Web Hosting Blog | Lunarpages Lunartics » SEO

Ping Your Site Map to Bing

Mitch — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:08:39 +0000

Now that Bing and Yahoo are teaming up with search, having your web site optimized for Microsoft’s new search engine is even more important. While browsing through some of Bing’s webmaster documentation, I found a way you an submit your sitemap to them – in one single easy step.

All you need to do is copy and paste this into your address bar, replacing the sitemap URL path with your own.

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml

If done successfully, you will get a message that says, “Thanks for submitting your sitemap”.

For those of you who like to keep up with more data, you can also submit your site map to Bing by signing up or logging into the Bing Webmaster Tools section. From there you can get access to more tools, like the keyword research tool, the HTTP verifier, and the robots.txt validator.

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What is My SERP?

Mitch — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:29:15 +0000

When dealing with search engine optimization, a phrase you might hear tossed around is SERP, but many do not know what it really stands for.

I’ll let you know what it is, and why you need to be aware of it.

SERP is the search engine optimization slang for how well your web site is ranked in the search engines for a specific keyword query. Technically, it is a shortened version of the phrase search engine results page.

Now where you rank for a keyword in the SERP is important, because the higher you are, the more likely somebody is going to click your link in the search results and check out your web site.

For an example, let us say I am running a web site about pro wrestling. I have articles up about all the wrestlers, the big events and everything anybody would ever want to know about. Now I would like to have a high SERP result for Hulk Hogan, because he’s one of the most popular wrestlers of all time, so there has to be a lot of people searching for him.

You see, you want to target your pages at popular keywords that have to do with your web site’s content.

The thing to remember is that you want to have as high of a listing as possible when it comes to the SERP, search engine results page, for keywords that have to do with your topic of choice. So, whatcha gonna do with SERP-amania runs wild on you, brother? (ok, maybe one Hulk Hogan reference too many.)

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Keep Lindsay Lohan Away from Site Title Tags

Mitch — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:57:21 +0000

The title tag is by far the most important part of your web site. It is the first thing people see, and it tells people what they are about to check out. If your looking for a way to get your web site traffic up, just by doing a little touch up work to your title tags you can see a little boost from the search engines.

Since the title tags is one of the big things the search engines look at when indexing your content, you should make sure you are doing all you can to make them the best.

What Should My Title Tag Do?

This is an easy question to answer. What should you title tag be doing? It should be answering who you are and what you do. For example – lets take a look at the title tag here:

Web Hosting Blog | Lunarpages Lunartics

From that, you know you are on a blog about web hosting, it is called Lunartics and it is from Lunarpages. Be sure to always include your web site or company name, and a few keywords about what you do.

Can you over do it? Yes, you can. I would say try to keep the keywords under five at the most. Also, make sure your keywords in your title tags are relevant to the content on that specific page or web site. For example, this would be a bad execution in title tag writing 101:

My Blog Paris Hilton Cute Puppies Lindsay Lohan

See, that might seem like you are going to get more people in because you are using popular phrases, but search engines will bump you down because your web site doesn’t have anything to do with those keywords.

So to sum things up:

make sure that your title tags are relevant to your web site content
make sure you give your company or web site name
don’t include keywords that are not related to the web site’s content

Some might say that search engine optimization is a confusing art, that they do not understand. However, as the years have gone by, a lot of it comes down to common sense.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Make it Easier for Google Searchers to Find You!

Mitch — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:39:14 +0000

Have you setup your Google profile? A while back, Google started to show profiles in their search results, so if you want to make sure somebody is able to find you – it might be a good idea to set up or update your own Google profile.

To get started, go to Google’s create a profile page, and click on the create my profile button. From there, you can list your name, upload a photo, give a description about yourself, list your super powers (what, you don’t have super powers?), list your web site links and so much more. The above picture is an example of my own profile on Google.

Once you are done, it might take a while, but you should start showing up as a result at the bottom of your Google search for your own name. Here is mine, as another example:

So there you have it. That is one more easy way to make sure people find you and your web sites when searching via Google.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Real-Time Blog Traffic Widgets

Mitch — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:55:37 +0000

FEEDJIT is a real-time blog and traffic watching service. One of the neatest services that they provide is the ability to add several different types of widgets to your web site to better identify your visitors and find out where they are from and what they are reading.

You have four different widgets you can choose from. You can add:

Live Traffic Feed – Lets you know where your visitors came from and what page they are on.

Live Traffic Map – Gives you a map from where your most recent visitors are coming from.

Recommended Reading – Gives you a list of link suggestions for the page you are on, that other people have visited.

Page Popularity – Gives you a list (and percentages) on all the most popular pages for the day.

