JR's Internet Marketing Strategies

For The Dot Comer In All Of Us

Higher Search Engine Ranks with Proper Keyword Research

Posted by JR in Internet Marketing, Keywords and Niches, Search Engine Optimization, Webmaster/Website Optimization, Website Tools


Lately, I have been hearing from a lot of people who are struggling with getting higher search engine rankings. Mainly this is happening to them because while they find highly searched for keywords, they are not evaluating the competition correctly. Any Internet marketing campaign starts with keyword research, but doing the proper evaluation of competing sites for those keywords is crucial for rank success.

In a nutshell if you want higher search engine rankings you need to identify the competition for respective keywords in the right way as part of an overall keyword research strategy.

It is not a crap shoot and luck has nothing to do with it. It is true that higher search engine rankings depend a lot on keyword anchor text backlinks, but higher search engine rankings are also closely related to the proper gaging of competition for those keywords.

Higher Search Engine Rankings with Keyword Research

Once you find a keyword, you must look at the competition in two steps, both of which are crucial for higher search engine ranks.

1. Google that keyword like this: allintitle:”keyword”. Many people are not doing this, they just search for keyword, this is a mistake.

Searching with the allintitle “keyword” gives you much more precise results of the true competition for the keyword, because it only includes those sites that are trying to rank for those keywords and the results show you those sites that have the keyword in their header/meta/title tag.

But when you search for just the keyword alone then you get all the sites that just mention that keyword on their site in some way and they are not using it site-wide as their main keyword. Those sites that just mention the keyword are easily overcome, as the SE’s, and especially Google will give your site much more relevance and weight as your site uses the keyword site-wide.

So those sites that just mention the keywords will not be your true competition. The allintitle:”keyword”, will show you the true competitors for those keywords that you will need to overcome for higher search engine ranks.

Example:

laptop = 202,000,000
vs.
allintitle:”laptop” = 18,300,000

Big difference there that can make or break the decision to use a certain keyword and how easy it will be to rank for it.

2. Look at websites on the 1st page results. Many avoid doing this, another mistake! See what sites are sitting on page 1 of SERPS and specifically their Page Rank. If they are mostly PR0 – PR3 then the job to get to page 1 and achieve higher search engine ranks will not be very difficult. But, if page 1 is full of PR4, PR5 + sites then it will be difficult to outrank these sites.

First, time is on their side, they are aged and have authority and logistically it will be difficult to catch up. Second, it will take tons more effort and many more backlinks to get to page 1 because you will have to outrank those those sites. I am not saying it can’t be done, but, it is very hard and any seasoned honest SEO will tell you to look elsewhere.

Also, look at their Yahoo backlinks, age of domain and number of indexed pages, all are good indicators of their strength and how difficult it would be to out rank them.

If you look at page 1 results for allintitle:”laptop”, you will see that it’s all authority sites and no way that a small niche site could ever get to page 1 for that keyword.

These steps should be taken not only for your site-wide keywords, but also for the keywords you will use on your inner and sub pages, that is if you want higher search engine rankings for all your website/blog pages.

Tools for Evaluating Page 1 Results

There are two great browser add-ons that will give you all necessary information to evaluate those sites on page 1 directly from the SERPS. These tools are also vital for any Internet marketer to have because they show all possible information about any websites on the web, including your own.

SEO Toolbar for Firefox – Aaron Wall’s (of SEOBook) SEO Toolbar for Firefox browser shows all pertinent info for whatever site you are viewing, like highlighting no-follow links and pages, page rank, number of index pages in major search engines, site age, Alexa, DMOZ listed, Yahoo backlinks, MSN links and lots, lots more. Must Have!

SEO Quake Toolbar – Similar to the Firefox SEO Toolbar, shows pertinent SEO and Internet Marketing information for any website but this one is available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Both of these when enabled (one click on their icons from the browser status bar) will show all selected information in SERP results under each website listing.

They are both similar, however you really need both, because only the SEO Toolbar highlights all no-follow links in red on any website. And, only Seo Quake places the information toolbar at the top of any website page you are visiting and not just in the SERPS so you can view all those stats on a page by page basis.

Make sure once you installed these, to activate them by clicking their icons in the browser bottom status bar, when they are on they will be in color, when off, they are black and white.

Now go get some higher search engine ranks!


Title Tags vs. Anchor Text – Link Attributes

Posted by JR in Blogging, Internet Marketing, Link Building, Search Engine Optimization, Webmaster/Website Optimization, Website Tools


A reader emailed me and asked for some advice about internal links:

“link titles” – that extra fill-in-the-blank box when entering a link in a post? Is there any value or is it just something nifty for the reader to mouse over?”

First, he is referring to Internal Links that are links back to your own home page and sub pages within your site’s content with the keywords you are targeting and want to rank for in the anchor text. Learn more at: The importance of Internal Link Building for On-Site SEO.

