Internet Marketing Strategy

It’s that time again! What time, you ask? Why, Blog Comic Friday, of course!

Have print mediums really become archaic, and a thing of the past, or have they only become outdated for certain types of queries?

If you liked this comic, check out Ranked Hard for more!

Markup Heirarchy – Advantages in SEO
Soh Tanaka explains how to keep your unique, content rich content at the top of your markup, and display it to your users however you want.

16 Useful .htaccess Tricks and Hacks for Web Develoeprs
SEO friendly redirects and SEO friendly URL’s aren’t the only thing .htaccess is good for!

Live Domain Drops and Daily Domain Catching
GoDrops.com has daily domain name giveaways, as well as a constantly updated dropped domain list on the right side of their site! Be sure to follow GoDrops on Twitter to keep up with thier special freebies!

That’s all for now, stay tuned for the next SEO Strategy Round Up!

It finally here, the booster kit every SEO newbie has been waiting for, handed down to man by the Gods themselves … Okay so maybe I was being a little facetious, who cares?

Due to the repeated questions of many anxious webmasters yearning to climb the ranks of the Google results pages to that #1 spot, that gold mine of traffic, Google released a simple document that overviews what you need to know about search engine optimization, the basics anyway. Google’s Official SEO Starter Guide goes over proper title creation, good practices for title and meta tags, ideal URL structures, website navigation from a search engine spider’s perspective, proper user of anchor and header tags, image optimization, robots.txt, and more!

If you don’t know much about optimizing your site for Google (or any other search engine, for that matter) you should definitely give the PDF a read. Hell, if you feel like brushing up on your SEO fundamentals, you should definitely give the PDF a read.

Check out the post over at Google Webmaster Central or just download the Official Google SEO Starter Guide!

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.