James' SEO Blog» SEO

The 1st Page of Google for “SEO Blog” Pt.2

James Harrison — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:44:08 +0000

Hey guys, in my last post about the 1st page of Google for SEO blog, I took a snapshot of the 1st page of Google for the term SEO blog and pointed out a couple things I noticed about the competition. One thing I mentioned was how dynamic the 1st page of Google was/is. Well, here’s proof; snapshots of Google’s 1st page for the keyword “SEO blog” over the past 4 days.

SEO Blog – SATURDAY (4/10/2010)

SEO Blog – SUNDAY (4/11/2010)

SEO Blog – MONDAY (4/12/2010)

SEO Blog – TUESDAY (TODAY)

Every single day the results change. In fact, according to my SERP tracker, my site has seen the 1st page a couple times in the last few weeks. I’ll catch it one day and snapshot it.

Remember how aggressive I was saying the competition was being when they only had “SEO blog” in their title tags..? It looks like it’s working, no? Sometimes it pays to be aggressive in the SEO world. But doesn’t it seem like the title tags should be used to distinguish your site from the rest and to allure clicks?

The 1st Page of Google for “SEO Blog”

James Harrison — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 06:48:44 +0000

Google’s 1st SERP (search engine results page) for the term “SEO blog” is insane. It’s one of the most dynamic first pages of Google I’ve seen in a while. Every day, the positions change, title tags change ,and the competitors get more aggressive. Lovely…, this playing field is much more fun than the ones that normally take weeks to months to even see a change.

As many of my readers know, I’m trying to get on that crazy 1st page for the key phrase “seo blog”. And as most SEO’s know, examining the competition is a MUST. A couple things I’ve noticed that I wanted to point out is the importance of the title tag, and how the 1st page of Google for the term “SEO blog” is a bumpin’ dance floor.

As mentioned in past posts (Title Tags, SEO & Samples & Title Tags Change Search Engine Rankings), the title tags are everything. Well, not everything. But they can determine a huge portion of the value of your efforts. In other words, if you work them right, the title tags could be one of your best weapons.

Here is a snapshot of the 1st page of Google for “SEO Blog”.

First and foremost, notice how EVERY website has “SEO blog” in their title tags.

Now, notice how 4 of the top 10 websites have aggressively made their title tags ONLY “SEO Blog”. There are many reasons behind why those blogs chose to do that. But the main one is because; the only real term those particular pages are targeting is “SEO Blog”. Now for me, I can’t do that. My blog is more than just an “SEO blog”, it’s an SEO blog by James Harrison, a San Diego SEO consultant.

1/2 of the pages saying only SEO blog are actually internal blog sections of their SEO site. So theoretically, if that’s what it is, then that’s what it is. BUT, even Google has acknowledged that that is not the way to write your title tags by running themselves through their own SEO analysis/report card. Look on pages 4-7, Google has decided that they should make more use of their own title tags.

“Give the search user important clues about the page”

Google Report Card

Are my SEO Blog competitors being too aggressive?

But anyway, I just wanted to point out how aggressive some of the sites are getting in hopes for the term “SEO blog”. Well, that’s enough for today. I’ll provide a full post on the dynamics of the 1st page of Google for SEO blog this weekend.

Remember, I’m a 1-man show competing with agencies of bloggers. (I am open to guest posts, by the way.)

San Diego SEO Group at LinkedIn – JOIN!

James Harrison — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 04:54:33 +0000

I’ve just come to find out that I am a manager of a somewhat used-to-be dead LinkedIn group called San Diego SEO. Up until recently, there hasn’t been much action. Originally the group was dead because we had strict rules for who could join. (You pretty much had to be a San Diego SEO). But that didn’t work. So as suggested by other members in the group, we decided to expand..

If you at all want to talk SEO, join the San Diego SEO group today. I’ll post my share of findings and spread the word, and I hope my fellow member do too.

Now that I know that I’m one of the managers, I figured I’d pay my part. All questions asked in the San Diego SEO LinkedIn Group will automatically be sent to my email. As soon as I get a chance, I’ll be sure give my 2 cents.

I hope to make more friends with some of you. You can connect with me on LinkedIn Here.

*If any of the original members stumble across this post, let me know. I have a few questions for you..

SEO Tracking Tools by EasySEOTracking.com

James Harrison — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:44:32 +0000

Today I would like to review the tools that will help you to answer the questions that SEO specialists ask during their everyday work:

Does my site appear in Google search results?
Did my site appear in search results previously?
How does my latest changes affect the overall SEO project?
Why do my competitors appear in the first positions on Google’s search results?

Does my site appear in Google search results?

You can check it by going to Google SERPs Checker, enter the keywords and your site URL:

As a result – the information on a position in Google search results will appear.

Did my site appear in search results previously?

To get more information on your current and previous position you need to Create an Account and enter the keywords and URL from the example above:

As the keywords and URL are entered the application checks the position of the URL in Google search results and creates a graphic with current any previous data.

How does my latest changes affect overall SEO project?

Let’s say you have a page named ‘big red car’. It appears in Google search result when users enter ‘big red car’ keywords. It also appears in the results when users enter ‘big car’.

So far so good. Let’s say you create a new page named ‘big blue car’. The ‘big red car’ no longer appears when users enter ‘big red car’ because the page ‘big blue car’ appears now. This effect is also called ‘keyword cannibalization’ (“Oh my god! Red car is eaten by blue car!”).

Google SERPs Checker allows you to monitor such side effects by providing the following parameters for each set of the keywords:

Average Keyword Position:
Let’s say ‘big blue car’ keywords are at the first position in Google and ‘big red car’ are at the second. The average keyword position in this case is 1.5
Count:
Number of keywords that make your site appears in top 50 Google search results.
First Page Keywords:
Keywords that cause your site appear at the first page in Google search results (most important keywords).

