSpace2 does not have an XML sitemap option, and as such I highly recommend “Google XML Sitemaps” . This plug-in will automatically generate XML sitemaps for you on the fly and submit it to Google every time you add, delete, or update a page or post. This helps ensure that Google has the latest information at all times. It’s a very simple plug-in to install and configure and once setup, you can forget about it and it will do the job for you.

A well optimized site loaded with relevant content can do very well in Google if setup correctly. The power of WordPress can make this process incredibly easy so all you have to worry about is writing those great articles and selling your customers. The plug-ins and functionality of WordPress are endless and when installed correctly can make the optimization of your blog considerably easier, increasing your chances for top rankings.

About The Author

Scott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Scott’s articles and those of the veteran StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com, Tel – 250-385-1190, Toll Free – 877-385-5526, Fax – 250-385-1198

Bringing Social Networking and texting together.

ChatToText is the world’s first application that allows anyone you want to chat with you from virtually anywhere on the internet, straight to your cell phone. You can add our app to your social network page (Facebook, Bebo, and soon MySpace), or people can find you through chattotext.com directly. You’ll get html code that you simply copy and paste to put ChatToText on any web property. Have your site visitors click the link to send a message to your cell phone that you can reply to.

Features include: The ability to turn your chat window on and off. The ability to set a schedule of chat availability. The ability to save your chat history. The ability to customize your chat window with your photo and more.

ChatToText costs $5.99/month for unlimited text chatting through as many social networks as we support (currently Facebook and Bebo…MySpace and others coming soon) and any web pages, blogs, or emails you want to add it to.

Improve Every Aspect
of Your Business With Twitter!
By Abe Cherian (c) 2009

You’ve seen countless articles and e-books written about it, but do you know how to market online with Twitter? If you don’t, you’re not alone. Most marketers are still boggled when it comes to using Twitter in their promotion efforts. The main reason is because marketers don’t realize the sheer ingenuity of our favorite microblog’s 140-character limit communication. The reality is that the internet is information overload for most people. The genius of Twitter is that communication is forced into small chunks of information which most people can willingly digest. Presented with the option, people are more inclined to read a sentence or two as opposed to a long, involved blog entry or email! In this article, I will demonstrate how Twitter can not only be used by your business for marketing purposes, but also for customer service, product development, free publicity, and valuable access to experts!

Twitter for Marketing

If marketing entails everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers, including all communication, relationship building, and brand recognition – Twitter makes it instant.

For this reason, it is the perfect social networking platform for announcing sales, specials, and promotions. Many larger companies, such as Dell, have a Twitter account to announce sales as soon as they become available. As a small business owner, you can harness the power of Twitter this way too!

If you can get hundreds, or even thousands of people interested in your niche to follow your company’s tweets, you have a targeted list of prospects at your fingertips. Simply tweet a brief detail or two about the special, and include your link. It’s that simple!

A list of businesses on Twitter:

http://www.twibs.com

As a marketer, you know that the speed at which you can get your message out to your potential clients before your competition can reach them essentially determines your success. Twitter affords marketers the advantage of communicating with thousands of new prospects at the speed of light, and allows them to see your offer in real time.

Twitter for Customer Service

Many companies are designating human resources and time exclusively to enhance their customer service via social networking. Companies can find out the challenges, questions, and troubles that their clients are facing by reading their tweets to others.

Customer service representatives or public relations liaisons can immediately resolve any problems by engaging themselves in the conversation. Customer service representatives who engage their clientele via Twitter improve their company’s transparency, and show that they not only are concerned about their customers, but they also care about their brand.

Twitter for Product Development

Twitter can be used as an instant survey tool for product development. You can simply ask the likes and dislikes of others with a simple tweet and can incorporate or improve your current products or services.

It’s catching on. In fact, software development corporation Eclipse is working on a Twitter plug-in called Twitterclipse, which will tweet announcements, findings and questions within their development team. It is faster and more convenient than email, and also avails an RSS feed for posting their development updates within the Eclipse website.

Twitter for Free Publicity and Brand Awareness

As you know, free publicity is priceless – and it can be difficult for a small business to get access to the media. Companies regularly pay millions of dollars to imprint their brand in the minds of prospective clients.

With Twitter’s personalization features you can place your brand or company logo on your Twitter page. Because of the viral nature of Twitter, traffic and publicity comes for free.

People will associate your Tweets with your company, and their trust will grow in your products and services.

Twitter Gives You Access to Important People

No other media gives you direct access to leaders in your market like the internet does. Twitter gives you personal access to leaders and mentors that you have only ever dreamed of connecting with.

I bet you didn’t think you would ever get the chance to be 1-on-1 with Brian Tracy on Twitter, right?

http://twitter.com/BrianTracy

or how about Frank Kern the 9th worst Surfer in the US

http://twitter.com/masscontrolkern

—
Editor’s Note: Several Twitter related sites provide a means to identify Twitter users in your geographical area or relevant to your business:

http://mrtweet.net
http://www.twellow.com
http://justtweetit.com
http://www.twitterlocal.net
—

Simply follow them, and open up the channels of communication with your tweets! The leaders of your field impart valuable knowledge that you can apply to your online business, and can be a great source of free marketing tips.

Improve Every Aspect Of Your Business With Twitter!

Twitter is extremely simple, but this fact also adds to its versatility. You may not realize the effect of Twitter on your business when your followers are at a single digit – but just imagine the scope of your business reaching tens of thousands of followers! Many online businesses are using Twitter now… what are you waiting for?