You can grab the JavaScript widgets here, then customize it and copy/paste the code into your own web site design. If you are are looking to learn a little more about the people who may visit your web site – this is yet another useful online application to do so.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Beginner Tips for Search Engine Optimization

Mitch — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:00:00 +0000

What does it take to get your web site to the top of the search engine mountain? Is there an easy way out or does it take hard work and dedication? I got an e-mail from a Lunartics reader who wants to know:

Hi Mitch, I was wanting to know if you could give us a run-down on the basic things people should know when stepping into making our sites better for the search engines? – Sam

Ah, the art of search engine optimization (otherwise known as SEO). Here is my own three punch combination if you want to get yourself to a higher spot in the various search engines out there:

Produce Quality Content – The key thing to remember is to put out quality articles, posts and content and not just a great amount of data into the Web. Quality over quantity wins every time.
Get Like-Minded Sites to Link to You – Find other web sites that have the same type of content you do, and get them to link to you (and vice versa). For example, if you run a gaming site, go out and find gaming forums and blogs that will link to your content.
Optimize That Content with a Few Simple Rules – There are a few simple rules to follow when formatting your content. Make good use of your headline tags, break your content up into easily to read paragraphs, and don’t use too many links.

Don’t Fall for SEO Scams

If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. There are a lot of “get popular quick!” or “raise yourself to the top of the search engines” scams out there, that I would take with a grain of salt. From what I have seen there is no perfect way to make the search engines like you more, and no instant solution to get to the top.

Want to learn more? Here are a few more good resources on getting started with search engine optimization:

Search Engine Watch | Search Engine Guide | SEO Chat

In conclusion, the best thing you can do for your web site if you want the search engines to be your friend and rank you at the top is to put out quality content, and get more people to link to that quality content. It is really that simple. Now it might not happen overnight, but if you work at it – and stick to your guns, you’ll make it up the ranks.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?

Amy — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:42:57 +0000

By Amy Armitage

So I got this email late yesterday and I really had trouble working out the answer. A few of us in the office are going back and forth yelling out random answers.

Here it is…

There are 7 girls in a bus
Each girl has 7 backpacks
In each backpack, there are 7 big cats
For every big cat there are 7 little cats

Question: How many legs are there in the bus?

Does the answer come to you quickly or are you still trying to figure it out?

Hint: I was being all clever and stuff and I counted the bus driver’s legs too. Apparently there isn’t a bus driver, just a bunch of school girls sitting on a bus that’s not moving with too many backpacks and a cat collecting hobby .. lol

Who stuffs that many cats into a backpack anyway? I think I should call the animal protection society ;)

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SEO – What You Need to Know

Mitch — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:07:09 +0000

Author: Mitch Keeler

One of the big questions we get from day to day is how to get yourself listed in all the biggest and best search engines. You have the hosting, you have the site – everything is working perfectly. Why are you not showing up? The art of hacking around and tweaking your site for the benefit of search engines is what we call search engine optimization.

Not all SEO experts are jerks, it is just really hard to find the ones that know what they are doing.

Is Search Engine Optimization All a Scam?

There are a lot of companies out there that would be happy to take your money and promise big results. While some of these are respectable businesses, others are the equivalent of those, “You just won a million dollars” e-mails you have been getting from that millionaire on his death bed that lives in an African country you can’t even pronounce.

Here are just a handful of nuggets that you can do yourself to make your own web site more search engine friendly without the need of a third party service getting in the way of things.

Have Good Quality Content. Remember Quality Wins, Not Quantity.
Get Incoming Related Links from Like-minded Web Sites.
Make Sure Your Meta Tags (or keywords) are Actually Used in Your Page’s Content.

What does Google have to say about SEO? Keep in mind that Google themselves say no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Check out this link on their webmaster section for more information about how they feel about SEO practices.

It isn’t all good and it isn’t all bad. You just have to learn how to do things on the right side of the search engines and keep yourself away from the fraud optimization providers

Have any other easy SEO tips that both novices and experts could get something out of? Drop in a comment or send me an e-mail. Maybe I can get together a list of the best of the best for all of our advantages.

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HostingCon 2007 – The Low Down

Amy — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:04:16 +0000

By Amy Armitage

Sheesh I’m tired! Wednesday night I finally arrived home from HostingCon 2007 with loads of swag and about 200 business cards! This year it was held in Chicago and for me it was the BEST one yet!

We arrived on Sunday night and Tiara hit the hay because she was too tired after spending all weekend partying? .. umm reading Harry Potter? (now that’s just embarrassing lol) .. Anyhow, after I settled in an unpacked my massive suitcase I met up with Jeff Cohen from Internet Litigators, his beautiful gal Jackie and adorable daughter Phoebe and we dined at Gibson’s Bar and Steakhouse. During our meal I told them the story of giving away my hubby’s chicken to a homeless guy (on one of our first dates actually), so with that we bagged up the left over lobster, steaks and cheesecake and went on a mission to find a hungry soul on the streets of Chicago. After Carson Daly declined my offer of yummy free food (he really was at HostingCon!), a lovely old fella was delighted to accept our culinary gift. On the trek back to The W Hotel, we met a New Zealand rugby player who tackled me on the sidewalk and a 21 year old horse named Caruso.