Purpose of Internal Links and
Title Tag vs. Anchor Text

1. Internal links are good for SEO. But, for SEO purposes the title tag is useless, the keyword anchor text is key to relate the page you’re linking to for the keyword you want it to rank for.

2. Improve Bounce Rate. Internal linking improves bounce rate (the rate at which visitors leave your site) and gives readers more stuff to browse on the site thereby keeping them there longer. The Title Tag, which shows up when the reader mouses over the link, is used for this purpose and is crucial to captivate reader interest and get them to read the contents of those links.

So, for example, while the anchor text (the keyword I want that page to rank for) may be Website Traffic, the Title will show more detail about the link, such as “Website Traffic that Converts are You Missing Out?”

Also, it is irritating to read a page and see internal links and not have any clue what is there, it is always good to give your readers a sneak peek.

Title Tag Code

Most softwares, including Wordpress have a fill in box within the add link area for the title and then it will automatically code in HTML, but here is how the code looks:

<a title=”Sneak Peek” href=”http://domain.com/”>Anchor Keyword</a>

Here is how it looks live with the title tag appearing with a mouseover:

No-Follow/Do-Follow Link Attribute

In Wordpress and most website software links created within text are automatically Do-Follow. For Google, when links are Do-Follow you are passing page rank juice to the url in the link and in essence giving it a vote of confidence helping their SEO efforts vs. No-Follow simply means that Google will not follow the link nor assign any rank to it based on your link juice to them.

When to add No-Follow:

For internal links you always want to pass your own internal page rank, also for reciprocal links and other sites that you may want to give a Google strong backlink to.

But, in reality there are several links that you may not want to do-follow and those need to be set manually as no-follow.

Examples for No-Follow:
Affiliate Links (should always be no-follow)
Authority/Reference sites cited to support content
Referral sites provided for readers
…and any other sites that you don’t need to waste PR juice on

Manually Adding No-Follow Link Attribute:

To add the no-follow attribute you need to go to the HTML source of your web page, in Wordpress it is done in the post/page editor by clicking on the HTML tab and manually adding “rel-”nofollow” as shown below:

<a title=”Sneak Peek” href=”http://domain.com/”rel=”nofollow”>Anchor Keyword</a>

Free Headers – Must See!

By the way, I did not want to do a separate post on this, but you have to check out this website I found with free website/blog headers at: Free Web Page Headers. They are simply gorgeous with tons of themes and absolutely free, just right click and save image as and then resize to fit your needs in a graphics software such as Gimp Image Software, which, by the way is also free, quite famous and a complete graphics/photo editing software.


Blog or Website? A Timeless Question

Posted by JR in Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Internet Marketing, Webmaster/Website Optimization


You can peruse any Internet Marketing forum and you will surely find a thread titled Blog or Website? This is a very common question asked by those starting an online business and especially for those looking to get into the business blogging.

Many times in the forums, you get lame answers, such as “a blog is a website” DUH!

But, that does not answer the question as it is intended, and even the newest of newbies know that there is an inherent difference between blogs, blogging and websites beyond the technological.

While there are very sophisticated techie definitions, for the purpose of this discussion I will limit the definitions to the basics of Blogs vs. Static Websites and the unique characteristics of blogging that also apply to business blogging for making money.

Blog is short for weblog, which, simply put is a dynamic website that is constantly updated and provides interactivity between it and its users.

vs.

Static Websites usually display the same information, thus it is static. The content is not updated regularly and while the webmaster may always add pages of content, it is not expected. These sites can also be described as passive.

Blog Charateristics:

1. A blog needs to be updated with fresh content regularly, it is expected and required, or else it will die out.

2. One of the blog’s main purposes is to engage readers and gain subscribers, in fact for many bloggers it is an end goal.

3. A blog is never truly passive, it cannot be slapped up and then left alone, it requires ongoing attention and therefore a lot of interest in and motivation for the subject from the blogger.

4. Blogs have messy navigation, since there is new content added regularly it is more difficult to present it all neatly and visibly, and much if it gets buried as more is added.

5. Blogs are more personal and represent a human behind the site.

Static Website Characteristics:

1. They are built, launched and then marketed. They can be a source of passive income without the expectation of new content. They are safe to leave alone to do “their thing.”

2. The navigation is neat and all pages and content can be displayed prominently to visitors, this includes all your affiliate link pages, store pages and anything else that you want visitors to not miss, therefore static sites allow you to have more control over what is presented to visitors, while blog content easily gets buried over with the new incoming content.

3. The static website is not usually personal, it is detached from a “human behind the site.”

Blog vs. Website

The decision to go with a Blog or Website is really a personal one. However, the problem for newbies is that they lack the experience to make an informed choice and often it is just trial and error.

