10 Tips for SEO Friendly Content Generation

Here are 10 useful tips for creating good content for SEO. These tips promote SEO friendly, as well as socially important, content.

• Create content that serves your customer’s needs first and your own needs second.
• Create content that will meet your visitor’s exact search query and satisfy it.
• Create content your visitor will be glad that they found – something that is useful.
• Create content that is based on real research rather than guessing at keywords.
• Create content that is written for your specific visitor so that it flows smoothly and reads well to them.
• Create content that is original and you feel proud to have created it.
• Create content that has a solid, well written “call to action.”
• Create content based on recent news and events in order to get traffic and backlinks.
• Create content that is controvertial or worthy of discussion in order to rank well in social networks.
• Create content that is scannable, highlighting important thoughts and ideas.

Tags: Content

Using Latent Semantic Indexing to Improve Content and Authority

Latent semantic analysis (LSA) is a technique in natural language processing by which we can analyze relationships between a set of documents and the terms they contain by producing a set of concepts related to the documents and terms. In the context of its application to information retrieval, it is sometimes called latent semantic indexing (LSI). LSI is an extremely powerful influence to relevancy.

How LSI Works

LSI uses an occurance matrix that describes the occurrences of terms in documents. This term-document matrix is a sparse matrix whose rows correspond to terms and whose columns correspond to documents.

An equation that is typically used to assign values to the elements of the matrix is ‘term frequency–inverse document frequency’ (tf-idf), which says that the term-elements of the matrix are proportional to the number of times the terms appear in each document, where weights of rare terms are increased to reflect their relative importance. LSI then draws indirect relationships between terms and documents, by related then to some concepts.

It’s actually way more complicated than this, but you can read more here: LSI at Indiana University

Just remember that it does not ever replace good basic optimization factors, but it is something that you can study and apply to specific pages for those occasions where you have very low KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) phrases, that are highly competitive.

LSI is an influence that is at work in the background rewarding you for writing higher quality, well written content.

When you hear Matt Cutts from Google talking about writing better quality content, he is not offering deep hidden meaning in his advice. There are excellent reasons to right higher quality content that
reads well to your visitors.

Best advice is to create content that is useful, reads well and that serves some legitimate purpose.

Tags: Content, kei, lsi

5 Rules for Writing Attention Grabbing Headlines and Titles

You’ve probably thought a lot about using different styles of headlines in your articles. You headline is one of the most important aspects of your page as a good headline hooks the reader and gets them reading your content or article.

Here are a couple rules for writing headlines:

• Use title case. That is, all words with 3 or more characters should be capitalized.
  For example: How to Write Attention Grabbing Headlines and Titles
• Do not capitalize all letters in a word except for acronyms.
  For example: even when writing ‘ONLY’, or ‘TODAY’ or ‘NOW’, avoid using all upper case in titles.
• Quantify the point. Include numbers, measurements, timelines, etc…
  For example: see results in only 3 days!
• Use numerals rather than spelling out numbers.
  For example: 10 Easy Tips on building your business.

  is better than…..

  Ten easy tips on building your business.

• Use strong, emotional adjectives and verbs.
  For example: catastrophe, kill, demolish, love, annihilate.

Letters versus numerals is not based on SEO, but on what appeals the the human mind from a usability point of view. Please read this study:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/writing-numbers.html

Tags: headline, title

Use Combinations of Older Common Words to Get Search Traffic

Did you know that most users will tend to employ older words when they are focused on solving a specific problem as they search?

You want to know how visitors are finding your site. But even before that, when you are designing your site or writing your content, you want to know how visitors might find your site. To plan this out, you should focus on common search terms and phrases rather than newer fad words or hyped up slang terms.

A phrase made up of older, natural terms that are only 2 or 3 words long will usually be how people naturally search.

What This Means

What this means is that it is good wisdom to use ordinary natural words in your web copy rather than brand new contrived words that have not been around for very long. In today’s day and age we are
continually coming up with new words or brand focused words. But remember to use good old fashioned descriptive supporting terms for best results in SEO.

If you fill your pages with contrived new hyped up words, you’ll be sacrificing the ability for your ideal buying audience to find you in the search process.

Tags: key phrases, keywords

Update Your Website in Order to Get Noticed

Remember that there is real value in performing consistent updates to your website. Do you blog less than once a week? Do you have the same boring layout and graphics that you used back in 1995? Do you publish anything useful or just repetitive mumbo jumbo that people already know? If so, you might be a ‘logger’ rather than a blogger.

If your blog is more like a log, spruce it up by adding freshly-written, original content on at least a weekly consistent basis. First and foremost, this will improve the number of times Google comes to visit and crawl your site. Pinging feed aggregators and submitting content to social networks will improve the number of direct referals to your site. But how can you ping or submit if you have no useful content? You can’t.

