Small business owner, entrepreneur, freelancer, or solopreneur. Regardless of what you call yourself, you’re busy managing your business and you don’t have time to maintain your online presence.  You need qualified, experienced professionals to help you with your Internet marketing. When you have a question, or need advice, you need knowledgeable people whom you can trust to guide you in the right direction.

As a side note, I’m a big fan of Sparkplugging. Wendy, Kelly, and the rest of the team provide immense value to the small business community and I’ve learned a lot from watching them and working with them as a Sparkplugging Intern.

Since our inception, our Internet Marketing Specialists have helped thousands of small business owners and we’re confident that you, Sparkplugging readers, know what it takes to make a business successful.  You’re dedicated, resourceful and motivated, and we want to help you expand your business.  I’m excited to announce this giveaway to the Sparkplugging readers.

Have a question about Internet marketing?  Ask NetBiz.com. We’ll work hard to give you the best answer possible, as fast as possible.

What Can You Ask NetBiz.com?

We have over 200 employees with experience in Search Engine Placement (SEP, also called Pay Per Click or PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Design, and other forms of Internet marketing. We have extensive experience dealing with industries as diverse as real estate, construction, publishing, consumer goods, consulting, and more.  What’s more, if we don’t know the answer right away, we will find it for you and show you the way.

Where Can You Ask NetBiz.com Your Questions?

• Twitter – Follow us @Ask_NetBiz, then send us an @ or DM and we’ll respond as quickly as possible.
• Facebook -  Become a fan of Ask NetBiz on Facebook and submit questions related to your small business.
• The NetBiz.com Blog – Visit Blog.NetBiz.com to get news and tons of useful information on Internet marketing, search engine news, and get in-depth answers to your most pressing questions.  You can ask questions via the comments section.

Why Is NetBiz.com Doing This?

We want to give back to the small business community.  In business since 2002, we currently have over 15,000 small business owners that we are happy to call our clients.  We recognize the great potential that is small business and we want to do what we can to help it grow.  This question-and-answer service is totally free and is something we plan to implement as an integral part of our business.

How Do I Get The Free Advertising?

All you have to do to win the free Search Engine Placement is follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook and then submit a question about Internet marketing.  It’s that simple.  If you want additional chances at winning, ask multiple questions, or share our Twitter & Facebook pages with others.  Every retweet and Facebook share counts as an additional entry.

The free advertising consists of two months, $500 per month, of Search Engine Placement on Google or Yahoo, customized and targeted to your business and clients.

Deadline to enter: Midnight,  September 20th

If you have any questions, feel free to email us! Ask [at] NetBiz.com

Cory Huff is the Social Media and Blogging Specialist at NetBiz.com, a search engine marketing company based in Portland, OR.  Cory was also one of the original group of Sparkplugging interns.

Most Sparkplugging readers are…well, small.  Call it consultant, micro-business, or whatever you like.  Freelancers are small businesses that can benefit from a very small amount of business.  Today I’d like to show you how to snag some highly targeted web traffic that will get you some great business – and it’s something you should be able to accomplish by yourself within a few hours.

My last post was on getting yourself added to the Google Local Business Directory.  Today I want to focus on how to expand that local presence.

What you’ll need:

• A website.
• Access to your website’s code, or at least the back end visual editor.  If you don’t make any changes to your website, you’ll need the person who makes those changes.
• Internet Access

Most freelancers work in competitive niches like writing, real estate, or consulting of some sort.  For this example I want to use the real estate industry to show how you can find buyers.

First, let’s do a little research. Do you know what people who are looking for your goods & services type into search engines?  Google will tell you, for free.  Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal# and use the free keyword tool to get an idea.  Start by typing in what you sell or provide. In this case, I’ll start with ‘Real Estate.’  I get this result.

Notice that at the top it shows me the average number of searches for the terms ‘real estate’ and ‘real estates.’  These are the exact matches for what I was searching for.  The neat thing is that lower down it also gives me a huge list of thing that Google says people also type when searching for real estate.  Wouldn’t you love to be found on the first page of Google when someone searches those things?  The big national real estate franchises like Remax, Coldwell Banker and others certainly love it.

Again, you can do this with any industry. Try it again with ‘counseling,’ ‘copy writing,’ ‘graphic design’ or whatever it is that you do.  The Keyword Tool will generate a list of keywords that relate to your industry.

Now, the next part that I am going to show you really only works for small markets where the competition is not too fierce, but it should work for many of you.  If you live in Los Angeles, NYC, or another major metro, you’ll need to do more than just this, but this is a good start.

Do the search again, but add a geo targeted qualifier to it.  That simply means add a city or zip code.  I picked a small town in Tennessee called Crossville (population 10,433).

Notice that the numbers drop dramatically?  It means its far less competitve.  If you could show up on the first page of 5000+ searches and get around 5 – 10% of those people to click through to your site, would you be happy?  I thought so.

Your next step is store those keywords you want to target.  You can click add next to all of them and it will generate a list on the right which you can then download as a text file or as a .csv (Excel) file.  You can also just write them down if you want to target just the top few.

