If you’ve heard Jason Calcanis speak, or keep yourself updated on his conferences, you might be familiar with his catch phrase, “SEO has no future.”

I think Jason might be right though, SEO has no “FUTURE” … but only a “PRESENT” … it is often too hard to look and plan a significant distance ahead of yourself.

PS: Sorry for the post drought lately, my boss has been working me dead the past several weeks!

Things around the bend are looking very exciting … DaftSEO will eventually be releasing its own suite of SEO tools, and as we go through the various stages of programming them, we will need people to test and help us debug our programs.

The suite will consist of various software, some will be like “Fast Blog Finder” or “Comment Hunt” to build backlinks, some will be diagnostics software for your blog, and there are some really fascinating ideas that we don’t wont to let everyone know about just yet … but you’ll see.

If you are interested in beta testing software for DaftSEO, then leave a comment to this post stating your interest, and you will be inserted into our beta testers pool, where we will select testers at random. Selected testers will receive an e-mail, so be sure to leave a valid address!

Cheers!

Some of these might seem they have been drug out and beaten many times, but you still see sites employing these methods, scattered across the internet.

Do not stuff the same keyword / keyword phrase into every header tag!
You will not pass search engine spider inspection, and your website will appear dull and boring to actual readers who might actually have an interest in your site.

Do not cram your title with tons of keywords!
Your title should be quick and to the point, and optionally include your site name at the end. It’s there to inform both visitors AND spiders of exactly what the page is about.

Do not bold the same keyword over and over and over!
Using bold to emphasize points you are trying to make is great, and can help visually direct a user along your idea’s path of progression. However, if used and abused, it can quickly turn the same visitor away.

Do not stuff keywords into the alt attributes of your images!
This is another SEO No-No! Alt attributes should accurately describe the image that it is describing. Nothing more, nothing less. Make sense?

Do not stuff keywords into anything, period!
It’s easily picked up on by search engine spiders, as we’ve all learned one way or another, and it can just as easily repel potential readers or customers.

Capiche?

There are many heated arguments on the internet (via message boards, blogs, social networks, and other community type sites) over which blogging software can provide the best seo optimization features for your own blog.

Well first of all, you have several options. You can use a free hosted service (the most popular being Google’s Blogger), use blogging software you can upload to your own server and domain (the most popular here would be Wordpress, which also offers a free hosted version, but it lacks the customization options you will want), or using a CMS software to manage your post items and other integrated plugins that come with software like Joomla or Drupal.

Google’s Blogger is GREAT for creating and managing many blogs on a smaller scale. If you want to make a bunch of AdSense ready websites swiftly and with ease, I would recommend using this blogging platform. You can manage posts, themes, and advertisements from the Google Dashboard, and the new widgets coming in Blogger Draft look really appealing.

However, if you want to create one to a few really great blogs with decent traffic and authority, you should option for Wordpress. It’s a fine piece of software with many built in features that Blogger does not have. It’s easier to customize themes (in my opinion) and create your own modifications to the software (or use a user created one that already exists and is widely supported) as well as better for handling larger loads of traffic and spam comments. Speaking of comments, I believe Wordpress is better for user participation, when I moved to Wordpress, my comment rate increased five fold … sure the spam comments increased too, but Akismet has literally filtered them all.

I hope this gives you a better perspective on how to choose your seo optimized blogging platform.

Arrivederci!

Many people complain that when they ask for links, or try to share their link on various communities, that they experience little to no success, or even get banned from the venue they are trying to reach.

Well, you have to make sure to follow the rules!

When you’re posting your links on forums, make sure it is allowed by the community to append your link to your signature. Don’t post your link in new threads and replies all throughout the message board, instead, look for an advertising or promotion specific forum where the administrators want these sort of threads to be placed. (e.g. a “post your link” forum, or a “review my site” forum.)

When posting comments to blog, don’t clutter your post with links to your blog, instead focus your energies on contributing something back to the blog (provide information, ask a question, etc.) and leave your link in the URL field. I can pretty much guarantee your comment will be approved and you will gain a relevant backlink.

I hope this has helped you out, following these guidelines has ensured that 99.9% of my comments get approved, and I’ve never been banned from a message board for promoting my website within a reasonable means.

Pretty much every blogger that utilizes Wordpress for a blogging platform has a post that has a similar title to this one, so I decided, “Hey, why not join the brainless mass of sheep that grazes on the green grass of the web?” Just kidding. But seriously, I want to share with you what I feel are the three most useful Wordpress plugins.