Now let’s go back to our example with cars. The SEO specialist can monitor the parameters above to find out such effects (it is also called ‘keyword cannibalization’).

For example if today ‘Average Keyword Position’ is 200 and yesterday it was 5, it is safe to say that something goes wrong and it is time to make some changes.

Why my competitors appear at the first positions in Google search results?

Google SEO Recommendation will provide an answer for this question. Enter the required parameters – and this service will be happy to assist.

Let’s say we want to beat our competitor seomoz.org. We start with the following:

We enter the keyword ‘SEO’, because we want to found out who is better optimized for this keyword.
We enter our URL.
We enter URL of our competitor.

The application provides us with the following recommendations:

So, today we have reviewed 2 services that allows you to enhance you site by providing information on your current SEO status. There are other cool applications that can be found at Easy SEO Tracking site.

Let me know if it helps for you!

OrangeSoda Offers SEO through American Express

James Harrison — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:10:26 +0000

American Express the popular credit card provider is now providing SEO services (serivce page) for businesses looking to get their site seen at the top of popular search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Big, etc.).

Now you may wonder how and why is American Express offering SEO services? How is a credit card company going to help improve my rankings? Well the answer to that is..

American Express isn’t really the company offering the SEO services, OrangeSoda is. It seems as if American Express has partnered or affiliated with OrangeSoda, and is just acting as a middle man.

Quotes from Page..

Flexible, Affordable and Backed by Expert Support

American Express’ consulting team will help you interpret your customer analysis and turn that information into a focused marketing plan

We then connect you to OrangeSoda to demystify the process of setting up a Search campaign to enhance your placement in the Sponsored Links, Maps section and/or Standard Search area

You get a customized Search campaign based on your goals and budget, and receive ongoing consultation from OrangeSoda

You can track your results 24/7 on your personal dashboard from Orange Soda

So, to me it seems like you might as well go straight through OrangeSoda and avoid middle man fees. But I don’t know what type of deal they’ve worked, so maybe going through American Express has it’s advantages, either financially or based on great company merits like reputation, age of company, size of organization, support, etc. Maybe going through American Express get’s you double the SEO..??

Whatever the case may be. I thought it was pretty interesting (and admirable) that OrangeSoda was able to workout a partnership with American Express, who I’m sure can generate valuable leads fast!

Leveraging Your Strongest Pages through Internal Linking

James Harrison — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:54:12 +0000

Like with a backlink building campaign where we aim to get as many relevant and popular links to boost or rankings, we’ll utilize the strongest pages we have within our site to boost our homepage’s rankings.

In a strategic link building campaign the goal is to get as many links that will vouch for our keywords from as many popular and relevant sites possible. So we must try to get links from sites that are ultra relevant to ours based on their theme and keywords, as well as sites that are popular in our community based on buzz and backlinks. Because afterall, search engine rankings are based on relevance AND popularity.

Just like we would with an off page link building campaign, we’ll have to discover our most relevant and popular pages within our site and add links containing our target keywords (pointing to the homepage) to each of them.

Let’s get started.

First, let’s find my top 10 (SEO Blog-relevant) pages according to Google.

site:jameseo.com “seo blog”

This searches my site jameseo.com for my top 10 pages for “SEO Blog”. Googles rankings are based on time, backlinks, trust, relevancy and many other factors, so the mix of sites could change. But currently my top pages are;

jameseo.com/wordpress-seo-to-be-a-top-seo-blog/
jameseo.com/plugins-i-installed-for-wordpress-seo-blog-optimization/
jameseo.com/wordpress-seo-to-be-a-top-seo-blog-2
jameseo.com/blog/san-diego/
jameseo.com/wordpress-seo-to-be-a-top-seo-blog-3/
jameseo.com/onpage-seo-title-tags-change-search-engine-rankings/
jameseo.com/my-10-most-popular-blog-posts/
jameseo.com/blog/james-harrison/
jameseo.com/posterous-fw-seo-analyst-job-in-new-york-ny/

I could just do a site:jameseo.com search to find my top 10 pages overall. But for this scenario, I’m targeted the keyword “SEO Blog”.

Pages with Most Inlinks According to Google

If you sign into your Google Webmaster tools and look at your dashboard, you can see your top pages with the most inlinks. Record those URL’s as well.

seo-resources/
wordpress-seo-to-be-a-top-seo-blog/
back-link-building-checklist-cheatsheet-guide-07-08/
6-call-attempts-for-better-lead-conversion/
plugins-i-installed-for-wordpress-seo-blog-optimization/
13-search-operators-ultimate-link-building/
flickr-seo-optimizing-your-flickr-account-photos/
blog-commenting-search-list/
re-directing-user-based-on-their-geo-graphical-location/

By now, you should have two lists, with some pages listed in both.

The 3^rd place we’ll fetch for our best pages to leverage is in our Bing Webmaster Center.

Once you are in you website’s section, click the ‘Keywords’ tab and type in your target keyword. (In my case; seo blog.) Bing will deliver your 10 most keyword relevant pages (to your target keyword) according to their algorithm.

http://jameseo.com/tag/seo-blog/
http://jameseo.com/contact/
http://jameseo.com/plugins-i-installed-for-wordpress-seo-blog-optimization/
http://jameseo.com/blog/seo/
http://jameseo.com/microsoft-seo-from-them-themselves/
http://jameseo.com/title-tags-seo-samples/
http://jameseo.com/blog-commenting-search-list/
http://jameseo.com/6-call-attempts-for-better-lead-conversion/
http://jameseo.com/link-building-expert-tips-backlink-reporting/

Execution

Now that I have a list of my top “SEO blog” pages, I will paste the following quote to the bottom of each post/page.

I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my SEO blog. I really do appreciate it. You can read another related post (found below) or subscribe here. Once again, thank you for visiting James’ SEO blog.

If you visit any of these pages, they will now have a “SEO Blog” link within each post pointing back to the homepage.