Now you want to add these keywords to your website.  On your Home, About and Contact page, put in a few sentences about how you are a real estate agent that specializes in the Crossville area, and then rearrange that sentence in a few different ways.  Make sure that each page has different content.  A good example could be:

Cory Huff is a Crossville Real Estate Agent with over 10 years experience helping buyers locate homes for sale in Crossville, Lake Holiday, and Woodlawn.  Located at the intersection of Interstate 40 and State Highway 127, Crossville, Tennessee is a beautiful city that is growing like crazy and we have new real estate deals on beautiful homes and land for sale in the Crossville area.

You know your market, so write for your own customers, but you get the idea.  Google loves this local search stuff, and in a small market this can often be enough to get you the traffic you need.

Further ideas:

• Create a blog that you update once a week with posts about the local real estate market.  Make sure you put these keywords in the title and at the top of the posts.  For example, you might do a blog post about how Obama’s recent tax credits will affect the homes for sale in your current market, and lead with the title, “Homes for Sale under Obama’s Tax Plan.”
• If you’ve added yourself to the Google Local Business Directory, go back and add some of these keywords to your listing in the description and categories sections.
• Get other websites to link to your site using your keywords as the anchor text like I do here with my blog, TheAbundantArtist.com, which contains posts on the best day jobs for actors.

It will take a few weeks to a couple of months for you to start to see results from this work, but it’s well worth it when you start getting phone calls!  Please bookmark this post and come back after you start seeing results, and let us know how it works out for you!

Cory Huff, Sparkplugging.com intern, works as a blogger & social media guy for Netbiz.com, a company focused on search engine marketing for small businesses.  He’s also a trained actor and writes about the intersection of money & art at TheAbundantArtist.com.

Google has recently made some changes to the interface of their local business directory that will allow you to take full advantage of local search.  Let’s take a look at how you can make it work for you.

You’ve always been able to add yourself to the Local Business Directory by visiting http://www.google.com/local/add.  Click on add new listing and you’ll get this screen.

Be sure to fill out every single field.  Every little piece has an influence on whether you show up when people look for you.  The description field should be filled with your products, services, and the areas you service.  You get 200 characters, you should use them all.

On the next screen you’ll be given the option to claim an already existing listing.  If one of those listings is you, make sure you claim that listing so you can update the info.  If none of them are you, choose add listing.

On the next screen you get to add yourself to Google’s categories.  Instead of being able to type in your categories, you have to pick from Google’s pre-determined categories.  Try to fill all five spots, but don’t put yourself into categories that having nothing to do with your business.  That’s spam and Google may penalize you in the rankings for cheating.  Fill out the rest of the listings and make sure you add pictures and videos.  The more you add, the better off you are.  If you can add videos of you doing your work or talking about your work, even better.  (extra hint: also post these videos on Youtube and your own website)

Now, after you’ve submitted, you have some more work to do (it’s worth it, I promise).  After you hit submit you’ll get a screen that will show you the status of your listing.  In some cases, your listing may be flagged for manual review by a Google employee.  If that’s the case it may take a few extra days for your listing to appear.  There’s nothing you can do to make it run faster, so just sit tight.

After your listing status says Active, you’ll start seeing activity like how many impressions (the number of times your local listing appeared in a search result) and actions (the number of times someone clicked on your listing, requested driving directions to your place, or clicked through to your website).  You can view more detail by clicking on View Report.

Do More

• Make sure you have a strong website that contains lots of local information about your company and your surroundings, like driving directions to your business, local companies you’ve worked with, and local events where you can be found.
• Links to your website from local authority sites are awesome.  Chamber of Commerce, college & university links, and other local sites can help your search rankings improve.
• Get reviewed.  Ask your happy customers to review you on relevant review sites.  For example, a Bed and Breakfast might ask customers to review them on CitySearch.com, TravelGuide.com, or other travel sites.

There can be a lot to finding your local search market.  Let us know in the comments below what kind of questions you might have!

Cory Huff is the blogging & social media specialist for Netbiz.com, an internet marketing firm in Portland, Oregon and one of our very own Sparkplugging Interns!  You can follow him on Twitter at @AGoodHusband

My wife now knows not to ask me “Have you seen that web site?” since my response the majority of the time is usually similar to “It’s terrible”.

Here’s my problem: I started coding HTML right around the same time it became a standard. I gamed Google successfully when they were just starting out (I’ve since learned a much more honest approach to SEO). I happily switched from tables to CSS ages ago. I’ve studied usability and web analytics just as long. So I have a bit of a bias.

So what is a small or independent business owner to do? I’ll give you my top tips to conduct a site self-evaluation.

Usability:

If your site is not easy to use, the people who are willing to stick around are going to become frustrated. People I work with frequently complain that all web sites start to look the same, it’s because there is an expected standard of usability that makes them appear similar. Most consumers expect navigation to be either across the top or down the left.

Contact information should be near the top, either side is fine, but it needs to stand out. Contact links should go to a web based form instead of forcing an email client to open. The page should also render virtually identically across Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome and Opera since there is no need to force people into using a different browser.

Graphics:

Do all of your graphics load? Have they been optimized for fast load times? I personally use Adobe Fireworks since it has some great export options. Sitepoint has a great article explaining the difference between GIF, JPG and PNG for web design that everyone should read.