On Monday morning after a night spent tossing and turning from the LOUD air conditioner I took my tired ~~ass~~ eyes over to the Navy Pier and listened to the dry comedic tones of Neil Patel and the marketing and SEO tips of the socially talented Ben Fisher. Neil only said crap ‘bout 3 times and cussed maybe twice. He really behaved himself. I got a lot out of that session as you can see from all of the links in this blog post to our competitors (invisible .. I hope) .. heh .. wha? A girl’s gotta try right?

Next session was about Green Hosting and the challenges most hosts are experiencing with Data Center power, costs, cooling etc. It was moderated by Isabel Wang (she’s totally gorgeous btw). The panel included DreamHost CTO Dallas Kashuba, SoftLayer COO Sam Fleitman and SWSoft Director of Marketing Doug Johnson.

I saw Josh from DreamHost and he muttered something ‘bout a basketball game but he was too tall and I couldn’t hear him properly ;)

I had a lovely dinner with the team from TechPad Agency on Monday night along with around 30 invited guests including InterMedia (Robert & William), Ben from Reseller Guide (he is the NICEST guy), Ben from HostNine, Justin from StartLogic and my all time favorite jet setting playboys Brian and Greg from Best of the Web! They are such a blast to spend time with.

Our table was the loudest one of course.. lol.. Mindy’s hubby Todd was quizzing me on Australian slang and the more we drank the louder the laughter.

So what is root really? ;)

Ping!Zine (my all time favorite web hosting mag) were there handing out EXTRA LARGE bright orange t-shirts. Keith tried to convince me I could look professional and wear my shirt as a dress the next day to the exhibit hall… ummm.. no… With this accent it’s hard enuff to be taken seriously.

Got to catch up with the amazing minds of eBridge Marketing Solutions (Frank and Hartland) and Hartland actually said EH! to me so I was stoked on that.

Dave and Jamie from Hosting-Review took me for beer on the pier on Tuesday afternoon (couldn’t get them to say eh unfortunately).

Aaron and Shane from FastServers [their servers aren't as fast as Lunarpages Servers ;)] were so lovely and we attended their spectacular cruise on Tuesday night. Aaron’s a super snappy dresser too. Sorry we didn’t make it to Rush Street but.. welp.. I’m an old gal and my feet hurt A LOT from wearing stupid girl shoes all day.

Here are some happy snappys:

Amy & Mindy

Neil, Brian & Greg (Best Group on the Web)

Aaron (FastServers), Mindy & Todd

Ben (TechPad) & Amy

Amy & Brian (Best Guy on the Web)

Derek (Strike a Pose) from Techpad

Ben (HostNine)

Eddie (Globat) & Amy

The TechPad Agency

Justin (StartLogic) & Amy

Amy & Keith (Ping!Zine)

Keith from Ping!Zine

Neil Patel

Neil & Amy

Amy & Greg aka Popeye (BOTW)

Neil (again)

Justin & Kyle

Amy & Ben (ResellerGuide)

Mindy & Tiara (sea sick)

Michael Low (WebhostingStuff) & Amy

Biggest Regret – (apart from not being able to play with Matt from BlueHost’s iPhone longer) was the people I was unable to catch up with, François from B2Evolution (sooooooooo disappointed), Mark from RatemyHost, Scott from WebHostingTalk and Richard Guzzo (fellow Aussie) from FindMyHost.

Cooooolest Giveaway – TechPad won the prize for their board game all about servers called ServerMania.

Most Annoying Stupid Drunk Industry Person – Some dufus named Scott who I would NEVER do business with.

Fastest Talker – Eddie from Globat (that’s saying something considering I was there)

MOST Seasick – Tiara (she got friendly with the toilet bowl)

Best Dog Chit Chat – Justin Reynolds from StartLogic

BEST Couple – Mindy and Todd!

Awkward Moment – I complained to Greg from Best of the Web about the idiot whose alarm went off early Tuesday morning and woke me up. Turns out it was his alarm and he was staying in the room next door to mine (oopsy).

Classic Session Moment – When Derek from TechPad posed the question “Will it Blend?”

Most Genuine Person – That would be a toss up between Michael Low from WebhostingStuff and Ben from WebhostingUnleashed. Both absolutely fantastic guys!

It’s not often you can hang out with like minded geeks who don’t ask you what web hosting is when you tell them what you do for a living. I met some fantastic people at HostingCon including David from TouchSupport (hi David!), Mario from R1Soft, Markus from Web Hosting Search, Brett from Webmaster World, Douglas Hanna from Service Untitled and stacks more!

It was a pleasure to be in your company and to meet you all :D

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Free Tools for Webmasters

Mitch — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:12:34 +0000

Author: Mitch Keeler

If you think of owning your web site as sort of like owning a house, I am sure you would follow me if I told you that every so often you need a few good tools to do some home improvement. On the Web’s side of things, there are dozens of tools out there (some good, and some not so good) to get this done. What if you had the best of the best all in one spot? That surely would save you both time and work.

