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Lately, I’ve had people asking me questions about the meta keyword tag. It’s dead. It’s been dead for years, yet I have a hard time getting this across to people.
Back in the old days of the web, the search algorithms were simple and the meta keyword tag was offered as a way for webmasters to let search engines know what their site was about.
It was simple. People liked meta tags, and they were easy to fill in with related data.
Unfortunately, spammers took advantage and started stuffing the keyword tag with unrelated words that they thought people would search for on the internet. If they thought people would search for “healthy hair,” then they would add that into their keyword tags even if their site was really about cars.
Spammers sometimes want traffic even if it’s junk traffic. I have no idea how this really helps their sites. To each his or her own.
What do you use instead?
Instead, you can start by become an SEO expert, writing stellar content or hiring an SEO copywriter. Content is king, my friends, and it’s hard to go wrong with quality content that people want to read.
February 12, 2008 – 3:48 am
This is part two of my article on becoming a SEO expert. You can read part one of this SEO Education series first if you want.
By spending time in online marketing forums, you may find you absorb a lot more search engine optimization (SEO) information than you realize. When I joined my first tech forum, I was baffled by the techie language. Within a few months, I could hardly believe I’d ever not understood what they were talking about.
This article shares seven SEO forums and two excellent online marketing blogs with you.
On SEO forums, you’ll find a mix of people managing niche websites, people wanting to market their brick and mortar, black hat SEO types, and prominent leaders and “gurus” in the SEO field. As with anywhere in the world, some people will be kind and others rude.
Read on to get the list of seven SEO forums and two blogs.
Read More »
February 11, 2008 – 2:33 am
Are you curious about how to improve your SEO skills? Are you a small business owner who wants to know a bit more about SEO?
Recently, someone emailed me to ask what resources I use and think are best for learning about search engine optimization (SEO). With some of these resources, you may wonder what is the relation to SEO. Magazines.com may seem like an odd choice, yet it works to help you with your website and SEO if you let it.
Below are the first nine of my top 27 resources, including websites and online training, that have helped me develop my skills.
This list is in no particular order. Here you go! Read More »
February 1, 2008 – 1:34 am
WordPress (WP) is, hands down, one of the best content management systems out there. Reason number one to use WordPress is that it’s free. You really do not have to pay one dime to use this outstanding open source software. It’s mind boggling!
Not everyone who visits here is a tech geek, so I’ll explain quickly that “open source” defines software, developed by programming volunteers, that people can use for free.
Now on to the reasons why I think you should at least consider using WordPress to run your website:
Read More »
January 16, 2008 – 1:24 am
Well, gosh. Here I was going to write the best ways to use LinkedIn and the company itself beat me to it.
I’ll share a few of their ideas and then a few of mine: Read More »
January 14, 2008 – 1:20 am
You, too, can use Facebook and LinkedIn for fun and profit. In this three-part series, I’ll discuss:
1. What steps to take for LinkedIn success.
2. How to use LinkedIn for networking, new work, and collaboration.
3. When you should use Facebook instead of LinkedIn.
When I first joined LinkedIn, I just didn’t get it. I signed up, plugged in some of my information and let it sit. Where was the magic I expected?
Read More »
January 11, 2008 – 5:31 pm
Imagine looking at the time, realizing two hours went by, and you haven’t completed your major project for the day.
Has this ever happened to you?
It was August and the scent of lavender and mint blew in through an open window. Somewhere a neighbor was mowing a lawn, and I could hear children at the playground. Ah, the sounds of a home-based office.
And then I wondered:
Read More »
January 9, 2008 – 1:08 am
I won’t give the same old advice about not visiting Starbucks every day. Instead, I’m sharing seven steps I personally used to save money as I moved into the role of entrepreneur.
As a home based business owner, you’ve already got a head start since you won’t be paying rent. Other ways you can save: Read More »
January 2, 2008 – 1:44 am
DoshDosh at the Make Money Online blog wrote about 8 ways to optimize yourself in your business, in your personal life and in your living space. Essentially, he shares how to optimize yourself.
Since it’s that goal-setting time of year, I’m sharing three ways to keep your business and personal goals realistic and possible. Read More »
January 1, 2008 – 11:35 pm
It’s easy to spend thousands of dollars quickly (and accidentally) with Google AdWords campaigns. I’ve heard the horror stories.