A personal pet peeve of mine, and many will argue, is the use of Flash. It still can’t be 100% indexed like text can be. Also, with mobile browsing growing dramatically and mobile Flash support being extremely limited, you may be hiding important information from your visitors.

On-site SEO:

This is actually easier than most people would think. META tags are far less important than they used to be, so simple “borrowing” tends to work well. Find the sites that rank in the top 5 for your desired search term, view their page source (CTRL+U in Firefox) then look at their Title, Description and Keyword tags. See what is repeated and make sure you use those in your tags. Then add the specific keywords that makes your site stand out even more.

Use your Heading tags correctly: H1 tells search engines those words are THE MOST important on the page, so use your targeted keywords there if possible, but try to use only one set of H1 tags. H2 is next most important and can be used a few times safely. H3 is next most and can be used even more. H4-H6 I try to use only for formatting, not SEO. Make sure to link back to yourself or other articles on your site with important keywords, but not so frequently to appear spammy.

Keyword targeting:

Use the Google Keyword Tool to find keywords that people are actually searching for. Leave the box checked to search synonyms, then find keywords that have a good balance between reasonably high search volume and low advertiser competition. What that means to me is that people are searching for those keywords, yet not too many publishers are competing for them, meaning you get something of a captive audience to start with.

Interactivity:

If your site is just sitting there doing nothing to invite people to interact with you, they won’t. Simple calls to action, downloadable whitepapers, email newsletters and the option to comment or share on social bookmarking sites are all basic tools that can be implemented easily. If it’s not easy to interact, how can they interact in a way that makes you money?

Recommendation:

Go with Wordpress for your web site. All of these features can be implemented incredibly easily through a variety of plugins and as Matt Cutts said Wordpress takes care of 80-90% of SEO automatically.

Those are some of the basics I recommend everyone consider when looking at their site. Even with this tips and tricks, good, relevant, frequently updated content will help your site move up steadily through the search engines with minimal effort, these tips will just help increase the pace and help the odds of converting your visitors into customers.

Nick Bostic has been an entrepreneur and internet marketer for the majority of his life. He currently works in corporate America helping independent business people be more successful and has been blogging to some degree for close to 8 years.

Follow Nick on Twitter: @nbostic

Bing has been all over the news since Microsoft announced its launch last week.  They’ve also done quite the commercial blitz.  Rumor has it that Microsoft has earmarked more than $80 Million for marketing their new search engine.

As a small business owner or freelancer, why should you care?

That’s a pretty tough question.

Google has made itself hella useful for business.  Since getting your company’s website to show up on the Google search results means more business for you, business owners love Google.  Can getting your website to show up on Bing help your business?

As of December of 2008, Google had a market share of over 63%.  Yahoo was at 16%, and Microsoft’s Live Search was at 9%.  Bing replaces Live search, so we can assume that Bing is starting with a 9% market share.  When you are looking at where to spend your resources, it seems like a better idea to put your efforts into the big G.

On the other hand, you may feel it’s worth it to conquer one tiny search engine.  Here are some ways you might benefit:

• Bing seems to be heavily weighted towards Domain Name relevance. One client company that I work with had four of its sub-domains show up on the first page of the results, where on Google the first page of the results show several negative reviews of the company.

• Microsoft pulled a fast one and made Bing the default search of Internet Explorer 6.  About 20% of people still use IE6. Note: this was a mistake and Microsoft is working on fixing it.
• Watch it and wait.  By many accounts, Bing doesn’t suck.  The search results are relevant, and if enough people are willing to give it a try, Bing might become a place where you’ll hope your customers find you.  From the Techcrunch Comments section:

I am curious to know how many Sparkplugging readers spend time on search engine marketing.  Let us know in the comments whether you engage in SEO or paid search tactics for your freelancing or small business work.

Oh, and let us know what you think of Bing.

Cory Huff is best known online for AgoodHusband.net.  He also works for an internet marketing firm that specializes in Search Engine Marketing.  Cory hopes to leverage the Sparkplugging internship to help performers and artists make money using the internet.

Follow Cory on Twitter: @aGoodHusband

But click here is seldom the best option for linked text. Take a look at these two examples:

To find out more about how I can help you grow your business, click here.

or

Find out more about how I can help you grow your business.

Which link tells you, as the site’s visitor, where you’ll go when you click the link? Isn’t it clearer in the second example that the link will lead you to how I can help you grow your business?

This may seem like splitting hairs a bit. But really, it’s not. There are a number of reasons to use descriptive linked text rather than click here. Here’s a few:

• Clarity – Descriptive linked text makes it much clearer where the link will you while click here basically just offers the command – click here. There’s no real clarity of why you’d click here or where you’ll end up.
• Scannable – If you scan most website pages, the links will stand out. They’re usually colored and styled differently than the text around them. So when you use descriptive linked text your visitors can scan your page for where they’d like to go next. Click here simply doesn’t offer the same advantage.
• SEO – If you care the least bit about search engine optimization, and you should, adding keywords in the links is one method of optimizing your text for search engines. Think about the 1.7 billion instances on websites that are using click here. Is that really what they’re hoping to rank for?
• Usability – As a big fan of the ‘don’t make me think’ principle of website design, I don’t want my users to have to interpret, guess or consider where my links will lead them. And that’s exactly what click here does – forces my visitors to think.
• Accessibility – Remember, not all your visitors will be using beautiful, graphics browsers to view your site. Some will use braille, aural or text browsers. Think about how visitors that are blind or have reading disabilities will use your site. Asking them to ‘click here’ gives them no idea where they’re going to end up.
• Readability – Isn’t it simply nicer to read content where the links have been crafted into the content rather than breaking it up with the old click here?
• Printability - More people print out your web pages than you might realize. Click here just doesn’t mean anything on a printed page and often breaks up the flow of text.