Now the majority of all the juice and SEO blog relevance my site carriers is channeled to my homepage.

Wordpress SEO to Be a Top SEO Blog #3

James Harrison — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:44:34 +0000

The previous post in this series was regarding running my blog through the SEO Workers’ Analyzer Tool and the Website Grader Tool and discovering what points my site fell sort on. I also analyzed my blog’s theme based on keyword density. In this post just as the top sites in this industry have already done, I’ll focus on completing (most of ) the on-page WordPress SEO.

However, before I get started and continue on with this series I wanted to publish my site’s data to date since I KNOW it’s going to change..

Alexa Ranking - 247,900
Compete – 1,094,293
Delicious - 12
Yahoo! Links – 2,232
Google Links - 10
Google PageRank – 2
Twitter Followers - 177
“seo blog” Google Ranking – 20
“seo blog“ Bing Ranking – 69
“seo blog” Yahoo Ranking – 80
jameseo.com Google Mentions - 187,000

Ok, let’s get started. We’ll cover..

A. Website Grader Fixes
B. SEO Workers Analyzer Fixes
C. Google Webmaster Findings
D. Bing Webmaster Center Findings

A. Website Grader

In order to improve my grade on Website Grader I had to complete the following tasks;

1. Condense Title Tag of Homepage to 70 Characters or Less

Not something I’m willing to fix. Therefore may never obtain 100%. I’ll talk more about title tags another time.

2. Add Alt. Attributes to Images on Homepage of Blog

I added alt tags to all images except for my rotating banners below, because they run through my ads manager which doesn’t allow me to add alternative text. But we’ll still work on that in another post.

3. Add Meta Descriptions to Pages

My pages (services, contact, about) didn’t have meta tags (descriptions/keywords). So I added them using Headspace plugin by Urban Giraffe.

4. Get Bookmarked in Delicious

I created a Delicious account specifically for this blog and bookmarked a few of my favorite posts.

5. Retweet(ed) Last 3 Posts

B. SEO Workers’ SEO Analyzer

1. Description Relevancy

My description relevancy to webpage content was off. The meta description could help your site out big time if used correctly. It’s important that your description is almost a ‘verbatim summary’ of that webpage composed into 160 characters; which should also be ultra relevant to the top 10 keywords of your website. Here’s my top 10 phrases according to SEO Workers (Prior to Fixes).

seo – 4
web design – 4
blog seo – 3
link building – 3
james harrison – 3
internet marketing – 3
seo blog – 3
resources – 2
internet news – 2
san diego – 2

If I can’t create keyword-targeted title tags and descriptions based on the page’s top terms, then I need to re-examine my content(top terms), metas &/or keywords; because they should all match.

2. Add Keyword Meta Tags

Added keyword meta tags, even though Matt Cutts says they’re useless. (There are situations where meta keywords do come in handy though.) But for the sake of my Website Grader. score, I added keywords really similar to my footer keywords to the meta keywords global setting in HeadSpace. That way the metas still match every page’s content.

3. “SEO Blog” Onpage/Domain Keyword Density

Tried to make “SEO blog” more prominent and dense by adding the sentence; “Thank you for reading my SEO blog :)” near the top of the side bar.

4. Make Homepage Have Most Site-wide Internal Links

I added a little sentence at the end of the comment sections of each blog post, utilizing a little option in Intense Debate’s comments settings.

Sentence: “Thanks for commenting on my internet marketing and SEO blog“. Now every page but the home page (because of the read more function) has one more (SEO’d) link pointing to my homepage.

5. Cut Back on the Phrase “comments http jameseo com”

I figured the reason ‘comments http jameseo com’ was the most dense was because the word “Comments” was above each post (10 times).

I used some options in Intense Debate, so instead of saying “comments #”, it says things like “blog comment here”, “talk seo with me”, “like my seo blog?” We’ll see if this works.

C. Google Webmaster Tools

1. Verify Domain in Google Webmaster Tools

Make sure you verify both (the www & non-www) versions of your website in Google Webmaster Tools so you can tell Google your preferred domain.

2. Submit XML Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools

The easiest way to submit your XML sitemap is to tell Google to use your blog’s feed as your xml source.

3. Fix Crawl Errors

I had 3 crawl errors.

One error was an old page I took down – But as you may notice, I brought back my resources page simply because 52 pages are linking to it. Thinking of how to make the best of that page now..
One of my errors was an old page that picked up some links when it was under the old permanlink structure. I redirected it with the redirection plug-in.
The last error had no business being indexed (wp-admin). So I disallowed the robots from the wp-admin in the robots.txt file.

D. Bing Webmaster Center

1. Make Sure Robots.txt File Doesn’t Have Any Problems

I ran my robots.txt text through Bing’s Robots.txt File Checker Tool and everything looks good; no problems found.

2. Check Site’s Outbound Links

I exported all my external links to an excel spreadsheet and scanned for any sites I shouldn’t be linking to. I ended up deleting about 10 links and nofollowing 5 or 6.

Don’t Link to Spam Sites
Don’t Link to Inactive Sites
Don’t Link to the Competition

That’s pretty much the basics besides what’s to come.. My next posts will cover leveraging my best pages, and optimizing my ‘read more’ text links, and as you can tell by my rankings much, much more ( to do).

Stay Tuned!

My 10 Most Popular Blog Posts

James Harrison — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:53:03 +0000

While dissecting my blog, analyzing the stats of individual posts and prioritizing my pages, I was able to come up with my most popular posts based on a variety of factors ranging from total inlinks, comments, retweets, search engine rankings, PR and more.

So for my new followers who don’t know my SEO blog, here is a list of my 10 most popular blog posts.

There you have it. Thanks for reading! Subscribe.