Ideally, you should hire an AdWords expert to manage your campaign. If you can’t afford that, then you can at least take three steps to improve your campaign results.
These may not be easy steps for you. Whether you find them easy will depend on your comfort with technology, your AdWords experience, and your comfort level with risking a possibly expensive mistake.
The top three problems I commonly see in AdWords campaigns are: Read More »
December 30, 2007 – 4:44 am
I joined Facebook 4-5 months ago. I committed at least one embarrassing mistake, at least one social networking crime.
I would like to help you avoid my pain.
When you join Facebook — and it’s a great networking and marketing tool, so you should — do the following. Read More »
December 28, 2007 – 10:13 pm
That is the phrase I typed into Google recently after rebooting my laptop for the third time in a row.
Two weeks ago, I expressed gratitude for having such a great computer. This week, I wanted to pitch it against the wall.
Now, I’m back to thinking my PC the best thing since SEO. I’ll let you in on a few of the steps I took to increase my PC performance. I ended up saving myself about $1,000 or $2,000 since I didn’t have to buy a new computer or at least several hundred to hire a computer expert to come fix my machine. Read More »
December 21, 2007 – 1:05 am
The fancy term for this is “internal linking strategy.” However, that’s more for the search engine optimization greeks like myself. This step-by-step explanation should help you increase your conversions over time while giving your visitors what they really want from your website.
1. Use Analytics to Discover Your Most Popular Pages: In your analytics program, find out which pages were the most popular for November. Make a list of the top five. (An excel spreadsheet works well for this task.) Do the same for October and September. If you see a certain page popping up more than once in the top five over those three months, then you know it’s probably not a fluke. Keep in mind that if you had a promotion going on for a certain URL on your site, you could end up with a “false” result for that page. Most likely, a promoted page won’t work well for this exercise.
Read More »
December 19, 2007 – 1:43 am
In the past few months, I’ve talked to numerous prospects and have a good sense of the most important action they could take to improve their online marketing efforts.
The secret, dear readers, is in the sauce.
The sauce, dear readers, is marketing research.
Too often business owners have not done the market research. Too often someone starts a business with the idea that “I love to make hats, so I’ll start a hat business.” However, they do not think, “I’ll start
a hat business because I’ve received a lot of requests to make hats.”
See the difference?
Is your business idea a good one?
The answer lies in the market research. Do people want what you want to offer?
Read More »
December 18, 2007 – 5:47 am
When it comes to search engine optimization, I don’t think you can read too many of the good online marketing blogs.
Since search engines often change how they rank sites, it pays to keep up to date with other webmasters and online marketers and hear the news straight from the front lines.
That said, these are the blogs I turn to again and again for online marketing news, perspectives that help me increase site rankings, and even occasional entertainment.
Read More »
December 15, 2007 – 4:24 am
This is part two of How to Rank in Google. Writing quality content is one of the most important actions to take in search engine optimization. Clients who come to me with a lot of content ready to place on their site will perform much better than clients without content.
The Beauty of Quality Content: Quality content provides relevant and valuable information to your audience and uses proper grammar. Quality content also:
Read More »
December 14, 2007 – 4:18 am
Recently, a colleague asked how her website could rank high in Google. She said she had her metatags in place and searched on her keywords, yet the site did not come up.
While metatags still have a certain amount of importance, the search engine optimization game has changed bit by bit to combat spam websites. If you have the time and a website with quality content, you can take a few steps to help your site increase its rank in the search engines.
Part 1
The Beauty of Backlinks: Backlinks are links that come into your site from related websites. Backlinks that come into your computer repair site from a website about fly fishing will not help your rankings. Instead, seek out links from related sites.
Search engine optimization is not a one-size-fits-all method. That’s why it’s best to work with an organization that can develop an ongoing plan tailored to your business. The following suggestions will work better for some businesses than others.
1. Blog Comments: One way to get backlinks and visitors is to leave blog comments on respected, high-traffic blogs. Your comment should be relevant to the post, and the post will ideally be relevant to your business. If the blog discusses tennis shoes and you have a tennis shoe business, it’s a good match.
2. Articles: If you like to write, you will greatly enjoy this method. If you have a lot of articles from your past newsletters collecting dust somewhere, this is a great way to use them. This strategy requires you post articles to article directories such as ezinearticles.com and include links to your website in your bio. You’ll get backlinks from the Ezine Articles site and from the sites of people reprinting your article.
SEO and Online Marketing at your fingertips