That said, you can use whatever linking strategies you like. Sometimes you can get higher response rates by directing people to click on a link. I suggest, however, not making a habit out of it. Use terms like ‘click to continue’ or ‘read on’ sparingly and only when you really need too. Otherwise, let your visitors know where they’re heading when then select a link.

So, how are you using click here. And what’s your overall in content link strategy?

I’d like to talk a little bit about what Shannon is doing right on the Seasonal Kids’ Activities Blog, because yesterday she got more traffic to her blog than I did on mine, by over 200%.  She got no big Stumble from StumbleUpon, no big link from another blogger : nearly ALL her traffic came from search engines yesterday, and no one single keyword or keyphrase sent her more than 9 visitors.

So How Did Shannon Kick eMom’s Butt Yesterday?

She Takes Advantage of Seasonal Searches

It was the day before Valentine’s Day, and searches for Valentine’s Day treats, activities, recipes, etc. peaked yesterday. Maybe “skyrocketed” is a better word than “peaked”. After the holiday her traffic will slump a bit until St. Patrick’s Day comes around.

She is Listening to Her Audience

Although people rarely comment on Shannon’s blog, she knows what they like by analyzing the way they find her site. She has a rich keyword history to review in Google Analytics at this point, and she knows what people are looking for. So she gives it to them.

She Has Done a Lot of Keyword Research

What Shannon lacks in her own data she is finding in keyword tools like this one from Aaron Wall. She’s taken the time to find out what words other people use to search and is making sure she uses their language in her post titles and articles.

She is Using Proper Alt Tags on her Images

By naming her images with keywords and using keywords in image ‘alt’ tags, Shannon’s referrals from Google Image Search are on the rise, and it’s also helping her to rank better overall

She is Developing Natural Relevant Links from Quality Related Sites

There aren’t a ton of Kids’ Activity blogs out there, so there aren’t a million places she can go to network. But by getting to know Char over at Printables4Kids and even linking from her own personal bog, she has been able to make a huge difference in her traffic this Valentine’s Day compared to past holidays like Christmas and Halloween

She is Working on Creating Community Outside of Her Blog

While she hasn’t seen a ton of traffic from her efforts yet, she’s taken her content on the road so to speak when she set up a group on Flickr to share photos of kids’ projects with other parents. It’s been a great way for her to both get more exposure for her blog and also contribute great content to the parenting community outside of our site.

I’d Also Like to Highlight What Shannon ISN’T Doing

She Isn’t Submitting Her Own Articles to StumbleUpon or Other Social Media Sites

Although there are mixed feelings about the rights and wrongs of self-submission, we prefer to let the community decide what gets popular on the social media sites.  Skellie can tell you how to make sure your stuff gets stumbled tamper-free.

She Isn’t Spamming Forums with Links

Although Shannon is finding forums and communities to join, she’s only mentioning her site when it comes up in conversation, or when someone asks for the information. I think this is a really, really important point, and exemplifies best practices when setting out to do self-promotion in online communities.

She Isn’t Leaving Comments on Blogs Just to Promote Herself

I’m a huge advocate of commenting as a way to promote yourself. I also advocate only adding to the conversation and not spamming other bloggers. Interestingly, when I look through Shannon’s referring sites, I don’t see any traffic of substance coming from her commenting activity. I’d actually recommend she does this a little more come Easter time.

She Isn’t Slacking

Usually our authors write about 3-4 posts a week. In preparation for Valentine’s Day, she posted a lot more frequently leading up to the holiday, and wrote a lot of posts much earlier than she did for previous holidays. That two week lead time and updating her content at a rapid pace made a HUGE difference in increasing her traffic.

Annoyingly, my own blog here is still at a PR of 3, despite the fact that I dropped all text link advertising, put in a reconsideration request, and the more simple and stupid fact that www.emomsathome.com/blog/ is the most linked-to page on this domain. Don’t get me started.

I think Google does this late on Fridays on purpose. Anything changing on your sites? I’m curious to hear about what’s happening with your page rank!

Find out what’s going on with your Google Page Rank with the iWebTools Page Rank Checker and the Page Rank Prediction Tool.

Sure enough, my traffic was up significantly from Yahoo. Most of it was because Shannon wrote a wonderfully optimized post entitled “Halloween Treat: Rice Krispie Pumpkins” which was ranking #1 on Yahoo for all sorts of related searches and we had a nice spike right before Halloween because of it. (Yeah, Shannon rocks!)

But after a measly <1500 referrals, I was super-excited to see that Yahoo had sent our site 112 visits just on October 30th alone.