Wordpress SEO to Be a Top SEO Blog #2

James Harrison — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:32:15 +0000

I was thinking about this series, its’ goal, and what I had in mind when examining its’ title; “Wordpress SEO to be a Top SEO Blog“. From how it sounds, this series is going to be about SEO tricks and Wordpress optimization techniques that will boost my rankings for the term “SEO blog”, AND IT IS/WAS. But thinking back to my post like “Deep Down, You Know Why You’re Not Ranking #1” led me to believe that I have to do much more than just optimize this blog.

So the good news for the followers of this series is not only will I share tips I’ve done within this blog, I’ll also be sharing other things I’ll have to do in order to compete in this saturated SEO blogsphere; which most likely will have nothing to do with WordPress at all.

Just keep that in mind.

So for my 2nd couple of hours..

Earlier I wrote a post on 2 free tools you can use to analyze your website. So I figured while I’m at it, I’d run my blog through these tools and make all the necessary adjustments to improve my scores and search engine friendliness.

First I ran the tool through the infamous websitegrader. You can view my report here. But my scores (prior to this post) are below.

Section	jameseo.com
Website Grade	97.7
Moz Rank	4
Google Indexed Pages	240
Traffic Rank	248,714
Blog Grade	68
Inbound Links	1,581
del.icio.us Bookmarks	11

Here are the points I missed;

3 most recent articles weren’t retweeted..
2 images without alt tags were found
page title of the homepage is too long – 73, 70 is recommendation
no meta descriptions in my 3 pages; about, contact & services.

Next I ran my blog through the SEO Workers analyzer tool.

I pretty much passed on all the basic and techy stuff. But here were some factors I wanted to address/keep in mind..

The phrase “SEO Blog”;

Domain Keyword Density
Homepage Keyword Density
Site Keyword Prominence
Main Keyword Theme of Site

In one of the sections of the analyzer tool results, it points out your top single keywords, 2-word keyphrases, and 3-word keyphrases.

I know I’m going old school here, but ceteris paribus..

Single Keywords: ["SEO" & "Blog" should be #1 & #2, if "SEO Blog" is my target term]

seo – 35 – 3.02%
blog – 14 – 1.21%
2008 – 11 – 0.95%
http – 10 – 0.86%
san – 10 – 0.86%
james+harrison – 10 – 0.86%
jameseo.com – 10 – 0.86%
diego – 10 – 0.86%
comments – 9 – 0.78%
google – 9 – 0.78%
2009 – 9 – 0.78%

Check

Two Word Keyphrases: ["SEO Blog" should be 1st on the list]

san diego – 10 – 0.86% <— My Hometown
http jameseo.com – 10 – 0.86%
comments http – 9 – 0.78%
seo blog – 7 – 0.60%
diego seo – 6 – 0.52%
jan 10 – 6 – 0.52% -
search engine – 5 – 0.43%
dec 09 – 4 – 0.34%
engine optimization – 4 – 0.34%
internet marketing – 4 – 0.34%

Looks like I’m going to have to write the phrase “SEO blog” everywhere I see “San Diego” or match the amount in other places witin the site. I pretty much just have to say “SEO Blog” 4 more times. I’ll also have to cut back on whatever it is I’m doing to show “comments http” 9 times. Same with “http jameseo com”.

Three Word Keyphrases: ["SEO" & "Blog" should be in the 1st one or within the 1st 2 combined

comments http jameseo.com - 9 - 0.78%
san diego seo - 6 - 0.52%
search engine optimization - 3 - 0.26%
diego seo freelancer - 3 - 0.26%
recognizes san diego - 2 - 0.17%
website isn’t ranking - 2 - 0.17%
awesome browser icon - 2 - 0.17%
professional seo specialists - 2 - 0.17%
reporter recognizes san - 2 - 0.17%
james+harrison 30 jan - 2 - 0.17%

Obviously, I have some work to do. But maybe as I filter out "comments http" and "http jameseo com", and switch "search engine optimization" with "SEO", the phrase "SEO blog" will show up on the list.

URLs found in the page

This section lists the URLs found within the page, and the number of times each was found.

Found 78 urls of which 62 are unique.

Ideally, if your homepage is you main page going after your main keyword, then that page should have the most internal links pointing back to it. Always point more links saying your desired keywords to the most important pages within your site/blog.

The pages listed below should be listed in the same order as your 'page importance order'. So, I either have to add another site-wide link pointing to the JameSEO.com homepage or get rid of one of the sets of pages links (either in the top nav or sidebar).

This post will be continued tomorrow, when I will discuss my fixes and optimization techniques based on my Google Webmaster Tools & Bing’s Webmaster Center finding. Stay Tuned!

Perform a Quick SEO Analysis Utilizing 2 Free SEO Tools

James Harrison — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:15:12 +0000

If you ever find yourself at the point where you just aren’t sure what basic SEO needs to be done for a website, consider using these two free SEO tools that will scan your website for ranking barriers and influencers. Within 10 minutes you can damn-near know everything your website needs to be fully optimized.

SEO Workers – Analyzer Tool

This tool is great for users looking for onpage SEO adjustments that need to be impemented throughtout the whole domain.

It doesn’t only analyze the Meta Tags of your pages, rather it tries to use the same spider technology as the search engines spiders them self.

Here are some of the results you can expect;

General status
Meta tags listing
Meta tags analysis
General web page analysis
The page displayed within search engine results
Keywords found in the anchor tags
Keywords found in the image ‘alt’ attribute text
Keywords found on the page
URLs found in the page
Headers returned from the server

Website Grader

This tool is a very popular analyzer tool. And it’s easy to understand why once you use it. It makes it really simple to understand where your website is passing and failing. Red marks for the wrong ones, just like our teachers growing up :)

The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data , website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others.

You can see the results for my SEO blog here.

This tool also allows you to add your competitors, so you can see how they are performing as well.

Take notes on all of the points you missed/got wrong or would like to personally improve on. That should give you a nice list of things to do with your website in order to improve its’ rankings. If you passed all those test sand you’re still not #1, then maybe you should consider reading “Deep Down You Know Why Your Website Isn’t Ranking #1“.