I for one, do not think blogging is for everyone. Blogging is a bigger time investment and blogs are not the greatest passive income tools. In fact, many Internet marketers say that blog readers and subscribers do not click on Adsense and they do not take you up on your add offers very much. Usually they are there to read your content. The true money comes from search engine traffic, that will not subscribe but will exit with a click on Adsense or by buying an affiliate product.

There are exceptions. Some blogs focus on shopping and product reviews and that is the focus of the posts with the focus of making money, I have no experience with this type of blog and so maybe some of my readers can add their input, like Frank from Money Saving Reviews – Money Saving Guides.

Blogging takes a lot of dedication to the written word, versus the static website that does not. Tons of blogs fail because the blogger loses interest quickly after launch.

With all that it takes to learn and apply the marketing and SEO end of the business, a static website lessens the work load and allows newbies to focus on learning the tools and skills necessary to succeed.

There are many user friendly website builders, such as WYSIWYG, that stands for “What You See is What You Get” website software that allows those without any code or even basic HTML knowledge to build beautiful sites with simple drag and drop simplicity. Once the website is launched then experience can be gained on the Internet marketing end, without the constant stress of updating. Two of the best WYSIWYG softwares are WebEasy 7 Pro and Coffee Cup HTML Editor.

Also, you can use the free Wordpress platform to build niche sites, with an empahis on pages instead of posts, that allow for neater navigation and a focus on making money as opposed to getting readers, but this is not true blogging.

What do you guys think?


Affiliate Marketing – Seize the Opportunities and Don’t Give Up

Posted by JR in Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Internet Marketing, Motivation & Success, Webmaster/Website Optimization


I have an affiliate marketing website that I built a few months ago. And the keyword is very popular and I have worked hard to get traffic and SERP rank position. As the months went by, I was getting a good amount of traffic but not one single sale!

I analyzed and performed the requisite tricks, such as landing page, colors, navigation and other reasons that result in high bounce rates and lack of sales and nothing seemed to work. I soon decided to move onto to other projects. A couple of weeks ago I was checking my commissions and noticed that that website had a couple of sales. And in the last week the sales are increasing and averaging a couple a day.

The lesson here is don’t quit till the magic happens.  Affiliate marketing and making money online is hard work and can be a crap shoot with lots of testing and failing. But if you give up then you will never reap the success you seek. Many newbies give up quickly because they are looking for a fast buck, but that is not realistic for affiliate marketing and making money online and if you set your mind that way you are destined to be disappointed.

Remember, not all websites will generate income right away, if ever, any honest affiliate, especially the honest super affiliates will tell you that. They all have failures on their books, but they also have one thing in common, they never gave up. They know that this is a great business with endless potential, but it has its ups and downs, bad months and good months, successful campaigns and some that are just dead. None of that matters, we move on and push harder.

Internet marketing is a lonely business. Most of us sit at home and pluck away at the iceberg, building websites, trying to rank our sites, build links, get traffic and of course make money. It is not easy, but many of us, including myself, love it and would not want to do anything else. Yes? No?

Sometimes, there are hard times and we all need the motivation to keep going. So, I am here to tell you to keep plucking away, new sites, new keywords, trial and error, learning from past mistakes, new opportunities and DO NOT GIVE UP!

Patience, faith and not giving up is key in making money online and affiliate marketing and the reward of the freedom that it provides in working for yourself is unparallel.


Some A-Hole Stole My Content – How to Fight and Prevent Copyright Infringement

Posted by JR in Blogging, Internet Marketing, Odds and Ends, Webmaster/Website Optimization


Some fool stole several of my posts and reprinted them on his blog. It started with one post and then daily I was noticing he was adding one after the other of my posts on his blog, a total copyright infringement.

The most comical part of this was the fact that his blog is called #1 SEO Consultant, HAH! What a crock!!!!! Any good SEO knows that scrapping content is a lame move, I guess he does not know enough about SEO to write his own guides so he scraps website content from others.

I sent him this email:

This is to advise you that you are using copyrighted and protected material on your website/blog. Your illegal use of the following posts on your site:

List of Stolen Posts URL’s on His Site

at his url is originally from my blog called JR’s Internet Marketing Strategies at http://getinternetmarketingstrategies.com. This is original content and I am the author and copyright holder.Use of copyright protected material without permission is illegal under copyright laws, and copyright infringement. Please remove the plagiarized material immediately. I expect a response within 3 days to this issue. Thank you for your immediate action on this matter.

He responded within 3 hours telling me all my content would be removed and he apologized for the inconvenience.

Content Scrappers, Splogs and Feed Theft

This unfortunately happens time and again. Losers that cannot write their own content will scrap yours and create what are called splogs, blogs full of scrapped content, as well as using it on their websites.