I forgot about it again until today when I decided to check on Yahoo again – was this a fluke, or is Yahoo indeed starting to rank my blog better lately?

Indeed it has:

Although traffic has obviously died down because Halloween is over, you can see that just since September 1 Yahoo is sending more traffic, more consistently, and since late October, the average is much higher.

Will Yahoo ever become the traffic driving force that is Google? Maybe, but not anytime soon. But I am THRILLED to see that Yahoo is finally indexing my site better – and if it is due to an algorithm update, I wonder if they have made some adjustments to index blogs more accurately in their search engine page results? It would make sense, as Yahoo seems to be steering themselves more into the social media space and (depressingly) away from search.

What is your recent history with Yahoo – have you seen an increase in the last month or so?

I wanted to demonstrate that everything that Google preaches is what you should be doing.

What I found 6 hours into this post is that is that the reality of the sites at the top of the search engines do not reflect that they have implemented the advice Google is giving us.

In fact, many of them are doing exactly what Google is telling us NOT to do, yet they are rewarded for it.

So what advice is Google giving us?

• “Focus on the user and all else will follow”
• “Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings”
• “Avoid links to web spammers or ‘bad neighborhoods’”
• “Don’t fill your page with lists of keywords”

Well, let’s see how these play out…

Irrelevant SEO Rule #1 :: High Page Rank Determines Search Engine Placement

I’d first of all like to point something out: A page rank between 3 and 5 will get great search engine results if you optimize for good terms. Do a search for a competitive term, and look at the page rank of the first result, for example:

Paid Survey – PR3, YellowSurveys.com

Home Business – PR5, HomeBusinessMag.com

Mortgage - PR5, Mortgage101.com

Jewelry – PR4, Jewelry.com

Halloween – PR5, Halloween.com

Irrelevant SEO Rule #2 :: Page Rank is an Indication of Trust

There is only one of those 5 sites above that I would feel comfortable linking to from my own site, and that one is Jewelry.com. The rest are textbook examples of sites I wouldn’t trust enough to send you to, let alone give my credit card information to.

But the worst offender is HomeBusinessMag.com, which is plastered with ads to home business opportunities that I have refused to sell ad space to because they looked too much like a Ponzi scheme. Just because they have a page rank of 5, doesn’t mean their content can be trusted. All it means is that they are savvy about hiding their links to bad neighborhoods by using redirects, or – ah, the irony – by running the ads through Google AdSense.

I will say that this site has some good content, but sadly, once you lose trust by promoting scams, you call into question everything on your domain.

YellowSurveys.com is even worse with the redirects in their right column – I’m adding this to point to Jordan’s comment below saying this is actually what Google says you should do, which to me seems far less user-focused than real links to real sites. But if they did that, Google would find that they seem to be linking to some pretty skanky neighborhoods.

Irrelevant SEO Rule #3 :: Write for the User, Not For Search Engines

Well, in my experience, if you want a return visitor, I agree with Google on this one. But evidently, if you want to get found, you have to write like this:

Irrelevant SEO Rule #4 :: Don’t Engage in Link Schemes

A quick search of the inbound links to Mortgage101.com shows that a very high percentage of the 5170 links coming in to their site come from local directory CitiesUnlimited.com, which is a text link that does not have a “NoFollow” tag:

So what’s going on here? Is this an elaborate link scheme? Or perhaps they bought a lot of text link ads?

Honestly, I don’t have a solution for this one, because I’m damned if I tell you to go buy links for your site, yet you are damned if you don’t. The fact of the matter is that getting lots of inbound links to your site works, Google is clear about this.

I’ll be the first to admit that is is damn hard to build inbound links on a large scale. I haven’t bought links, but I almost did as recently as two months ago.

But the risks now associated with buying those links are just as grave as the risks… of, well, NOT getting the links in the first place.

So What Does an Honest Marketer Do With All of this Information?

I started this post to demonstrate that I’m not after a higher page rank – what I want, like you, is more visitors. Obviously, with a page rank at 4 & 5, that’s all eMoms at Home needs to do well in our niche. Since “Referring Sites” represent more than 66% of our traffic, I had better damn well be going after as many links as I possibly can – not to game Google, but to actually be sure that I DO NOT RELY on Google for my and my authors’ livelihood.

To be honest with you, I don’t follow all of Google’s guidelines to do well in the search engines. This is obvious, because even though I have worked to optimize for the phrase ‘home business’, I’m still not even in the top 100 results.

The reason I follow Google’s guidelines is because I want to sleep at night.

I write for users because I want you to come back.

I don’t sell ads to bad neighborhoods because I would never forgive myself if I made a buck at the expense of you losing a buck to a scam.

I avoid massive blogging link memes on this blog because I know that I don’t get quality traffic from those posts, and because I think it makes me look desperate for links, which I am not. I get added sometimes anyway, and I’ve even gone as far as asking myself to be removed from them – they just aren’t worth it.

And I’ve always focused on adding value to the blogging and home business community because that is how you build a successful business.

It just so happens that these are things Google wants us to do anyway. Yet Google’s own search engine result pages are in direct conflict with these guidelines.

Regular readers know that I would never sell out on quality to gain a buck. I hope you don’t either. But sadly, instead of feeling like I have made lemonade with this post, I feel like Google has left me sucking a lemon.