Time to Follow the Create Wealth On The Internet Twitter Channel

http://twitter.com/CreateWealth2da

About The Author
Abe Cherian is the founder and CEO of AdClickMedia.com, an online advertising network and a subsidiary of Multiple Stream Media.

“Site conversion” is a dull way of saying “how to get more profits from the same amount of website traffic.” And Who doesn’t want to get more profit from the same number of visitors?

Increasing your conversion rate is a straightforward, even dramatic way of positively impacting your bottom line. It really cannot be emphasized too much that any improvement at all in your conversion rate means additional revenue that is total profit.

Remember this when you are told that the way to “make more money” is to invest in more traffic-generating schemes (and dreams, at times). Before you start spending more money to generate additional traffic, you need to do as much as you can to make sure the traffic you are getting is being converted as well as they can. By making sure your site conversions are maximized, you will have a more accurate track of visitors to conversions to optimize.

The following tips are not in any particular order (except for Number 1), and can be modified and reordered to suit your particular situation. Take ownership of the change and improvement, and make sure everyone involved understands the importance of maximizing every revenue source, beginning with the existing ones!

1: Before you can repair or improve something, you have to have a good way of measuring where you are, what you’re doing, where you’re going, etc. You can sign up for a free Google Analytics account and use other low- and no-cost tools to develop your “analytics” and “metrics” – essentially fancy words that tell you how you’re doing with numbers.

2: Create landing pages that are both keyword- and campaign-specific. Try separating any related pay-per-click keywords into smaller and tighter groups, and then create the landing pages for each of those new subgroups. Conversions will almost certainly be better if keywords, advertising approaches and landing pages are thematically related and tightly integrated.

3: Test different headlines and copy writing. This might be the most effective way of quickly showing improvements. Therefore, you need to write compelling copy or find someone else who can do it for you. There is plenty of free advice about this (much of it worth every penny you pay for it), but the importance of copywriting as it affects site conversions cannot possibly be overstated. This is key.

4: It is very important to test your pricing, as it really does make a huge difference in conversions. If your goal is to maximize customer value, then the highest converting price may not actually be the optimal one. In other words, if you raise your price by 50% and only see a 10% reduction in conversions, you will more than compensate for the drop. Going the other direction, if you lower the price 15% and this doubles or triples your ratio, your gain compensates for your price reduction. Test your prices, and test them in both directions.

5: Website load time has become an oft-overlooked item in this age of “broadband everywhere.” Load time is critically important in reducing your “bounce rate” on landing pages. There are various online services that will measure your load speed (websiteoptimization.com), and when you know what it is, you can reduce it by compressing images, removing redundant items, optimizing your style sheets (CSS) and HTML code, and so on. The referenced website will also give you advice on other ways to improve your site’s load speed.

6: Clearly identify the sales path(s) and discard any points of resistance, or bottlenecks. Even if you have just a single product, there may be a number of different “paths” that lead to a sale. Perhaps you have a landing page to acquire visitor contact data, which then takes them to a sales page, and then to an order page, and so on. Check your metrics and analytics carefully and you should start seeing patterns in how your visitors navigate your site. If you can see when, where and how visitors are leaving the site, you can delete unnecessary steps, enhance the sales copy or the “call to action,” insert a few testimonials, emphasize your warranty or something else to capture that business. Do everything you can to keep the sales process simple and straightforward. The less confusing it is, the less resistance visitors will display.

7: Let your praises come from others’ lips. Sometimes talking about oneself can sound egotistical, and it has been clearly proven that third-party testimonials boost conversions. In marketing it is called “social proof” when you bring in statements and assessments from others to buttress your message. If you add testimonials – short blurbs, highlighted quotes, letters – to your various landing pages, sales pages and even shopping cart pages, you will almost invariably notice an improvement in your conversion rate.

8: You need to understand the mind of your market, and your customer’s experience with your website. Place an order on the site yourself as you step into the mind of a first-time visitor. Identify the hang-ups, inefficiencies and confusing or missing components that hinder your conversions. In concert with step #6 above, you want to identify why you are not converting, so that you can make the necessary improvements, whatever they may be, to improve your ratio.

9: Some people believe passionately in the power of media on landing, sales and order pages to raise conversions considerably. Others are not convinced, and there is not much hard data from controlled studies to consult. You should consider testing this idea yourself. You should try pages both with and without automatic play engaged. The idea is to lower buyer resistance, and if media helps, all the better. Music, motion graphics and video do add life and personality to your website, but there is a “sweet spot” (balancing point) and the fact remains that different age and cultural groups respond differently to the media. You need to make changes here in the context of your site’s demographics. You wouldn’t put rock music on your page of ladies’ perfumes, probably – unless you have a 20-something demographic and it’s a signature fragrance from U2 or some other chart-topping band.

Aren’t most of these lists called the “top 10″ this or that? You can count this tip as a bonus, then: Keep track of everything you do! Nothing “goes without saying” anymore, so you are hereby reminded that all your hard work can go for nothing if you do not keep good records of what changes you are making, when, where, why and how. Chart your progress, review it regularly and don’t be afraid to make continuing refinements as you move along your strategic path.

Finally, as a “super bonus tip” – use some kind of sales accelerator, “offer intensifier” or other method to move people faster through the sales process. It could be a special “one time” or “limited time” offer, a limited quantity offer or even a “special event” promotion. Research what’s going on at other sites in your industry and others, and stay abreast of what seems to be working. Add your creativity to the mix, tailor things to your company’s situation and you should start seeing increased conversion rates in short order.

Powered by ScribeFire.