Some ideas for content updates:

• Your opinion on industry related news.
• Your opinion on how non-industry related news affects you or your industry.
• Quick tips on your subject matter.
• Rewrite an old post with updated information and resources.
• Post a question or a poll to your visitors.
• Reflect on a question or poll the you have previously posted.
• Review a product or service that you have used.
• Pimp a product or service through affiliate marketing.
• Summarize your day or week and teach the readers a moral or ethical lesson.
• Be creative and do something I haven’t mentioned here.

If you’ve noticed, the most popular blogs have new content at least once every other day. Publishing fresh content is much more effective than many people realize. Take advantage and make the extra effort and you will reap the benefit.

Tags: Content

How to Optimize Individual Web Pages for Conversions

Conversions are what make your website work for you. Without visitor conversions, your efforts are not worth your time. Here are some ideas to optimize individual pages on your website.

Examine your log files for activity on the last few pages you have recently added to your site. Get a feeling for how traffic moving to and through these pages are working for you. Where are visitors coming from? How did they get there? What are they probably looking for?

Does each page you have recently added have a clearly defined objective? In other words, what is it that you want a visitor to do after reading a page? What action will make each page successful or
“fulfill” that objective.

Every page may have a different objective so each one needs to be considered on its own. Maybe your most recent pages are selling a product, so your objective is to make a sale. Then is that page using
a strong enough call to action or clearly telling the visitor what you want them to do? If not, go back and make it better.

If you are looking for an interesting log analysis program, have a look at Click Tracks.

You could also set up Google Analytics to track conversions on a per-page basis.

Either way, if your visitors are not converting, only you can fix your ad copy and your calls to action to make them convert. Remember to:

• Tell them why your product or service will add value to their life.
• Qualify that value as little as possible and if you must qualify it, do it by spelling out the qualification. Instead of, “Most dieters should see results quickly.” Say, “Dieters that have 30 or more pounds to lose should see results quickly.”
• Quantify that value with a time or amount. Instead of, “Dieters that have 30 or more pounds to lose should see results quickly.” Say, “Dieters that have 30 or more pounds to lose should see at least a 10% loss within the first month.”
• Bulletize your points. Make your ad copy scannable!
• Use your knowledge of eye flow. Direct your readers from top left to bottom right, and end with a clearly visible, easy to see, easy to read, easy to act on, call to action.
• Highlight and spell out clearly, any guarantees or promotions.
• Tell them to buy! “Click Here!” “Subscribe now!” “Order now!” “Place your order now!” “Order today!”
• Finally, don’t forget to split test.

Remember, clearly define a desired action for each page. Optimize your ad copy, optimize your calls to action, and don’t forget to split test. Keep each test live for 3-6 months though, so your test won’t be biased by trends, seasons, the economy, etc…

Tags: conversions, optimize, web page

Add Value to Your Website by Offering Useful Tools and Resources

Content is the foundation behind any successful website. You must offer original, detailed, descriptive, helpful content to your readers. But what if you already do that? What is the next step?

Let me ask you a question. How well are you optimizing your pages for additional related accessories or tools related to your specific product or service? After all, without added value why would anyone continue to visit your website?

Depending on the type of business you are running, try and explore data that extends beyond the obvious. Look for something that you could easily incorporate into your Web site, like an affiliate
program that compliments your current products or services.

Be sure to research related online tools and other resources that you could be optimizing for, such as calculators, tests, profiles, maps, widgets, gadgets, games, driving directions or other important related possibilities.

Check your top competition for the tools and gadgets they are using. Then try to think outside the box and expand on what they offer. Good keyword research with an open mind often pays off in real nice profits if you explore just a little deeper than your competitor has.

Tags: value

Optimizing Your Website for Local Search

Printed search is dying. Newspaper readers have converted to online local search and feed readers. Even online shopping is increasing at a significant rate; 1/3 to 1/2 of holiday spending is spent online even in most major cities.

The Yellow Pages

A direct comparison can be made between the Yellow Pages and the Internet Yellow Pages. How many people will bother getting up, picking that thick yellow book, and searching for what they need in some 1000 odd pages or so, when they can just plug in a simple query online and find their results in 7 seconds? That’s a rhetorical question… you already know the answer.

Local Search Is Taking Off

With the recent and upcoming growth of mobile search, local search will be a force to be reckoned with so it is to everyone’s advantage to get registered today and claim your spot in the major local search engines and portals. You might not see a significant statistical growth in traffic tomorrow or even a month from now, but you will be poised to receive all those random searches for your location. Remember the early bird gets the worm. Don’t wait to optimize for local search when there are already 1000 or more listings for your area.