Good thing I’m in this for you, and not for Google, because instead you might get a post like this:

eMoms at Home is a home business site that supports the home business community with internet home business advice, home business work life balance issues, home business productivity and home business ideas. Our home-based authors who work from home write about home based eBay selling, home based craft business, home based freelancing, dads working at home, kids activities for home business owners and products for families who have an interest in home business.

*Snort*

As many of you probably already read today, several of my peers and mentors were slapped by Google today with significantly lowered page ranks – as much as from a PR7 down to a PR4 in some cases.

Andy Beard and Daniel Scocco are providing ongoing coverage of the sites taking a hit. And it’s not just popular blogs – even the Washington Post and Forbes.com have gone from PR7 down to PR5.

The good news? Everyone seems to be reporting the same or more traffic from Google SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

I was at a PR5 yesterday. I’m still at a PR5 today. I’d like to point to the things I did differently than people like Darren, Brian, and even the team over at BlogHerald – but I really have no clue. I believe we all have focused on bringing quality, relevant content to our audience and have always put the reader experience first before revenue. I believe we have all sold links at some point (though I turned down a cool $1000 for some text link advertising in August because of my Google fears…).

Theories are everywhere – some suggest the fact that being part of a blog network has hurt some of the sites, or perhaps that the incoming links are being devalued.

Frankly, I’ve been rather tight-lipped on the whole subject, mostly because I am not at a point in my business in which I can afford to rock the Google boat. I guess you can say that their scare tactics have worked on me – and I feel rather sad about that.

At the same time, I’ll be the first one to admit that I don’t understand Google, algorithms, nor could I pull off anything black hat if my life depended on it. I’m certainly not implying that anyone who has been hit is engaging in black hat tactics – far from it. I’m just saying that my level of SEO knowledge, though pretty advanced for my audience (work at home parents) is far less than that of my peers in this industry.

Perhaps it’s my relatively simplistic SEO implementation that has helped me skirt under the radar?

I’d really love to hear what you think about the issue:

Do you think Google is doing the best thing for their own users?

How could this be hurting their users?

How could it help?

And what are your predictions about Google’s intentions? Why do you think they are doing this and where do you think they are headed now that they have taken steps down a road that is certain to make quite a few (large and small) businesses angry?

But I got to thinking recently about the whole link-loving thing. I guess sometimes I forget how hard it seems in the first few months of blogging to get attention, traffic and those coveted links. Certainly, on my “Overdue Link Love” posts I try to spread the luv around. But then I read a post today by a woman I don’t even know, named Lizzie. And it moved me.

Lizzie has a brand new blog and wanted to try and monetize it. She turned to PayPerPost as a source of revenue, only to be flatly rejected because of her lack of Google Page Rank. So, in a quest for inbound links, Lizzie found a blogger who did link exchanges :: only to find that same said blogger refused all requests from sites with a Page Rank of less than 3.

Now, I may not be able to spend hours every week hunting out new and deserving bloggers to link to, but I can say this: that I have NEVER ONCE checked someone’s page rank before I decided to link or not. And you may disagree with me, but I don’t think it’s worth your time or energy to care about it, either.

Can I just state the obvious here :: sites without a current page rank will eventually get ranked. So let’s not be so dang short-sighted about our SEO goals here, people. URGH. What is a PR0 link today can be a PR6 link in 6-9 months.

Here’s a table that shows that even pages with a rank of 1 add up to help your total page rank “score”. Plus, there are even rumors that Google might do away with Page Rank altogether, anyway.

Write good headlines. Use good title and description tags. Link to sites that are relevant. Build relationships. Eventually, Google will love you for it. And if you are only relying on Google for traffic anyway, you’re missing out on some seriously great site building opportunities.

Lastly, I’ve always been grateful for every dang link that comes to this blog. Including Walter’s, Wendy’s, Jason’s, Leisa’s, Kate’s, WAH(web)Mommy’s and Jesse’s. These fine authors all have relatively new blogs in the work-at-home/small business niche and I think they deserve my link love and your attention.

And since running this site really is extremely time consuming, I’d like to ask that if you have a blog or site with good content (no splogs!!) that is a resource to entrepreneurs, work at home parents, or home business owners, please send me a note about your site. I would be happy to add you to this list, help build your page rank, and help you get the attention you deserve from Google, PayPerPost, or anyone else you wish to impress.

I’m a stats junkie anyway, because I feel that analyzing traffic patterns is like peeking into the minds of your site visitors. With a blog, the visitors you get to know are the most vocal commenters – studying your analytics allows the non-vocal visitors tell you what they like – and don’t like.

There are SO many ways to take advantage of seasons and hot trends in Search Engine Optimization. And you don’t ever need to stray off topic in order to take advantage of them.

One of the most popular posts on this blog, 94 Ways to Keep Kids Busy for the Work at Home Parent, is starting to fall off the charts:

Why? I’m not doing anything to make Google angry – it’s the simple fact that now that kids are back in school, parents no longer need help keeping their kids busy (in fact, it’s probably high time I wrote a post on juggling your business schedule with school activities, eh?!).