This thief was using a plugin developed by some other dick that actually lets you scrape feeds from other blogs and automatically insert them into your blog, feed theft is rampant on the net and considered copyright infringement. So if you publish a full feed then your whole post just gets injected into any scraper that uses this plug-in.

Some bloggers will republish excerpts of posts with a link back to the original source to continue reading the story and I am okay with this.  But to scrape the entire post and republish it can harm the original author’s site.

Two Schools of Thought on Content Theft

Some feel it’s fine as long as their links are retained within the content and they look at it as getting more backlinks. But, many do not feel that way, and there are harmful effects, especially in cases like mine, where there were several full feed posts stolen and it appeared as if he was the author.

Some Harmful Effects of Content Theft

  1. No matter how hard Google tries to credit the original source, the theft site can outrank you with your own content.
  2. It appears as if they are the author of the content and it can damage your reputation, especially with flagship blogs/sites.
  3. It PISSES you off!

Content theft on the Internet is copyright infringement and just as illegal as violating US copyright laws and we all need to be active in putting a stop to it, if we are passive about it, it only encourages more scrappers to continue stealing our stuff.

Basically how you allow your word to be used is upto you, but be sure to make it clear on your websites and blogs.

Protect your Sites and Blogs: Visible Copyright Notices

1. Website Copyright Protection:


  • Warn thieves and cover yourself by displaying the © Year -Site Nam e – All Rights Reserved notice on your website. Always place it at th e footer and you can also add it at the end of each your inner website pages that have original written content.
  • Creative Commons helps you publish your work online while letting others know exactly what they can and can’t do with your work. Choose a license and they provide you with tools and tutorials that let you add license information to your own site. Creative Commons License Options.

2. Wordpress Plugins for Copyright Displays

Display Copyright on the Blog
Display Copyright on the Feed
  • RSS signature – My favorite! This one is cool, it adds a personalized message into the feed for copyright and anything else you may want to say and also you can put a link to your url as the original source. So when these thieves steal you feed content and put it on their splogs this message will also appear at the end of the content with the credit to you.
  • Angsuman’s Feed Copyright Plugin - Automatically add copyright message to feeds, fully configurable.
  • © Feed – Very detailed and highly configurable and has digital fingerprint options.
  • Simple Feed Copyright

How-To Monitor and Identify Theft

1. Blogs- Watch your trackbacks and Incoming Links. Another reason besides SEO to use internal links on your posts. If the thief left any of your internal links intact within the stolen post, Wordpress will send a trackback to your blog, you can find these in your Wordpress admin: in comments, on the dashboard – incoming links and often in your spam folder, via a plugin like Akismet Comment SPAM Fighter, which I hope all of you have.

2. Websites and Blogs – Use Google Alerts that will notify you whenever your links or your desired search terms show up on the web. Learn more at my post: Google Alerts a Must Have Tool

3. Websites and Blogs – Use Copyscape – Enter your url and they will scan the web to look for duplicates of your content. Free version is very limited.

4. Search the search engines – This is the hard way, but can work, just enter you web page title in the format: allintitle:”your title”

5. Wordpress Plugins to Identify and Prevent Content Theft

  • AntiLeech by Owen Winkler - This one is classic! It does not prevent the splogger bots from accessing your site, instead it produces a fake set of gibberish content especially for them that includes links back to your site and sends it only to them. Since these sploggers never read the content they steal it’s perfect. Has lots of options. Use the Website IP finder with this one.
  • Digital Fingerprint – Detect Content Theft. Injects “digital fingerprints” into your Wordpress post feeds then checks the web for evidence that your blog’s content may be illegally used.
  • © Feed – Very detailed and highly configurable and has digital fingerprint options.

When Content is Stolen and Copyright Infringement Occurs

Finding the Contact Info of the Thief

First look to these sources for website owners name and contact information on their site:

  • Contact
  • About
  • Footer notes
  • Email links in the source code, with “mailto”
  • Email forms

If none of above exist use these resources to find contact info.

Steps to Deal With Copyright Infringement

1. Send Email. Send a firm but polite email to the thief and demand to remove the stolen content and CC their host, like the email I sent above, you can copy it and just insert your information.

2. Contact Their Host. If they do not respond, contact their hosting provider directly and notify them of the copyright violation. Many hosts will close those accounts or work with you to resolve the issues.

3. Cease and Desist. The above usually does the trick, but if you still do not get a response you can start a Cease and Desist Order, that is more official and threatening.

Here are the best sources to learn more about Cease and Desist

4. Contact the Search Engines. This is the ultimate step and as per the Digital Millineum Copyright Act, compels search engines and online service providers to work for you to stop the copyright infringement and violation.

Contact Search Engines:

Learn more about copyright infringement at Internet and Copyright.