With that in mind, Lunarpages has launched a new Webmaster Tools section to help you with your own web site home improvement.

Ping Tool – Want to know if a certain web site is up or down? Here all you do is enter your domain name, hit submit and it will let you know if the web site is active and the ping speed.

Dmoz and Yahoo Directory Checker – Both Dmoz and the Yahoo Directory are both places you want your web sites to be listed at. With this simple tool you can check to see if you are there instead of having to hunt and peck your way around looking for yourself the old fashioned way.

Pages Indexed – This helpful tool tells you exactly how many pages under your web site that some of the top search engines out there today have listed in their databases. This way you can keep track of which one has been crawling you the most and which hasn’t see you at all.

IP Checker – This simple tool resolves the original host for a specific IP. Sometimes this can be helpful to locate a spammer. Enter in the domain name and it spits back out an IP address for you to follow and the status of the web site.

Keyword Density Tool – Want to know which keywords you use the most or the least to help you in the search engine optimization race? This tool delivers in that department for sure. You can get from 5 to 100 results for a single domain too!

Keyword Research – Need to get a few keyword suggestions but don’t know where to look? Type a phase or word into this tool and it will give you a great number of related terms you can us on your own web site or design.

Link Popularity Checker – So how popular are you? With this next tool it is easy to check. It tells you your inbound links for Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Alltheweb, Altavista and Sympatico.

Meta Tag Generator – Meta tags are still very important to many of the search engines out there. All you need to do here is type in all the content you want in your meta tags and it will send you back what you need to copy and paste into your web site’s code.

Page Rank Checker – The PageRank Checker checks your Google PageRank number to see where you stand. This is a number that many webmaster monitor – and the higher it goes – the more Google likes you. I promise you want Google to really really like you.

PageMason – PageMason makes it east to use your browser to control your website, simply install, edit and publish. All the tools you need are right there at your fingertips.

Lunarpages Toolbar – Want to keep all of Lunarpages resources right at your fingertips? If that is the case, then you need the Lunarpages community toolbar. It comes with weather, security tools, Lunarpages favorite links, radio and POP3/webmail e-mail access.

As you can see Lunarpages wants to deliver you all the tools you need to become an even better and bigger success Online. From PageRank look up to keyword help we are offering a little ‘bit of everything that webmasters need to become successful Online.

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SEO Tips for the Everyday Person

Mitch — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:43:23 +0000

Author: Mitch Keeler

Making your way to the top of the search engines is not an easy task. It takes hard work, dedication and a little luck to be on your side. So how can you ever hope to rank higher than you already do? Well I have a handful of search engine optimization tips that might help you get going.

Use Title Tags for Links – Including title tags for your links is a good way to help people learn a little more about the link itself, and it also gives the search engine spiders a little more content to crawl through. As with any tip, you might just want to make sure you do it in moderation. A few words to help people find out what the link is about won’t hurt though.

Get a Sitemap – A sitemap is handy to have because it gives a full link list for the search engine spiders to follow. This way you can be sure they see all of your links for all of your web pages as well. You might also want to look into creating a special Google sitemap too.

Mix Up Your Pages’ Titles – Is the title for every single web page on your web site the same? This might be hurting you in the long run. Instead of just using “YourDomain.com” as the title of all your web pages – try describing the specific page first, such as “About Us – YourDomain.com”.

Have any other good tips to share?

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My Favorite SEO Cheat Sheet – Ranking Factors Version 2

Amy Armitage — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 20:19:30 +0000

Author: Ben Welch-Bolen

The always amazing Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz fame posted an update to the search engine ranking factors list they keep. This is one of the most useful tools for anyone involved in search engine optimization. You can quickly check to see if something you are worrying about is important or not according to the experts. They rank all the factors in order of importance and have opinions from over 35 SEO experts.

Top 10 Ranking Factors in 2007:

Keyword Use in Title Tag (4.9)

Global Link Popularity of Site (4.5)

Anchor Text of Inbound Link (4.4)

Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure (4.1)

Age of Site (4)

Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site (3.9)

Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community (3.9)

Keyword Use in Body Text (3.9)

Global Link Popularity of Linking Site (3.7)

Topical Relationship of Linking Page (3.6)

Learn more at the Search Ranking Factors Version 2 at SEOmoz. I use these daily as work to improve results in Google. Also be sure to check out this interview with Rand Fishkin Joe did here a while back.

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Web design, flash, animation and custom web development at its best.

Amy Armitage — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 02:46:43 +0000

Author: Samuel Feuer

We have just launched a new site that I wanted to showcase on this here blog. The site is dedicated to exclusive members only and was 100% custom built from the ground up by the MindSmack.com crew. Check it out!

http://www.privatepass.citi.com

Yahoo!