A more dramatic example is a post I wrote early this year called Blogging Tax Deductions :: What Can You Write Off?:

Not only do you see a huge dropoff after April 15th, but you can also start to see a tiny uptick in the summer as those of us who got an extension started to face the IRS music again.

So how can you take advantage of this and drive more traffic to your website?

• Write articles around seasonal trends
  You don’t necessarily need to write about back to school shopping, but you can use it as a launch for a metaphor post.
• Use seasonal keywords in post titles
  Just mentioning a hot keyword in your headline pulls more traffic, but if your post has nothing to do with Halloween, then the boost will be short-lived.
• Launch a separate niche blog or site targeted at a holiday or season
  MothersDayCentral pulled this off SO well – and their brilliant linkbait post sealed the deal to put them on top of Google’s Mother’s Day charts
• Watch news sites for hot topics and events
  This site has done well writing about the Super Bowl and Harry Potter on just the right days, even though Dawud and I stayed on topic – blogging and business.
• Rotate advertising on your site to fit the season
  You may be able to do well selling iPods on your site year-round, but will probably sell more if you mention that they are great presents during the December holidays, to give to college grads, or that the Easter Bunny likes to hide them with eggs.

For more reading (just found this after I wrote this post – Ironic!): Seasonal Traffic and How to Capture It for Your Blog from ProBlogger, and Take Advantage of Seasonal and Holiday Traffic from Tyler Banfield.

Here’s a few more research tools for identifying trends:

• Technorati’s Top Searches
• Google Trends
• Yahoo features daily top searches on the bottom of their home page
• TrendWatching publishes a monthly briefing, with a wonderfully timed analysis of all things female for August 2007

Unfortunately, I have NO IDEA what to tell her.

Since you are a smart bunch, I figured I’d throw the question your way. You’re all so good at helping each other out anyway…

Reader Question of the Week:

Do you think video or podcasts are better for SEO?

What do you think?

My particular concern was with spammers who actually left a comment that had something to do with the actual post – they read the article and write something that can slip under the radar, which allows their true intentions to be hidden – that they are a spammer just like any other spammer. They are just smarter than the rest.

Anyway, many people expressed a little skepticism as I gave them an example of one of these sneaky spam comments – yet today I have proof positive that what walks like a duck and quacks like a duck is indeed a duck.

So sadly, I have deactivated DoFollow from this blog. My time is way more important than being spent on investigating on every comment left on this blog – and I assure you, I get 3-5 of these sneaky spam comments daily.

I wasn’t the first to ring the warning bell on this one – Lorelle on WordPress brought it up at the end of last year (AND over a year ago!) – before the DoFollow movement even started.

I care enough about this blog to not risk it’s credibility, Google Trust, and existence.

If something happens to this blog, I’ll have a hard time helping you with your business.

And if something happens to this site, I reach less people with a message that is vitally important – that each of you were put on this earth to do great things.

So, PLEASE, care enough about yourself and your blog to watch this issue very carefully. You may want to continue to participate in the DoFollow movement, and that is FINE.

Just be an educated, savvy and ruthless comment moderator.

Ok for those of you who might not know, deep linking is when you link directly to a post versus simply linking to the front page of a site. For instance if your blog is called TheItBlog.Com and you have a post with a URI of http://www.theitblog.com/my-awesome-post/ people who link to you have two choices.

1. They can link to the main page of your blog by using the link
http://www.theitblog.com

2. They can link to the exact post they are interested in by using the
link http://www.theitblog.com/my-awesome-post/

Now if they use the first option when referencing your post or site, anyone else who wishes to read your original post will have to click over to your site, do a search for the mentioned article, click to the article and read it. That is an excessive amount of clicking and time wasted just to read your article. Experience shows that more often than not, users will simply click off your main page versus going through all the steps necessary to locate your post. The result is a lost reader and potentially lost revenue.

Of course all is not lost, should your site be referred to only through your front page versus a deep link to a particular article. You will still receive a link in Google and other search engines “eyes” but that is where the path potentially ends.

If they use the second option, the likelihood that a potential reader can find not only your site but the direct post that was mentioned is greatly increased. A simply click on the link and they are taken directly to the article. No excessive clicking, and less chance of a direct click off to find something else. You have the reader’s attention, hopefully the content is worth their click.

So the question becomes, how do you know if people are deep linking to you and vice versa. If you have ever seen a comment to a post which looked something like this and used the title of a post and a blog’s name versus a person’s then that is a deep link in action:

[…] LifeIsRisky Midlife Musings Utterly Geek Whatever I Feel Like My Dandelion Patch Surviving NJ GeekySpeaky Simple Kind Of Life 3DayMom BuyMeBlog The Hockey Dad […]

This particular type of comment is the result of the deep link pinging your original post or sending you a trackback. If you are using trackback aware blogging software such as WordPress then it will show up in your comment section. There are usually no special actions required on the deep linker’s part, other than the actual deep link, or the receiver’s part if the software is configured correctly.

Ok so I understand what a deep link is you say but why should I care?

Excellent question. Deep linking and the resulting pings and trackbacks help on numerous levels. For one it builds a relationship between your post and other posts that reference it or are used for reference. For another it potentially builds traffic for all linked sites as users click around to follow the conversation or learn more about the subject. Also, it builds additional links in Google or other search engines, which is always a good thing.