Internet Marketing: SERP Rank Experiment Results

Posted by JR in Affiliate Marketing, Build a Niche Store - BANS, Google, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Webmaster/Website Optimization


One thing is certain, with Internet Marketing something is always changing and the Google SERPS are unpredictable. It is important to stay on top of changes and roll with the punches.

Some of you may have heard of recent issues that thousands of affiliates have had with BANS (Build A Niche Store) sites and similar affiliate marketing websites getting de-indexed completely or massively losing SERP position.  There was speculation that lack of original written content was the main reason for this. And for many I know this was true. Time and again Internet marketers do not understand the value of original website content in affiliate marketing.

Many affiliates literally just slap up affiliate sites, whether it’s BANS or Amazon, or other such sites with nothing but affiliate link pages and without any original content. As I have said before in The Importance of Quality Content, this is a really bad strategy and will kill your chances of ranking in the Google SERPS, if you even get indexed at all.

I too was hit with this issue on two BANS sites and it was important for me to correct these issues quickly as my BANS sites make money regularly and the best traffic comes from the search engines, especially Google.

These two sites rose steadily in the SERPS when first launched with regular link building and on-site SEO. A while ago, the two sites began dipping in and out of their high SERP positions on a regular basis, one day they were there, then they were gone. Then suddenly a few weeks ago the home pages were de-indexed all together and only some content pages showed up in SERPS for their keywords, an Internet marketing nightmare! So, I began to do some experimenting, which is your best friend in Internet marketing.

SERP Experiment

First, I added more content, though I knew this probably had nothing to do with the content since both sites have more content pages than auction/affiliate link pages and I add content on a regular basis, but I wanted to eliminate all possible factors.

Second, I built up more links via article marketing, some new forum postings and do-follow blog comments, to see if that would resolve the issues. Neither of those tests did anything to get my sites back in the SERPS.

I then I decided to do a test with the home page.

1. I removed the eBay auction listings (affiliate links) that I had listed below the welcome messages on the sites.

2. I added 2 more paragraphs of wording to the welcome message and a related image with the keywords in the alt tags and some internal links to relevant pages for the keywords that came up within the content of the welcome message.

Experiment Results – Exactly 4 days later:

Site #1 home page appeared on page 1 of SERPS without quotes and has been there for over 2 weeks, holding steady.

Site #2 home page appeared on page 2 of SERPS (higher than it was originally) without quotes and has been there for 2 weeks as well (Page 2 is not surprising since there are some big guns on page 1 that I am currently working to out rank).

Since I had eliminated all other factors the lesson here is obvious, affiliate links on the home page affect SERP position for affiliate sites.

While I have heard this before, it never had affected me until recently and so Google is obviously hitting hard not only on affiliate sites with little or no content but also on those sites that have affiliate links on the home page.

This just proves how important experimentation in Internet marketing really is. While many panic and follow hype instead of using common sense, checking results and testing.

A great example of this is the widespread and ongoing inaccurate hype about duplicate content and how it still manages to be a leading and misleading focus on many forum threads because people just do not check things out for themselves and therefore limit their success online.

About BANS

Contrary to what some haters in the Internet marketing world may say, BANS (Build a Niche Store) is not at fault, in fact, BANS is regularly making lots of money for many affiliates who optimize their sites correctly and bring in regular search engine traffic and now thanks to this experiment I am back on that track.

BANS is really great, because it is cheap and allows anyone without any coding knowledge to build unlimited numbers of great money making websites centered around the eBay affiliate program, as well as any affiliate programs of their choice. One of the best things about eBAy is they have over 10,000 products and so the possibilities and keywords are endless.

Many of the BANS bashers never take the time to actually do the work required for success, instead they think they can use the software to quickly put up some sites that are nothing but mirrors of eBay and start raking in big bucks overnight. Sorry, nothing is that easy in Internet marketing and making money online takes more effort than just buying software.

I highly recommend BANS and you can see my full review with screenshots at: Review of Build a Niche Store or Check out the BANS official Website.

What do you guys think? Have you been affected by recent SERP changes? Do you add content regularly to your affiliate sites?


Website Traffic that Converts – Are You Missing Out?

Posted by JR in Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Traffic, Webmaster/Website Optimization


What makes the best website traffic? Well, as far as I am concerned and I’m sure you’ll agree, it is website traffic that performs the action on my website that I intend it

too. Whether it is to buy something from my affiliate marketing niche sites, click on Adsense, to subscribe to a blog or whatever action the web

master intends that will lead to us making money. So, the best website traffic is traffic that converts.

Free Classifieds

Not all Website Traffic is Equal

If I have 5,000 unique visitors a day, and they do not perform any of the intended actions that I want them to then this is totally worthless website traffic, would you not agree?