You can also check out some of our latest creations @ http://www.MindSmack.com

For those of you who are into the whole affiliate marketing thing or just love the web and feel you have some interest in meeting other web gurus who are into marketing and the like check out the eComXpo @ http://www.ecomxpo.com/home.htm

Now back to your regularly scheduled website programming…

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Quick Interview by Joe Whyte with Michael Jension of Solo SEO

Amy Armitage — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 06:33:35 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Michael Jenson from Solo SEO. Solo SEO is one of the leading do-it-yourself SEO services online. Michaels product is very user friendly and I had a chance to test it out and I was impressed. I also love the missing mybloglog tools he has implemented into his site.

Michael and I talked about hosting accounts and what his feelings are on certain hosting options.

Joe: When you first started doing SEO do you remember what type of hosting account you started with and what type of hosting account would you recommend to new SEO/SEM’s and Internet Marketers?

Michael: I remember my first website, 13 years ago, was hosted on my ISP because that’s all I knew about. It had a tilde (~) with my username after it. Nowadays you have more options than you can imagine for web hosting. We run our own servers, and for us personally it has been more of an issue of what facility to put our boxes in. For that I have a few recommendations for co-location facilities:

1) Up-time. They can say 99.9%, but is it actually that. They should have various systems in place to notify you when the network is down, and even more important, be notified themselves when its down.

2) Access. You should have a contact at the facility that you can say, “Hey, can you go listen to the fan on this box and tell me if it sounds normal?”

3) Fast. Make sure your pipe is fast, real fast. If you don’t have your own server, there are many options for a web host. You can do shared or dedicated hosting depending on your budget and needs.

Joe: What do you look for in a hosting account/ web host?

Michael: Your own IP. Not required, but a nice benefit. If you share an IP with others and a site on your IP decides to do bad things, your IP can end up on blacklists or other lists that would affect your site and business.

Service. Your requests from point 3 should be quickly attended to. If you like the phone, make sure you can call and not just submit an online service request through their website. Many of the web hosts will let you try it out for 30 days or so, and make sure you try it out to the max and make sure it fits your needs.

Joe: Do you prefer Windows or Linux hosting and why?

Michael: Unix server. Not only do I not like Windows, but my experience with Windows servers has been awful. You can do a ton of things out-of-the-box with a Unix machine.

Michael was very busy and only able to talk for a moment but I thought it was more then worth posting. Thanks michael!

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Lunarpages SEO/SEM link roundup

Amy Armitage — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 18:32:18 +0000

Author: Joe Whyte

Get ready for the Lunarpages roundup. Here is a list of some of the best post’s over the last couple weeks that I have found that I would like to share.

Guillaume from SEOMOZ.org wrote a quality post that any SEO should use while doing their on page optimization.

Rea had an interesting post on how to NOT treat your affiliates so they don’t screw you over.

Loren Baker posted on Blog Carnivals. This idea has got me very interested and I will be doing one shortly on Search Marketing Standard.

NEO of search posts on digg allowing banned domain names back into digg.

5 very in depth tricks to effective keyword research by THE LISA

11 guidelines for getting authoritative links over at searchenginewatch.com

Utilizing the robots exclusion protocol

The top 25 web 2.o startup sites to watch. Great post over at searchengineland.com

Jon from wickedfire put together a hard hitting thread about over and under rated seo/sem etc professionals.

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Elite Retreat Interview with Aaron Wall

Amy Armitage — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:54:44 +0000

Author: Joe Whyte

Today I interviewed Aaron Wall who is going to be a speaker at Elite Retreat in March. This is my third interview in my Elite Retreat series. Aaron Wall is the creator of SEObook, PPC secret ebook and is a talented SEO guru.

Joe: What do you plan on speaking about specifically?

Aaron: Mostly organic search engine optimization, but I can answer most questions related to search marketing, link building, and blogging.

Joe: What real world value do you think your attendees will walk away with after your seminar?

Aaron: Last event we went through and pointed out marketing elements and conversion elements that could be improved to sharply increase the performance of the attendees sites. I think we can help people with anything from lead generation right on through to improving conversion rates and closing more sales.

Joe: You’re SEO book really catapulted you into being an SEO guru but would you place more emphasis on SMO or SEO these days?

Aaron: I think there was a time when SEO was harder because link acquisition was harder than it is today. If you are good at creating linkworthy ideas it shouldn’t be hard to get noticed in today’s marketplace. You can call that SEO or SMO but really it is just marketing…creating things people want to talk about and then leveraging that authority and market position for profit.

Joe: For our clients and viewers can you tell us the secret to success for making a site rank well?

Aaron: This question is so broad that it could take me 300 pages to answer it, but as a rough formula I would say create something the market wants, bake a unique marketing angle into your creation, participate in your market and get their feedback, and do things people would want to talk about (and thus link at). That is the basic process, and at the beginning you should do keyword research, market analysis, and plan out your information architecture. The process is also ongoing, where you use your current market feedback to evolve your marketing.