Onsite Local Search Optimization

Be sure to include geographical information like your real world address on your pages. Your information should be included in HTML so the spiders can read it. Proper places to put this information include in the meta tags, title tags, at least one header tag (probably on the contact page), at the top of your pages, and/or in the footer of your pages.

A whole new breed of spiders is looking for area codes, zip codes and city names, to assist searchers in finding stores and services near their location. Even whole phone numbers are quickly being picked up and cached for future reference.

Optimizing in this way will allow you to come up ahead of the competition when someone searches for a business in your industry, or even if they just search for your geographic region.

Using hCard Markup

This is not a necessary technology, but it provides a web standard for listing contact information moving forward that is machine readable and easily styled.

hCard, which is short for HTML vCard, is a microformat for publishing the contact details of people, companies, organizations, and places, in a variety of online formats including XHTML, HTML, RSS, Atom, and XML. hCard uses a 1:1 representation of vCard (RFC 2426) properties and values.

To code an hCard on your site, you might use the following code:

<div class="vcard">
<div class="fn">Jane Doe</div>
<div class="org">A Company Name</div>
<div class="tel">555-555-4321</div>
<a class="url" href="http://www.example-url.com/">http://www.example-url.com/</a>
</div>


Read more about the hCard and related vCard standards here.

Offsite Local Search Optimization

Top Resources: As always the main battle is between Yahoo, Google, and MSN.

• Get listed with Yahoo Local
  Yahoo! Local – Yahoo! does not require manual confirmation.
• Get listed with Google Local
  Google Local – Google will send you a postcard with a confirmation code once you submit your listing. This can take 4-6 weeks.
• Get listed with MSN Live
  MSN Live – Microsoft launched their attempt to compete with Google and Yahoo! for the local search market in the fall of 2007. The partnerships between Microsoft and several other companies that offer state of the art technology for imaging and mapping, has resulted in a high quality user interface, which should prove to be some serious competition for the big 2 in the near future.

Second Tier: These are the sites that have high PR, plenty of backlinks, and a hearty following, but they are still only secondary in importance for local search concerns.

• Get listed with Merchant Circle
  Merchant Circle – They let you promote your business with a variety of tools including custom anchor links, business reviews, and a public blog. Part of the custom URL for your business includes your phone number.
• Find out more about getting listed with Ask City
  Ask City – Ask City was launched by Ask to compete directly with the big 2. Neither Google nor Yahoo can compete with the interactivity provided by their map technologies. You can utilize a sitemap and a robots.txt file to have a chance to get listed quickly, or you can use their ping service to notify Ask City about your updated sitemap. Learn more.

The Little Guys

• Get listed with Verizon Superpages
  Verizon Superpages – For printed Yellow Pages, Verizon is the king, but their online version has a long way to go to catch up with the big boys. By the way, if you add your listing you will probably receive a call from a sales rep trying to sell you their Pay Per Click services. I’ve not spoken to a business owner yet who has kept the service for more than a year, but you make your own decision.
• Get listed with Yellow Pages
  Yellow Pages – This is the paper yellow pages book brought online. They have made no effort to make the user interface competitive with the top tier sites. Less than 5% market share.
• Get listed with Local
  Local – They have the best domain name, but they don’t do anything with it. With a market share under 2% they need to make vast improvements to really make their service compete with anyone else.
• Get listed with True Local
  True Local – True Local is a free local search directory. You must be brick and mortar to be listed. They are apparently working on a few new features, so maybe the service will be better in late 2008.

The Rest

• Get listed with InfoSpace
  InfoSpace – Just a small time local search site who has developed the proprietary metasearch technology that is used on insignificant search engines like DogPile and WebCrawler.
• Get listed with Yelp
  Yelp – Yelp is more of a local search community than it is a local search engine. It is user driven, rather than business driven like MerchantCircle. Could provide a limited opportunity to network in your area.
• Get listed with ZoomInfo
  ZoomInfo – From their website: “ZoomInfo is the premier business information search engine, with profiles on more than 37 million people and 3.5 million companies. ZoomInfo delivers fresh and organized information on industries, companies, people, products, services and jobs.” I guess a link is a link.
• Get listed with YP
  YP – YP.com isn’t even a real site. It exists within the LiveDeal.com infrastructure. Once again, a link is a link.

New and Untested

• Get listed with Local Buzzer
  Local Buzzer – This is a brand spankin’ new site with lots of potential. It is a community driven site, but mixes map search with review-based search. The front page is the search page, and its user interface is about as simple as they come. It has potential.