Since the social, Web 2.0 revolution on the net there has been a craze with webmasters clammering to get a chunk of social traffic. Page 1 of Digg is often considered the holy grail of website traffic, but in reality Digg and other such popular social site traffic can be pretty worthless. You may get lucky occasionally but it’s nothing to rely on long term.

The reality is that social traffic hardly ever buys anything, subscribes or performs any other actions that will lead to you making money, which is why we are all here right?

Social traffic can be great as far as “numbers of website traffic” and getting more website traffic, becoming famous, but when it comes to converting website traffic it is often a big fat vacuum. Unless your goal is to become the next Tech Crunch, social traffic is not the best for making money online.

Look at your analytics and analyze what website traffic is making you money, I guarantee it won’t be social traffic. Of all my niche sites and Squidoo lenses, social website traffic has made me too little to mention! In fact, I recently launched a ringtones blog, and I got 1500 uniques from Stumble in one day, how many sales? ZERO!!!! A perfect example of how worthless that traffic is.

There are probably many reasons for this, first and foremost of which is the fact that social traffic is not well targeted, many of them are just browsing or bored, they are not performing an intentional search to solve a problem, a basic principle of any kind of marketing is that in order to get sales there must be a consumer with a problem and website-trafficsomeone who provides a solution and THAT will lead to the desired action. Same with Internet marketing.

Also, the same concept applies to the website traffic from article marketing and blog comments where you may get traffic and even some who take the action you desire but it’s never a consistent nor  a reliable stream of well converting website traffic. While blog comments certainly are good for networking and getting known for your flagship blogs,  you constantly have to comment on blogs to get even a little bit of traffic so it is not “passive” traffic.

The main purpose of article marketing, social bookmarking and blog comments is NOT website traffic but link building for BACKLINKS and those backlinks lead to higher to Page One of SERPS for your sites keywords and THAT leads to converting website traffic.

I am not including Internet forum participation here, because there you will find targeted traffic that is looking for solutions and so that traffic often converts very well.

Best Source of Website Traffic that Converts

The best source of long term, stable converting website traffic are the search engines and specifically Google, since they dominate that arena.

1. Website traffic from the search engines is the best converting traffic because it is truly targeted. When someone sits down to search for something on the net, they are purposely looking to solve a specific problem, and they are much more likely to perform an action on your website than any one else.

2. Search engine traffic is all day everyday, 24/7, unlimited possibilities. While social traffic is temporary and gets buried over with newly submitted content, sitting on Page One of SERPS is far more stable. It may take time to get to Page One, but once you are there your site will get exposure to that targeted website traffic with little maintenance.

I am not saying that you should not test every possible traffic source for your niche, and especially when your site is new and you are working on ranking high in the SERPS, you should get all the traffic you can get. What I am saying is that search engine website traffic should always be the main end goal of any online campaign and it is the best converting website traffic.

Website Traffic with SERP Domination

Many webmasters and bloggers work hard to get their home page on Page One of SERPS by utilizing basic Search Engine Optimization. They do all the requisite tasks such as, on-site SEO, link building, keyword research and optimization etc… But, they completely ignore the inner pages of their websites and/or blog posts. This is a complete waste of perfectly good search engine website traffic. This is especially true for bloggers.

Time and again I see blog posts that are obviously just randomly picked titles without any keyword research when there is ALWAYS a good keyword that can be found for ANY subject. So the end result is that your home page may sit high in SERPS, but all your other pages are just randomly floating somewhere around the web missing out on a ton of good targeted website traffic and all for the price of ten minutes or less of research.

Also remember that as your home PR (page rank) increases it will bleed that PR to your inner pages. This blog is a PR3, but several of the earlier blog posts are PR1 and PR2 and those post titles were carefully keyword researched and now they sit on several Page One’s in Google for their keywords and continuously bring targeted website traffic to this blog. Google will spread the authority you’ve earned from your home page to inner pages placing you higher all over the SERPS, for all your keywords and this SERP domination is what brings more and more targeted, converting website traffic. And the absolute same applies to static website’s inner pages.

Keyword Research for Inner Pages

  • Use SEO Book Free Keyword Suggestion Tool and/or Google Keyword Tool to look for good keywords for your inner pages, I look for at least 30 searches a day, but the more the better.
  • Search allintitle:”your keywords” in Google to evaluate the competition. I usually choose lower competition keywords for inner pages, under 20,000.

As always you want to have the most possible searches with the least amount of competition.

3 Keyword Optimization Essentials for SERP Domination:

Here are the most important aspects of optimizing each and everyone of your website pages and blog posts for the SERPS.