Good Luck!

Deep Down, You Know Why Your Website Isn’t Ranking #1

James Harrison — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:58:39 +0000

In my efforts for the “top spot” (#1 on Google), I do various tasks such as link building, PR, social networking, outreaching, etc. But as we all know obtaining the #1 position takes time if the keyword is worth it. It’s no easy task to prove to Google that their trillion dollar algorithm is wrong about who they’ve chosen to be #1 and that they should be picking your site. Even inexperienced SEO’s have a hard time realizing how much work can be involved.

We need to accomplish some things.. We need to help Google feel secure in putting us #1, while still helping them maintain their search relevance integrity.

So, before reading any further you must KNOW that you should be #1 (in the first place). You must honestly feel (DEEP DOWN) that your site deserves better placement than the top 3 guys (combined) on Google’s sophisticated search engine. If you don’t deserve the top spot, you’re better off spending money and time on bettering your website, company and services. Google will give you chances and test you out in a variety of positions and see how well you perform, so the first key to SEO is to already be #1.

Ok, so you feel deep down you should be #1. Now the outreaching for “vouches” takes place… This involves reaching out to other webmasters asking for reviews, links, “citations”, and much more. The strength of your competition and depth of your industry will determine how much work this involves. Although, if you deserve the top spot , you’ll obtain everything you need to be in the #1 position.

But here are a few reasons why the #1 website can be hard to outrank even after you’ve done all you can do to get others to recognize you;

They are an author of a book about your keyword, niche or industry
They’ve been doing monthly press releases via PRWeb for over a year now
They’ve passed the $299 Yahoo! Directory inclusion
They have reviews of household products on hundreds of blogs
They were featured in magazines and on news sites
They’ve been running a commercial in your city for as long as you can remember
They have 10,000+ web pages in their site
They’re a social network with 100,000 users
They sponsor local events in your city
It’s a high PR Wikipedia Page

These may not seem like direct SEO, but these type of things generate massive buzz, help legit websites get recognized and can sometimes be very viral generating tons of natural links.

Like I said, if you deserve the #1 position on Google, you’ll get it. Google isn’t stupid. But there are some experts that can crack algorithms to help you make the most of the tasks mentioned above in a very efficient manner.

If you would like to suggest more reasons why it sometimes seems impossible or waaaaay too expensive to beat out the competition, COMMENT IT.

PRWeb – Tell Your Story to the World.

WordStream Launches Two Free Niche Marketing Tools for SEO and PPC

James Harrison — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:28:50 +0000

WordStream adds to their suite of free search marketing tools, introducing two new products to help search marketers better identify profitable keyword opportunities

BOSTON, MA – December 16, 2009 – WordStream, Inc., a provider of keyword tools for pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) efforts involving large numbers of keywords, today launched a pair of tools designed to help businesses identify and optimize highly profitable keyword niches.

WordStream’s new tools, The Keyword Niche Finder and The Free Keyword Grouper, are designed to help businesses and marketers solve specific problems:

The Keyword Niche Finder – Instantly identify and target the most profitable keyword niches
The Keyword Grouper- Group and organize vast lists of keywords into actionable keyword groups to turn into ad groups or website content

Strong keyword organization is the foundation of successful search marketing, and WordStream’s Free Keyword Grouper lets marketers take massive lists of target keywords and instantly group these keywords into tightly-knit, relevant groups. This advanced level of keyword organization is critical for creating effective ad groups for PPC campaign advertising and for informing content creation and site navigation for SEO.

Beta user and independent search marketing consultant Ian Hughes said of the tools: “The great thing is that the two tools really complement each other: The Keyword Niche Finder lets me quickly identify not only single keyword ideas, but the most popular clusters of keywords, and The Keyword Grouper is great for making sense of a lot of data or a long list of keywords you’ve already created.”

With The Keyword Niche Finder, marketers can type in terms related to their business and receive a list of the most popular and relevant keywords for their websites, along with the most interesting keyword niches or clusters. Marketers and website owners can leverage the results from The Keyword Niche Finder to build and structure intelligent website information architectures or create new subsections of their existing sites to drive traffic and collect new business opportunities.

“One of the biggest challenges for business owners is determining where to begin their keyword research and how to continually expand and refine their campaigns to get maximum returns,” says WordStream Founder and Vice President of Product Development Larry Kim. “With our two new free tools, we’ve armed marketers and business owners with the power to instantly receive well-organized, prioritized lists of the most profitable keyword opportunities in their niche.”

WordStream’s subscription-based service also announced a major upgrade recently, including integration with Google Analytics and sophisticated multi-source keyword analytics. It provides users with a tool-set to take those insights to the next level by continually monitoring the performance of their keywords and offering actionable keyword suggestions that helps them grow their campaigns and revenues, all for a very affordable monthly fee.

About WordStream

WordStream is a provider of SEO and PPC solutions for continuously optimizing and expanding search marketing efforts, involving large numbers of search engine keywords. WordStream provides a scalable, private, online keyword workbench—which includes a free keyword tool and an AdWords tool—for conducting keyword discovery, keyword research, keyword grouping, search marketing workflow and for turning research into action.

WordStream believes that an organization’s keywords are a valuable, proprietary asset, and that organizing, prioritizing, coordinating and executing of PPC and SEO efforts around a comprehensive, researched and up-to-date keyword taxonomy is the key to search marketing success. Keyword management improves search marketing productivity and enables greater relevance, which enhances the value of search marketing efforts.

WordStream Press Contact:
Ken Lyons, Marketing Manager
617-963-0563, klyons@wordstream.com

####

More for Those that Just Don’t Get ‘SEO by the Hour’

James Harrison — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 03:12:16 +0000

More on ‘SEO by the Hour’ for those who don’t understand. Regardless of when the results of your SEO tasks you perform kick in, if properly recorded and explained to the client why the certain SEO task is being done makes it easy to provide deliverables on what you did with your hours.