Local Data Publishers

• Get listed with Marketing Leads USA
  Marketing Leads USA – Marketing Leads USA is one of the most comprehensive local data providers online. Their databases are tops in the industry for business, executive, and consumer data. Since they are able to offer discounted services, their data will be put into widespread use across the Internet and the offline sales and marketing world going forward.
• Get listed with InfoUSA
  InfoUSA – InfoUSA is more of a gigantic database than a local search directory. Their data provides many of the smaller local search engines with data for their search results.
• Get listed with Localeze
  localeze – Localeze is a business data aggregator. Directories use their feeds and datasets to populate their database backends.
• Get listed with iBegin Source
  iBegin Source – iBegin Source is another business data aggregator. They supply yellow pages and marketing firms with US and Canadian business data.
• Acxiom – Acxiom is another online data provider. Their data is used to populate and validate many other corporate and business database. There is no link to add your business.

Avoid the companies and websites that want to charge you $199 to get listed in all the local search engines. You can just take an hour or so and manually do this yourself. Unless you are a multi-million dollar corporation, this type of expense doesn’t make much sense to me.

Tags: google, local, msn, yahoo

Tis the Season to Be Promoting

Prepare some new optimization strategies with a seasonal approach, but prepare them well ahead of time so that you can be ranked and visible before the season arrives. Allow for a 3 month window.

January provides a 3 month lead-in to Easter.

In February you want to start targeting spring and summer products such as the Awesome Auger.

March is a perfect lead in to 4th of July promotions.

April and May provide an opportunity to look for products and services that people will be searching for in the fall season.

June would be a great time to begin creating some new pages for Halloween.

July is the month to build a new site targeting Thanksgiving.

August and September would be a great time to begin building for Christmas promotions.

October could give you a chance to target the New Year.

November is the best time to start a Valentine’s Day campaign. Think Teddy Bears and flowers.

December is a nice month to take a vacation… or maybe to promotion Spring Break vacations!

Leave plenty of time for the search engines to index your pages so you will already be found as the season approaches.

Tags: Promotions, Sales, seasonal

How to Make Your Millions With Affiliate Marketing

Do You Want Your Blog to Make Money?

Those of us, not including myself, who have tens or hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per month, aim to make some money with their blogs and communities. There are many ways to do this by including Adsense and banner ads, which don’t really add much value to the overall user experience.

Provide Additional Value to Your Visitors

Have you thought about how you might monetize your loyal visitors by offering even more solutions to their problems?

Are there complimentary services related to your industry with whom you could start an affiliate relationship?

There is a way to offer an exact solution for extremely targeted content. It is called Affiliate Marketing (AM). Many part time and full time bloggers have heard of the major players in AM, but sometimes it’s better to think outside the box. When you can’t find what you are looking for on the major networks, it’s always a good idea to look for smaller players who might have offers not available mainstream.

Join Hydra Network, The Leading Performance-Based Advertising Network, Today! Hydra Network is always FREE to join.

Why Choose Hydra Network

1. Rave-worthy service

   • One-on-one support from your personal Hydra Network Affiliate Manager
   • Rapid, reliable response
2. The most new, unique and exclusive CPA campaigns

   Hydra Network constantly gets new campaigns. If you want something you don’t see let them know; they will get it and beat any other network’s street payout on it!

3. Higher conversions

   • Unique creative for non-exclusive CPA campaigns generates higher response
   • CPA campaigns pre-screened to ensure fit with your audience
   • Daily emails to inform you what’s new… and what’s pulling
   • Your Affiliate Manager helps you choose campaigns that best fit your audience and generate the highest response
4. Most user-friendly interface

   • Fast and easy campaign setup
   • Easy sub-ID tracking and other setup options
   • Easily manage your account
   • Track your traffic in real time
5. Hydra Network pays you more for the same campaign

   If you find a higher payout, let them know and they will top it.

6. Earn more with Hydra volume-based rewards

   Choose cash or prizes like an Apple iPod, plasma TV, Sony VAIO notebook or Hawaiian vacation..

7. Get paid what you deserve, without fail

   • Reliable and accurate, proprietary tracking system
   • Credit for all the compliant traffic you drive
   • Always get paid on time with Net 15 payouts

Join Hydra Network, The Leading Performance-Based Advertising Network, Today!

I personally use Hydra in combination with some of the other affiliate networks, and I find that they offer the best payouts as well as offers that I can’t find anywhere else. You should at least take the time to check it out.

How to Use Hydra Network

Anytime you have a product or service that you really like and want to share with your visitors, you should first write a review in your own words. Then when you have written the story that you think everyone should read, you should browse the Hydra Network for that product or service. Chances are that you will find an advertiser that offers what you are promoting.

What better way to help your visitors then by providing a direct link to purchase exactly what you are telling them to purchase? I have found affiliate marketing to be the solution that I need to offer maximum value to my visitors.

Don’t forget to promote your product or service with the keywords and anchor text that will help the search engines know exactly what you are writing about. Remember not to be too vague, and remember that long tail key phrases can often be easy to dominate, thus helping to build a foundation for success.

Tags: am, business, hydra