1. On Page Title vs. Meta Title

On Page Title is the one the visitor sees on your page, such as the title of the blog post. The Meta Title is the title in the Meta Tags that the search engines will look to for your SERP placement. So, you can make the title the visitor sees longer and more detailed if you wish, while the Meta title can be shortened to comply with Meta Tag character standards and to zone in on keywords, but make sure it is still attractive to get the click from searchers.

website-traffic

  • Both titles should have your keywords in them
  • The Meta Title should have the keywords listed first or as close to the beginning of the tag as possible.
  • The On Page Title should be the header on your website inner page with the <h1> tags. In Wordpress this is automatic.

If you don’t have it, you really need to get the All-In-One SEO Pack plug-in for Wordpress. This will give you the Meta Tags module for customizing meta tags for every post and it is really a must have for Wordpress. It also provides some other important features for SEO on WP blogs.

2. Keyword Density

Long posts and website pages are the best for the SERPS and getting more website traffic, they allow the most room for keyword density and they also give the edge of lots of content for Google.

  • 5% Keyword density per post/page, especially first couple of sentences, middle and ending paragraph.
  • Bold the keywords a few times and especially in the last couple of sentences.
  • Use <h2> and <h3> tags for the paragraph headers within content using your keyword, as I did in this post.  Example: <h2>Keyword – Paragraph Header</h2>

3. Permalinks

The permalink must have your keywords in it. So, if my keywords are “how-to bake”, then my permalink for the blog post page or website page would be: htttp://www.recipes.com/how-to-bake-cake. That’s it, nothing else, if you add the whole title you just confuse Google as to what you want to rank for.

Some website software, and Wordpress will automatically add the entire title of your post/page into the permalink so, you must edit this. All extra words except for the keywords are UNNECESSARY and can be a detterent to ranking well in the SERPS.

Permalinks and Wordpress

With Wordpress you have to make sure to select the proper permalink structure. By default Wordpress will create permalinks for posts using the post number, like this: http://getinternetmarketingstrategies.com/?p=123.  This does nothing for you in the SERPS.

How to Change Permalink Structure in WP:

From your Admin Dashboard go to Settings and then Permalinks. From there either choose Month and Name OR if you do not want to date your posts you can choose Custom Structure and then enter /%postname%/ into the box. This way you will have the optimal setting of http://www.yourdomain.com/posttitle

Editing Permalinks on a Post by Post Basis:

When you are writing posts from the editor after you enter the title the permalink will be formed automatically, click edit and get rid of everything but the keywords with the dashes in between each word.

website-traffic

Performing these steps is really important for SERP rankings and getting website traffic from a multitude of keyword sources to get those visitors to your sites. Also, please see 6-Step Checklist for On-Site SEO for more techniques for keyword optimization for inner pages, such as Alt Tags for images.

What do you guys think? Do you research each page and post? If not, why?


THE Tip to Staying Organized in Internet Marketing

Posted by JR in Internet Marketing, Motivation & Success, Webmaster/Website Optimization


I figured I will post light this Saturday and offer a big piece of advice that has saved me along the Internet marketing journey. USE YOUR BOOKMARKS!!

Weather you are using Internet Explorer or Firefox both browsers give you the greatest invention since ice cream…Bookmarks!

I will tell you that you should always keep very organized bookmarks for the simple reason that IT WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE!

The reason is that there is tons of information that you are and will be coming across as you work, from helpful blog posts, guides, tools, resources, etc…, the possibilities are endless, and if you don’t keep organized bookmarks as you go, you will be scrambling and pulling your hair out when you want to go back and find something.

It really does give a lot of peace of mind to know that the stuff is there and well organized, especially with all we have on our plates in this biz and because I am sure that most of us do not have personal assistants

The browsers really make it so easy to bookmark with drag and drop capability that there is no excuse not to. Some of you may be just clicking bookmark for everything, but, the problem is that you then just have a long list, without any order, this leaves you having to look through a possibly massive list…ugh!

What I do is I have folders in my bookmark tab that are titled for specific subjects and then I just drop relates links into those folders

Just a few that I have are:

  • Active Affiliate Programs (for easy check of $$$$ :-) )
  • Site Launch Submissions (list all tasks/submits for a new launch)
  • Forums
  • Add URL
  • Products Maybe to Promote
  • Content Research (folder for each of my sites)
  • Word Press Stuff – Plug-Ins
  • Website Promotion/Traffic Sources
  • Tools and Checkers
  • Must Reads

and many more…

How and what you organize is totally a personal thing, but just make sure that you do, because believe me when you are working and very busy, you will come across things you want to save for later, and resources you currently use and you will want to have these things easily categorized and accessible, IT WILL SAVE YOUR SANITY!!

By the way, I just added 1GB of memory to my PC and WOW, $25 on Amazon for the module, did it myself took 5 minutes, I feel like I was released after serving 10 years in a tiny cell, my PC is flyiiiing without ANY limits. If you have low memory I highly recommend it!!