Any SEO that does not track how long it takes for them to perform SEO or doesn’t know how to analyze the playing field correctly probably isn’t worth your time. They are wasting their time by not recording the most efficient processes and could be wasting your time too. And we all know time is money.

More points;

Crawl rate is based on PR. There are enough tools to figure out how often the bots come now and how often they will come. Thus making it possible to estimate the next time your pages will be cached.
Find a professional that wont waste your hours getting you links that will be worthless a year from now.
When charging for SEO, it MUST be for the service/project; not the results. That’s why only SEO professionals that you trust to produce results should perform SEO services for your site.

Link building got it’s name for a reason. It requires work. Just like building a house.

You use tools to help you speed up manual and tedious tasks and to help you determine how much “supplies you need”
You can estimate the cost of everything produced
And it’s actually possible (but not advised) to buy everything up front.

Do you want a link building expert that knows exactly the most effective things to do with the 1st 5 to 10 hours and has 100’s of rankings to prove it? Or, do you want someone that doesn’t have a clue and will just say “we’ll see”? I prefer someone that has tested and tested, tracked and reported various tasks, how long they took and more importantly how effective each of those tasks were toward their SEO initiatives. Make sure your SEO has tested various strategies, recorded their outcomes and know which are best for your site in it’s current state and for it’s future.

However you decide to purchase SEO, just don’t waste your money on someone that’s going to perform ineffective tasks for months and months and months. Just remember you can ask Google’s top results, how to be #1 and how much work/hours is needed to achieve such rankings.

SEO by the Hour? I Don’t Get It

James Harrison — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:29:04 +0000

I noticed quite a bit lately that some people don’t understand the concept of SEO services by the Hour. It’s actually a really popular question potential clients ask me. So, I figure let me take a stab at answering the question here in a blog post.

First, let me add, that I hate my domain SEObytheHour.com. I feel it limits what people think I can offer them. Plus it’s rare you can really charge SEO by the Hour. I just bought the domain some years back (because it sounded cool), built some links to it, played around with it and viola, it’s getting action.

But here’s how it goes anyway…

To my knowledge, Google’s SEO algorithm is proprietary. No one can crack it. I’m also willing to bet that some of the smartest, technical minded gurus are working behind the formula to do 1 main thing; deliver the MOST RELEVANT results for its users, so it continues to be the best search engine ever.

That being said; I don’t know SEO.

But I do know 2 things. 2 things that I feel are the core to everything I do. The understanding of these 2 things is what I feel sets me apart from he rest.

Google is the most used search engine because when people ask/query what they are looking for, they rarely have to go past the 1st page. The sites Google is picking to be #1, 2, 3, 4.. are picked for a reason..
The best way to figure out how to rank #1 is to dissect the competition; the top rankers. Why are they #1? Is it because they answer every who, what, why, how question there is about your target keyword? Is it because of their links? Check where their links are coming from. How did they obtain them? What do they say? What kind of content is surrounding those links? HOW MUCH WORK DID THEY HAVE TO PUT IN TO RANK #1?

Performing proper keyword and competitive research and utilizing web tools that make virtually everything your competition does transparent allows you gauge how much work you will have to do to compete. I can literally find out everything there is know about your competition and what chances you have to rank for those terms. The questions are, what keywords do you want to go after? Who’s ranking for those keywords? And how much work is needed to compete?

Asking those questions makes it easier to understand SEO by the Hour.

After years of hands-on experience working on all types of web platforms and structures and professionally recording how long everything takes, page by page I can guesstimate how long it would take to optimize your website, no matter the size or how it’s built. Normally, full-fledged SEO is implemented once really strong in the beginning and overtime you will make various changes here and there based on what Google tells you through its rankings.

OK, so onpage is covered. But what about offpage you ask.

Well, when really analyzing your competitors, you can determine why they are number one by using SEO analysis tools and link building tools that give you heaps of information. For some keywords, you can learn that the top guys got away with just doing free directory submissions utilizing their anchor text links. Sometimes the #1 site just did a bunch of articles and guest posted in several niche blogs. Sometimes you find out the top guy has been doing a monthly press release through PR Web for over a year. Or even worst, the top guy is an author of some book that was a New York Times Best Seller that has guest featured in all the top authority and news channels.

Again, I record how long it takes for me to do everything and the cost of what ever is needed. I know how long it takes for me to write a press release or how much it cost to have a professional write one. Same with articles and blog posts. I know how long it takes for me to email 100 webmasters. I know how long it takes for me to guest author in a blog. All in all, I know how to determine how much work is needed to compete with the top guy(s).

Most of the time if someone is coming to me for help, they are going after terms that require WORK. Terms that require 100’s of hours. This is why sometimes SEO has to be performed naturally over a period of time. Luckily I KNOW how long everything takes me to do.

Overtime, you’ll realize that SEO take hours and hours and is an ongoing campaign. After all, isn’t the keyword you going after valuable (to more than just you)?

Still, the most important question to ask yourself is; how can I be the most relevant site to the next 1 million people that type in the keyword I’m targeting?

Onpage or Offpage – Which is More Effective for SEO?

James Harrison — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:11:27 +0000

One day while cruising PB (Pacific Beach, San Diego) with my Buddy Robert the SEO PPC Pro, he asked me for my opinion on a forever debatable SEO question; “Which is more effective, onpage or offpage? If you really wanted solid top SEO rankings fast, what would you spend most time doing?”

Knowing Robert, he already has his opinion. He’s just picking my brain. Plus, he knows I’m a die-hard linker.

Before you read any further, I might as well tell you now that I don’t come up with a conclusive answer. (Especially, being asked right off the bat.) And notice how I jump back & forth.

But here’s my answer anyway.