The first is included by default, but you must register with Wordpress and get a Wordpress API key to make it functional. Akismet is a spam countermeasure for your blog that filters and catches incoming spam comments and spam trackbacks, catching them and letting you delete them all, or if one comment is magically not spam (never happens) … allow it into the index.

Second is the no-www plugin. I believe eventually, the way the internet is headed, that we will do away with the www prefix before domain names. So I recommend you get to an early start and install this plugin today!

Last, but certainly not least, the All In One SEO Plugin for Wordpress is definitely one of the most useful tools out there, and there really isn’t a comparable SEO plugin at all. This plugin lets you customize all aspects of search engine optimization on your website, such as your title tags, meta tags, and header tags. It’s also backwards compatible with other seo plugins.

Enjoy, and I hope your Wordpress blog is better now that you have read this article.

1. Title and header tags are the most important seo elements on your website.

Definitely true, true search engine experts structure their whole website around these elements, that’s why there are so many plugins for various content management systems that make it easier for you to make changes to these tags. Title and header tags probably hold more value in SEO weight than meta tags do now.

2. Relevant keywords contained within your domain name (base or full URL) is an excellent search engine strategy.

Having a TLD that contains the keywords for the niche you are targeting is a very powerful asset in your mission to brand and market your product and/or website, in fact I’d say it is one of the most important aspects of optimizing your website, aside from number one.

3. Image descriptions help increase traffic.

Aside from being compliant, alt tags on images will give even more weight to your page by letting search engine spiders know even further exactly what your product is and which market to deliver it to.

4. Good quality links are good quality links.

And you can’t go wrong with that. Search engines currently do and will always give high value and increase your search engine rank positioning as you accumulate links from high traffic and/or high quality websites and networks.

5. New, unique content will bulk up your traffic.

As long as you keep updating your website, search engine bots and readers will keep coming back to your website, hungry for more information that you can provide them with. So keep it up!

So remember to adhere to the standards, because they will always guide you in the right path.

Good God, I’ve resorted to making a list of tools and utilities that are well employed by any internet marketing specialist or seo practitioner.

ValidRank - Provides an analysis of a website’s PageRank and checks to see if the data projected is accurate or not.

Google Ranking Factors - Good resource for double checking your own website’s optimization strategies.

SEO Test - Rates the search engine optimization techniques used on your website, provides a nice basis to improve your SEO.

Shoemoney SERPs Tool - Easy to use SERP checker, check your URL against your keywords.

NoFollow Check - Check if a website or blog has the nofollow attribute enabled.

Page Strength - Rates your website’s relative importance and net visibility.

StatCounter - My favorite website metrics and analytics utility.

Backlink Checker - Categorizes the backlinks by domain linked from, useful tool.

Hope you found the list useful, if you have any really neat utilities I failed to mention here, please leave a comment, thanks!

Before you run off and start plugging your link halfway across the internet on every semi-related website you come across, take some time and examine the internet real estate where you are going to be placing a gateway to your own website. Whenever I place a backlink, I always make sure to run through a series of criteria, first.

1. Quality Backlinks are RELEVANT Backlinks

Make sure the page where your backlink will be displayed is in the same niche as your website! Why link to your website selling car parts from a blog that reviews baby diapers? It makes no sense at all! The more relevant the link, the higher your position in the search engine results pages. Hopefully the page is keyword rich and highly ranked already, which brings me to my next criteria.

2. Quality Backlinks are from RESPECTED and RANKED websites.

If the website that is displaying your backlink ranks highly for the keywords or keyphrases you are after, chances are they are an authority website with some steady traffic. Backlinks from these authority figures will increase interest in your own website. I try to get build backlinks with websites that are in the top two hundred results for my search criteria.

3. Quality Backlinks contain your TARGETED KEYWORDS or KEYPHRASE

Last but not least, when submitting your link, don’t forget to target your anchor text! Do NOT have your link saying “Click here to go to ____________” … bury your anchor within a catchy, keyword rich paragraph or sentence. For example: “Internet marketing & seo techniques are a necessity in promoting your brand and increasing traffic.” That sentence gives opportunity to give myself three different relevant, keyword rich backlinks.

So, make sure to take a step back and examine the website your about to place your link before you do so. Just don’t take over my keywords!

WordZe has provided a public list of the top search keywords and keyphrases queried via Google per hour since January 8th, 2008. The list includes over 130,000 search terms!

Combined with the Google AdWords Keyword Research tool, this is a very formidable tool to add to your SEO arsenal for keyword research.

WordZe’s keyword information included on this list is mined from Google Trends.

http://www.wordze.com/Gtrends