What do you guys think? Do you keep bookmarks? Any tips for staying organized?


1000 Free Quality PLR Articles and Free Duplicate Content Tool

Posted by JR in Article Marketing, Webmaster/Website Optimization, Website Tools


Is this you dealing with website content and article writing?

Then here are some really great goodies that will restore some peace and sanity.

As a follow up to my post 16 Website Content Ideas, here is a great resource to get 1000 Free PLR articles that I found when perusing the net, and since I am a cheap skate, I was looking for PLR that was quality and free and I found it!!

What is PLR?

Just to review PLR is Private Label Rights, PLR is usually sold or in this case given away and this is an article license that provides content that you can do WHATEVER you want with, including, edit, rewrite, take credit for and republish verbatim as your own, but DO NOT do the last one.

Goodie #1

1,000 FREE PLR ARTICLES – This PLR pack has tons of niches and topics and many of the articles have really quality information and are pretty detailed.

No Catches just 3 steps: 1. They ask for your email to send the PLR. 2. There is a sales page to some other products (actually look pretty good) that you can skip at the bottom of the page if you wish. 3. Get an email with your PLR download link, well worth that effort!

Using PLR Effectively:

Always, Always rewrite PLR. Keep the substance but regroup sentences, change common words, rewrite in your own words, etc.. to make the articles unique. Remember that you don’t know how many others have used the PLR and they should not be used as exact duplicates but used to make life easier not having to write content from scratch.

I found a couple of articles that I actually cut up and re-pieced together to make a great page of content for my computer niche site.

As long as you rewrite it, PLR can be used for Article Marketing as well as website content.

Hell of a lot easier than writing from scratch!

Goodie #2

Free Duplicate Content Checker

DUPE FREE PRO – Compares articles side by side and gives you a percentage of the duplicity between articles so you can check your original PLR with the rewritten for duplication percentage.

1. Copy and paste original and rewritten article into separate areas

2. Hit the COMPARE button – Bam! the software gives a percentage of duplicity, VERY COOL!!

It even highlights the duplicated phrases for easy changes.

And, this tool calculates keyword density for any phrase or keyword you put in!!!

I would suggest you get your free copy of Dupe Free Pro NOW, I doubt they will be giving it away forever, frankly I am surprised it is free now.

Now, I honestly cannot advise on the ideal percentage, but I shoot for anything below 15%, if anyone disagrees with this number please feel free to comment and give your input.

What do you guys think?


Get to Know Your Competition with Free Website Ranking Analysis

Posted by JR in Webmaster/Website Optimization, Website Tools


I got an email the other day from Sam Cabal, the creator of a service for webmasters for website ranking analysis and he asked me to check it out. While I get lots of these kinds of emails and offers to check out Internet marketing products, this one really stood out.

Review My Web is a free service and webmaster tool that analyzes your top competition against the website you enter, in order to further your website ranking efforts. Just enter your URL and enter two competing websites of your choice and you will receive an email with a link to your report.

I suggest for the competition websites, you enter FIRST two URL’s that are sitting on PAGE ONE in Google SERPS for the keywords you are trying to rank for, these are your biggest competitors. The only exception to this is if you have really top gun sites in 1 and 2 position in your SERP results, then it’s better to go down the list to the smaller websites, generally if you have a smaller niche site, it is virtually impossible to compete with a BIG GUN. For example, for the laptop niche, you have sites like pcmag.com and cnet.com, very difficult to to outrank these HUGE websites, but there are always smaller ones down the list on page 1!

Website ranking report rates your competitiveness and details where the competition is beating you in:

  1. Traffic Rank Comparison
  2. Backlinks Comparison - in Google, Yahoo and Ask.com
  3. Coverage Comparison – Your total pages indexed vs. the competitions in 4 major search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com
  4. Social Media Analysis – Compares your blog coverage vs. your competition
  5. Competitive Site Analytics - Best One! - Compares your PR, domain expiration and creation and most important Meta Tags, Site Wide Keywords, H1, H2, H3 Tag Data and Keyword Density against your competitors and it writes out all the details.

Detailed Report – Excellent!

Review My Web provides written details on your website ranking performance, including a review of the above findings with the actions you need to take to improve for:

  • Search Engine Page Rank
  • Backlinks
  • Indexed Page Coverage
  • Site Design
  • Social News – Blogs

I was very impressed with this webmaster tool, it was accurate, and it provides crucial information to help your website ranking by identifying problem areas and a glimpse to what the competition is doing to beat you and it’s FREE!!

BTW, my report went to spam so check your spam file if you don’t see the report fairly soon after your submit your info, it comes from Review My Web as the sender.

Thank you Sam for sending me the heads up, you have created a great service!!!

Get Your Report at Review My Website


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