Honestly, when I’m trying to increase rankings, I find myself spending more time onpage. I know I always say link building, get backlinks, more links, etc. But when I’m really trying to find a way to increase rankings, I look deep into the site. I know link building is the key to successful SEO. But before you go after your desired links saying the terms you are targeting, it’s extremely important that when Google finds your page through those links that that page is ultra-relevant to that term, and the rest of the site must agree (through proper internal linking).

When you say “Hey Google, come check out my site. Shouldn’t I be ranked #1 for my target keyword, afterall, all these relevant sites said I should through their links?”; you better be right. Or you could be asking for it..

Google is #1 because they deliver the most relevant results.

Slightly Hidden Content – SEO [IM Chat #1]

James Harrison — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:49:52 +0000

I know many of you SEO’s feel the same or experience the same thing…

You know more about SEO and computers than everyone around you, so you’re “Mr. SEO know it All” that has to answer every computer related question for friends, family, and co-workers, even if it has nothing to do with SEO. But every once in a while a buddy of mine will ask me a SEO question on IM and I take on the role of Mr. Know It All James-SEO.

[11:15] seobuddy: hey james…do you have a minute to look at a site for me?
[11:16] James-SEO: sure
[11:17] seobuddy: ~~Here’s the site~~

[11:20] seobuddy: the site has rankings, but do you think it may be considered spam at the bottom of the pages?
[11:20] seobuddy: the keywords almost the same color as the background.
[11:20] seobuddy: what are you thoughts?
[11:21] James-SEO: you know, it’s not too bad, but it’s not good
[11:21] James-SEO: I have 2 things to say about this
[11:22] James-SEO: 1. Google can recognize the color difference and assume that since you don’t really want visitors to see those words that well, they can assign a lesser value to those words. why even index that content?
[11:23] James-SEO: after all, those aren’t the words you want to visitors to read
[11:23] James-SEO: since it’s not invisible, it’s not “illegal”
[11:24] James-SEO: But it’s also not in proper legible grammar, so it’s safe to assume that that part is not meant to be read
[11:24] James-SEO: it must be just a bunch of keywords with commas and a matching color background[11:24] [11:25]seobuddy: do they need to be there…isn’t having them in the meta’s good enough…
[11:25] James-SEO: meta data is different than onpage content
[11:26] James-SEO: if you insist on having those keywords there, make sure those exact keywords are in the metas for relevance between meta data and content
[11:26] James-SEO: if those keywords are in the meta data, each phrase better be found somewhere in the content
[11:26] James-SEO: naturally
[11:26] James-SEO: not slightly hidden
[11:26] seobuddy: i also have the same titles on most of my pages…
[11:27] James-SEO: that’s a big no no as well
[11:27] seobuddy: yea, you told me that before, that’s why I mentioned it
[11:27] James-SEO: Google likes each page to be unique
[11:28] James-SEO: if pages have a lot of similarities, they just index the stronger page
[11:28] James-SEO: but back to the almost hidden keywords,..
[11:28] James-SEO: #2
[11:28] James-SEO: the background is CSS, it has a background image and a background color
[11:29] James-SEO: google can only read (for now) the color of the background, which by default is normally white. so the words look to google light Grey on white
[11:29] James-SEO: If the css background is set to Grey, then it could appear you have completely hidden content
[11:29] James-SEO: light Grey content/keywords written in un readable form (like meta keywords) is of course of a lessor value than words in large bolder black font or bright red keywords mixed in content on white backgrounds
[11:29] seobuddy: yea, but i thought that bolding kw wasn’t nec anymore
[11:30] James-SEO: there’s 100’s of ranking factors, ALL of value
[11:30] James-SEO: bolding just doesn’t mean as much now as it did in 2000
[11:30] James-SEO: but search bots can still recognize a bolded phrase
[11:38] seobuddy: so if you were optimizing this site, what would you do to it? i am running a ranking report now, for a crapload of keywords, so it will take a long while. I do have many 1st page rankings, so what could you change?
[11:39] James-SEO: got to find out if the site is ranking for the most relevant traffic AND conversion generating terms
[11:41] James-SEO: i’d make sure 1st that all meta data is unique from page to page and that they are all targeting the BEST (tons of factors) keywords
[11:42] James-SEO: then make sure the content is naturally relevant to those metas
[11:42] James-SEO: or do it vice versa; content then metas
[11:43] seobuddy: yea, but I don’t have the text on some of the pages to support a lot of keywords, so would I be better off putting them at the bottom of the page, only in bold?
[11:44] James-SEO: nothing compares to naturally written content. Why do you feel you should rank for terms your content isn’t relevant to?
[11:44] James-SEO: that sounds dishonest and misleading

SEO Rambling #6: Content Writing – Grammar

James Harrison — Tue, 05 May 2009 06:25:06 +0000

Anyone that has been writing papers in Word doc over the years may have noticed some changes in Microsoft Word since Windows and Office 95/98. Actually, Word has upgraded tremendously since. 1 upgrade I want to talk about today is the grammar check. You can tell that Windows is more sophisticated in recognizing errors (spelling and grammar) now.

If Word can recognize sentence structure and point out verbs, nouns and fragments, then no telling what Google could recognize. Obviously Google wants to deliver relevant sites to users, but it has been stressed that quality plays just as much of a role. And believe you me, besides design; the only way to really tell if your site is quality is through your content. With Google being the ultra-website analyzer, they have to look at things in a way a human would look at it.

What I’m trying to say…

Quality content is good for users to understand what you are saying/selling. Plus error-free pages are recommended by Google/Yahoo/MSN and the general public.

If Word can give you a green squiggly line for grammar mistakes, Google can recognize and assign worth to each individual person, place, thing, action, adjective and so on within a sentence, (especially keywords you’re ranking for or have links containing).

For instance; in the 1st sentence below “SEO” is a noun or action and in the second sentence “SEO” is an adjective.