I also provide a free overview on Work.com

Joe: In your opinion what is the best formula to monetizing a site for maximum ROI?

Aaron: It depends on the vertical, the resources at hand, and the strengths of the site owner.

Joe: You have really been branded as an SEO guru but what other fields of search marketing do you excel at?

Aaron: I am pretty good at seeing the trends in how search will affect other markets. I also created a fairly well known brand in the SEO field, so I am probably pretty decent at branding and blogging.

Joe: How did you get involved with elite retreat?

Aaron: Lee asked me if I would like to be involved at a conference.

Thanks Aaron for giving me some time and talking to me about elite retreat.

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SEO Advice from a Regular Webmaster

Mitch — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 14:41:02 +0000

Author: Mitch Keeler

Now I do not claim to be a search engine optimization expert. I don’t even really like it all that much. Learning about SEO these days though is a must if you want your Web site to become a success. Here are five of my own SEO tips that anybody can make use of.

Use title tags in your links. This not only gives you a few more easy ways to get some crawlable content on the Web page – it also helps your visitors get a preview of what the link is about. The alt tags can be useful here as well.

Content is the key to all of this. Make sure you have good quality content on all of your Web pages. You might also even look at hiring a content writer so that you can be sure you are serving up quality content. Notice I put the key on quality and not quantity.

Use Google’s Webmaster Central tools. This is a nice little collection of tools and links to make sure Google is crawling your content and to keep tabs about what they have been looking at. You can also submit your sitemap here as well so Google knows exactly where on your Web sit to go.

Using keywords is good, but do not go overboard. There is a fine line between using a keyword or keywords successfully and keyword stuffing. Sprinkle them in – do not cram them in.

Contact Web sites that have related content (to what you are pushing out to the public) and ask them to exchange links with you. Having link sharing between similar content is a good way to make sure that you will be found via resources that are similar to your own.

Have any others to share?

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Elite Retreat Interview with Lee Dodd of LeeDodd.com

Amy Armitage — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:26:28 +0000

Author: Joe Whyte

My second interview in my elite retreat interview series is with the well known social netowrking expert Lee Dodd who has achieved much success with sprint forums and is a current speaker at elite retreat San Fransisco in march. Lee’s expertise is essential for anyone considering creating and marketing a forum. Be sure to check out lee’s business bushido site to learn more about lee.

Joe: What do you plan on speaking about specifically?

Lee: I plan on speaking about the growth potential of online communities in the first segment. I will basically outline the benefits of online communities, how to monetize them, dive a bit into SEO, and give a solid picture of the growth and earnings potential. The second segment will be dedicated to my tactics of both buying and selling web real estate.

I have bought and sold more than 60 web properties (websites) over the past 2-3 years. I have spent $xxx,xxx in acquisitions yearly. I have learned much through all of these transactions and will show our attendees how to buy and sell effectively without getting burned. There is plenty of money to be made doing this very thing. You can read more about me and the other speaks here:

Joe: What kind of real world value can attendees take from YOUR seminar?

Lee: I think the attendees will walk away with a solid understanding and plan of attack that will help them achieve the very goals they came with. The leadership will guide them through the EXACT steps it will take them to get from their POINT A to their POINT B. They certainly won’t get fluff or sales pitches, just the hard facts they need to succeed in their business.

Joe: How did you make the sprint forum so popular?

Lee: The site really grew in popularity as I continually added free tools and resources for the users. We have a free upload tool, one of only 3 or so on the web for Sprint phones, we have a huge wallpaper gallery with free wallpapers to download, we provide custom graphic and ringtone creation for free, we have user blogs, and so much more. As I built the new fun content, growth continued at a steady pace. Things like SEO and branding really took care of itself at that point.

Joe: For our clients and viewers can you tell us the secret to success for making a forum popular?

Lee: I will continue to share that my main secret (and there are others which will be discussed at the Elite Retreat ) is creating useful and unique content. This doesn’t have to be written content necessarily, but rather tools, games, video, audio, or some other type of valuable content to your userbase. Having this in place will bring the traffic required to see your community grow.

Joe: Can you tell us about one of your most notable client’s and what you where able to do for them?

Lee: I have worked with a variety of clients and their forums. The first one that comes to mind is a woman that runs a large community that is health related. I was able in one session to give her a plan of attack that took her earnings from approximately $1,700 a month to more than $4,500 a month. It didn’t require much work either as it was something she had implemented in a matter of hours.

Joe: In your opinion what is the best formula to monetizing a site for maximum ROI?

Lee: Depending on the niche you are in, you will want to focus your monetization efforts in a specific area. For instance, if you are in the technology sector you would want to begin with monetizing your traffic through CPA offers and CPC (Adsense or YPN) networks. As traffic grows, you would want to build up your private advertisers as well. To maximize ROI, the key is to maximize eyeballs. Ask yourself if you are doing everything you can to bring in the most traffic to your site, and then once they arrive are you doing the best you can to convert them in to revenue.