I do SEO for a local internet marketing firm.

I am an SEO Specialist at an internet marketing company.

Why does this matter? Well to be quite honest, I’m not sure if it does. But as an SEO specialist, when studying a site’s top ranking competitors; I would see how they utilize or present a keyword. For example, if you look at the rankings for “seo” you’ll see that most of the sites are using “seo” as a noun (or action). But if you search “seo specialist” you’ll see all the sites are specialist sites pertaining to SEO.

There’s a difference. Nouns are harder to rank for because you usually need strong adjective pages supporting the noun page (if that make sense)

So what, James…

If you want to rank for “link building” use link building as a noun or as a verb (or even better a proper noun) instead of an adjective or adverb. The most important parts of a sentence are the nouns and the actions/verbs. Focus on making your keywords one of them. UNLESS you want to rank for link building expert; then you’d make sure expert is what the page and content is about, but have link building being the describer of the type of expert you are.

Just something to think about.

If you feel you wasted your time reading my random SEO thought, please let me know. If these random thoughts are of interest to you, I’ll continue to blurb whatever I’m thinking more often.

Oh yeah, thanks for reading my blog!

Been Busy with SEO, But I’m Back (Selling Out)

James Harrison — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:39:09 +0000

Since it has come to my attention that some of my followers still think I work at MEA Digital, I decided to post an update. I’m no longer an Online Media Specialist at MEA Digital. I quit back in December 2008. Since then I’ve been working as a link building specialist ;) at SEO by the Hour in San Diego, CA. I’ve been keeping busy with affiliate marketing and other website duties since the turn of the year.

Because I haven’t cared enough about this blog to make it a money maker, I’ve been neglecting it…

Every time I sign in, I see more and more comments I should respond to. I sometimes prefer just to go back to working on something else. But since I’m an SEO Specialist and this is my SEO blog, I might as well utilize (monetize) it.

So I’m letting all my readers know now; this blog back, but is selling out. I’m going to have banners, review sites, hold contests, update my wordpress and more. That’s the only way I’ll be able to set time aside to give you guys fresh SEO content, MORE OFTEN.

On the bright side, I’ll blog about everything I’m doing so you can follow along.

Search Engine Optimization Resources

James Harrison — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 02:17:08 +0000

Search Engine Optimization Resources

Title Tags, SEO and Samples

James Harrison — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 02:57:59 +0000

Everyone that has spent anytime studying SEO or reading my blog knows that the title tag is one of the most important factors in ranking well on the SERP’s. Title tag planning is crucial for SEO. What pages within your site will target which words? What pages will match each other and share terms? Which page will focus on only one phrase and which will focus on 3 to 5? These are just a portion of questions to ask yourself when it comes to title tags and SEO. There are definitely more things to think about such as location of company/website name, prominence, density, total characters, and the amount of times to mention the key phrase that that page is targeting.

Here are several examples of title tags ranking #1 & #2 for really tough terms.

#1 & 2 for “Mesothelioma Attorney“

#1 & 2 for “Search Engine Marketing“

#1 & 2 for “San Diego Hotels“

#1 & 2 for “Mortgage Loan Broker“

JameSEO Conclusion:

Too many other ranking factors to predict how a title tag should be used.
Google doesn’t display words after ~65-70 characters. (This doesn’t mean whole tag isn’t examined.)
The only thing all top ranking sites’ title tags have in common is the presence of the keyword phrase and that the keyword phrases are in bold.
Plurals and singulars have some type of relationship.
Density of keyword counts.

The only right way to write a title tag is to describe the page correctly and honestly. Here are some SEO questions to ask yourself when creating proper title tags.

Does it match keywords in META?
Does it correlate with the description?
Does it match the keywords in headings (H1, H2,..)?
Does it go with page file name and URL (Page Title ~ page-title.php)?
Does it describe the body content?
Is the company/website name located in the title tag? If so, where?
How prominent is the key phrase in the title tag (1st phrase in title or cut off at the end)?
What’s the density of the targeted keyword? (total keywords divided by total words)
How many characters are in the title tag?
How many words are in title tag?
Is the title eye-catchy? Does it stick out amongst the competition?
Exact, phrase and broad match of keyword in title.
Is the title tag unique from the other titles of your site? Are there duplicates?

All these questions should be asked comparatively speaking of your competition.

Hope this helps anyone learning how to write title tags.

James' SEO Blog» SEO

The 1st Page of Google for “SEO Blog” Pt.2

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

The 1st Page of Google for “SEO Blog”

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

San Diego SEO Group at LinkedIn – JOIN!

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

SEO Tracking Tools by EasySEOTracking.com

Did my site appear in search results previously?

How does my latest changes affect overall SEO project?

Why my competitors appear at the first positions in Google search results?

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

OrangeSoda Offers SEO through American Express

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

Leveraging Your Strongest Pages through Internal Linking

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

Wordpress SEO to Be a Top SEO Blog #3

A. Website Grader

B. SEO Workers’ SEO Analyzer

C. Google Webmaster Tools

D. Bing Webmaster Center

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

My 10 Most Popular Blog Posts

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

Wordpress SEO to Be a Top SEO Blog #2

URLs found in the page

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

Perform a Quick SEO Analysis Utilizing 2 Free SEO Tools

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

Deep Down, You Know Why Your Website Isn’t Ranking #1

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

WordStream Launches Two Free Niche Marketing Tools for SEO and PPC

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

More for Those that Just Don’t Get ‘SEO by the Hour’

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

SEO by the Hour? I Don’t Get It

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

Onpage or Offpage – Which is More Effective for SEO?

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

Slightly Hidden Content – SEO [IM Chat #1]

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

SEO Rambling #6: Content Writing – Grammar

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

Been Busy with SEO, But I’m Back (Selling Out)

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

Search Engine Optimization Resources

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog

Title Tags, SEO and Samples

Related Topics from James\\\’ SEO Blog