Joe: Who is the best web hosting company in the world?

Lee: Lunar Pages of course! ;-)

Thanks for entertianing that question Lee. I have been very impressed with what you have done with sprint forums and spending 20 minutes speaking with you about social networking and marketing could truly increase someones online efforts and maximize their ROI. Have a great trip to San Fransisco.

Random Posts

Elite Retreat Interview with Kris Jones of Pepperjamsearch.com

Amy Armitage — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:21:18 +0000

Author: Joe Whyte

Elite Retreat is geared more towards the industry professional looking to learn the secret skill set from the professional super affiliate, SEO, SMO and venture capitalist. The speakers at elite retreat are highly qualified industry professionals who will be able to answer in depth questions which are posed by the attendee’s on a more in depth level then normal conventions. Elite retreat is going to have a one on one feel giving specialized attention to the individual’s who attend making this the first ever one on one convention in its field. This is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs and small to large business owners attempting to gain momentum in the search field.

I will be doing a series of interviews with the leading speakers at Elite Retreat attempting to get some information on what they will be speaking about and how it can be beneficial for the attendees in a real world situation.

First up is a leading powerhouse in the search field and his name is Kris Jones of Pepperjamsearch.com.

Joe:What do you plan on speaking about specifically?

Kris: I will share my insights on how to make money online using a combination of search-engine marketing, affiliate marketing, and various alternative online media channels. Since my experiences cross both the affiliate (publisher) and advertiser (merchant) perspective, I’m likely to be responsive to the needs of the attendees and address their specific concerns. This is not a conference where we speak to the attendees – instead, we speak with them to address and optimize their businesses.

Joe: What can attendees expect from this conference?

Kris: Attendees can expect to come to the Elite Retreat with problems or ideas and have those problems or ideas addressed by very experienced, proven internet marketers. In addition, each attendee will have valuable one-on-one interaction with each speaker, including myself.

Joe: Why do you hire such attractive women? Is that your form of chickbait?

Kris: It just so happens that our approach has always been to hire the best and brightest employees we can find. In general, women are smarter than men. Being one of the fastest growing privately-held companies in the United States attracts smart people. Oh, ya, and there is a strong correlation between smart people, being female, and being attractive.

Joe: What is more important to you as a marketer, SEO or SMO?

Kris: I’m a strong believer in both SEO and SMO, but I have to admit that I’m fascinated by SMO. I’m a student (and in some cases a teacher) of different forms of buzz and viral marketing – not necessarily from the standpoint of just putting out (social media) content, but doing so in a way that entertains, while capturing imagination and gets people talking. Both SEO and SMO can help businesses capture market share, but only SMO can truly get people talking about your product or service in a way that makes them want to tell their best friend who tells their co-worker to take action. By the way, my company offers businesses management and consultation in both SEO and SMO.

Joe: Can you tell us about one of your most notable client’s and what you where able to do for them?

Kris: We have been the outsourced online marketing division of igourmet.com since 2000 – we perform all online marketing duties for igourmet, including SEM & SEO, affiliate marketing management (Linkshare), online media planning & management, partnership acquisition (i.e., Target.com, Overstock.com, Epicurious.com), etc. With our help igourmet has received numerous national awards, including designation by Consumer Reports (2006) as the #1 place to shop for gourmet food online, Internet Retailer as a Top 500 online retailer (2005 – 2006), and Forbes Magazine (2003 – 2006) as the #1 place to shop for gourmet food online. We’ve increased igourmet’s sales in each of the areas mentioned above by an average of 150% per year, every year.

Joe: Can you give some advice to our visitors and customers on how to effectively market their site.

Kris: (1) Start with paid (PPC) search-engine marketing. Hire a PPC expert (internal or outsource) outside of executive management who understands PPC and is committed to staying on top of the daily changes and opportunities that are emerging across all of the various seach-engines. Your PPC manager should not be responsible for multiple channels of online marketing – they should be dedicated to PPC. If done correctly, PPC should account for 20% or more of your online sales.

(2) Second, hire an SEO expert (internal or outsource) outside of executive management who understands SEO (especially on Google) and is committed to staying on top of the periodic changes and opportunities that are emerging across all of the various seach-engines. The goal here is to create some short, medium, and long-term goals for how you can represent your website as an authority to Google and the other engines – therefore, have patience, it will take time, but the committment will pay dividends many times over once your reputation is established and your website takes into consideration the basic and advanced tenants of SEO ( i.e., links and what those links say, tags, content, navigation, etc.).

(3) Third, evaluate the power of affiliate marketing. Does affiliate marketing provide an additional market share acquisition channel for your business? Regardless of your business model, chances are affiliate marketing can add an additional 15% or more to your bottom line. Hire an affiliate marketing expert (internal or outsource) with leverage into the affiliate marketing community. Since approximately 95% of your sales are likely to come from less than 5% of the affiliate community (the Super Affiliates) you’re going to need an affiliate manager with access to those 5% (leverage) – I call it leverage because affiliate marketing is really about building partnerships – your affiliate manager must be able to spend most of their time building relationships with the 5% of affiliates who drive the industry.

(4) Finally, evaluate alternative forms of online marketing, including social media, display advertising, contextual advertising, behavioral targeting / re-targeting, strategic partnership acquisition, buzz marketing, etc. Hire an online media expert (internal or outsource) with experience and insight into the aforementioned channels.

By the way, your online marketing efforts should not be structured for autopilot. Moreover, your executive team should not be responsible for online marketing efforts – if this is the case, you need to hire an expert and allow the executive to get back to what they should be doing. If you are not involved in all of the above channels you are missing out on market share that your competitors are likely enjoying.

Joe: How did you propel PepperJam to the forefront of the internet marketing field?

Kris: Hired smart people with integrity and got out of their way. Also, I’ve been involved in online marketing since the late 90’s (the GoTo.com days) which apparently makes me one of the early adopters of paid search and affiliate marketing.

Thanks Kris and I wish you all the best at elite retreat and I know anyone attending your session is going to take away a life long value that cannot have a price put on it.

Random Posts

What the search industry leaders are doing for Valentines Day

Amy Armitage — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:23:33 +0000

Happy valentines day to one and all. Its a day of love and living. Its a celebration of loving your loved ones. It is important for us to show the ones we love just how much we care for them. Some say its only a commercial holiday and ~~women~~ some say its one of the best holiday’s in the world. I have been lucky enough to have some of the major players in search give us a little bit of insight into their valentines day holiday. It was very kind of them to give us a little bit of access to their personal life.

Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land): For Valentine’s Day, I’ll not so surprise my wife with flowers and a card and try to give a real gift, which would be ending work early and having a nice meal at home with her.

Darren Rowse (Problogger.net): It’s a fairly normal day really. We exchanged cards and took a mid morning stroll down to our local cafe where we had a coffee. The rest of the day will be normal work and tonight we’re off to church for our normal Wednesday night gathering.

Aaron Walls (seobook): I am going to help my girlfriend fix up her kitchen cabinetry website and then go to the city for a sweet yummie dinner.

Kris Jones (PepperJamSearch): I will be spending Valentine’s Day with my beautiful fiance Robyn. We are bracing for a large snow storm on the East Coast so after a romantic dinner we will probably spend some time with a bottle of Chianti and our 2-year old English Bulldog – Roxy – by the fireplace.

Bill Slawski (SEO by the SEA): Sad to say that nothing romantic is going on at SEO by the Sea tommorrow. Instead, we’re planning on battening down the hatches, and riding out a wintery storm that may or may not hit us with a lot of snow, sleet, freezing rain, and possible flooding. We do welcome valentines, to help get us through the rough weather

Adam Maywald (voasi.com): I am going to an anti-valentines day party with all girls.

Todd Austin (Worlds Best Designer):I am doing nothing. I am leading an organization against valentines day. Its a corporate holiday created by corporate commercial capitalists and although I respect their drive I hate the idea and that women all over the world have fallen for it and are making men’s life living hell.

Andrew Gerhart (Automotive.com): Tonight I’ll be taking my fiancé to one of our favorite local restaurants, starting a new tradition. Either that or cook her the meal I made her on our first date. We’ll see.

Lee dodd (LeeDodd.com): Our day is going to be a pretty normal Wednesday. We weren’t able to secure someone to watch our children after church tonight, so we had our Valentine’s Day on Monday. It was nice as we went out to dinner (delicious) and then a movie. I did get a card from my wife this morning at breakfast however, and plan to give her my gift tonight.

Amy and Jay Armitage (lunarpages.com): (amy) so yeah i’ll get home, we will prolly have a chat bout our day and a drink.. put the kids to bed.. I’ll make him watch my lame TV shows and guilt him out bout not sending me flowers (that I never wanted anyway). He will try get his leg over and we will spoon until I turn like a rotisserie chicken because I’m too hot.. We never have celebrated Valentine’s Day.. we just love on each other every day. (Jay) Gotta go she told me I aint getting any for a while if she doesn’t get flowers.

Andrea Schoemaker (planetandrea.com): I wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen this Valentine’s Day. This morning I woke up to a delivery of a dozen roses and a bag of my favorite chocolate (Peanut M&M’s) and I also have a dinner date later this evening! Should be fun. I also baked 2 dozen cupcakes and decorated them with hearts for all of my neighbor kids!
What are you doing for valentines day?

P.S. Here is what I am doing:

Joe Whyte (joe-whyte.com): I am not really into valentines day but considering this is the first valentines day I have spent with Marielle as my wife I wanted to make it special. I bought about 4 gifts and hid them around the house. I have notes or “clues” placed next to each item and then one near the door when she walks in. When she opens the first clue it will have a riddle she needs to decode to find her next gift. Each clue has a little love note in it.