Perhaps it’s largest asset though is that it allows the author of a blog to see who is actually reading and referencing their posts. If you are like me, you really like to get to know your readers. Some people make it a special point to communicate with their readers and visit their respective sites, if they know about them. This helps with networking, relationship building and overall cohesiveness.

Now deep linking alone won’t make your blog outstanding, only outstanding content and a wonderful marketing plan can do that but they certainly help. Plus deep linking can be used within your own posts to reference a previous post on your site making it easier for your users to find other items that might interest them. A win win situation all the way around.

So now that you know what deep linking is all about why not start using it? It only takes a few extra seconds and can reap lots of benefits for both sides.

—-
Susan Driggers blogs at LifeIsRisky.Com

I really wanted to interview Jennifer because not only does she write phenomenal content for Search Engine Guide, but she’s also a “famous” work at home mom and blogger. She rose to blogging stardom earlier this year when her blog, The Lactivist, got into a scuffle with The National Pork Board over her pro-breastfeeding t-shirts which cleverly stated at the time, “The Other White Milk”. (My new favorite shirt in her shop is “Breasts: Not Just for Selling Cars Anymore”!! ROFL!!)

Jennifer, you are the Editor of Search Engine Guide – can you tell us a little bit about your background and how it landed you here?

Well, I actually started out in SEO forums, like many of today’s industry bloggers. I first began learning about search marketing back in 2000 when I was trying to get the company I worked for listed on DMOZ. I became an active member at Search Engine Forums and went on to become a moderator and then the forum administrator. Around that time, About.com’s Web Search guide position came open and I applied. I got the gig and started writing for them on the side. It wasn’t long after that that Search Engine Guide publisher Robert Clough started email stalking me. About a year later, I came on board at Search Engine Guide as editor-in-chief and have now been there for almost three years.

As far as work in the online marketing industry…I’ve been working on the web since 1996. I actually worked my way through college as a freelance web site developer. I took a full time job with a dot com start-up during my senior year (they paid for me to finish school) and then bounced through a handful of companies before striking out on my own in 2001. I’ve been a freelance consultant ever since…specializing in organic search, viral marketing, link building and now a little bit of social media marketing.

I know that I didn’t really start paying attention to SEO until my blog was 4-5 months old. I found the topic a bit overwhelming at first. What are some of the absolute basic, need-to-know and must-do-now things that new websites should do to make their sites and blogs search engine friendly?

The biggest issue with blogs is that they’re template driven. Many blogs don’t allow the owner to control things as simple as the title tag and that often leaves them unfriendly to search engines. We use Movable Type at Search Engine Guide and Robert has mashed together a pretty powerful content management system with it. It’s not cheap though, so many start-ups will likely avoid it.

Some cheaper options include free web-based sites like Blogger and the free server based program WordPress. I use Blogger for my Lactivist Blog, but I’ve had to do some work with the code to make it more search friendly. Blogger doesn’t really allow you to control the title tag unless you integrate some hacks into the code. WordPress is quite a bit more friendly in terms of search optimization. If I had it to do over again, I’d start with WordPress. (Yes, I know I could switch, but it’s a big process that I just don’t have time for right now…)

Beyond that, it’s the simple things.

1.) Use your keywords in your post title (which often functions as the title tag of the page)

2.) Use keywords in your links

3.) Work on building relationships and links with other bloggers in your topical area.

4.) Start a blogroll and let people know when you add them to it

5.) Comment on other people’s blogs and trust that they’ll follow you back to your site if they like what you say

6.) Consider joining a blog carnival (or starting one)

Good blogging is mostly about being aware of what keywords are, using them when appropriate and then building links and relationships. It’s not difficult, it just takes time.

There are so many ways to promote a web site: content development, link strategy, SEO, viral marketing, promotions, social networking, social bookmarking, PPC, … if you had to place a priority on some of these over others, what would you recommend?

Those are all great ways to build content and I think a lot of it has to do with the focus of your site and how quickly you’d like to grow it. I run two sites of my own and occasionally work on others if I take on a client. My two sites (Search Engine Guide and The Lactivist) have each been built different ways.

Search Engine Guide has mostly been built using good content development, link strategy and online relationship building. Search Engine Guide is nearly 10 years old, so we’ve got a pretty heafty database of articles and blog posts. We’ve also got eleventy billion incoming links. (Ok, maybe not quite that many, but its in the hundreds of thousands…) We’ve done that by taking our time and building up a resource. We pretty much never ask for links, but we freely link to other sites and we often notify them when we do. This has helped us get on the radar of many small business owners as well as other people in the search industry. They now link to us as often as we link to them. We’ve also integrated RSS feeds, discussion forums, brought in guest bloggers and implemented a variety of other plans to give easy access to quality content.

The Lactivist on the other hand is my hobby site and my marketing playground so I’ve been a bit more experimental with it. I did test some PPC in the early days, but dropped it after about a month. (PPC is hard to justify unless you have a distinct call to action.) The Lactivist has grown to more than 40K unique visitors a month in just a 18 months. That’s not bad for a highly niche site. Most of that growth has come via word of mouth and relationships.

I spend a lot of time building relationships in the online mom community. I host a debate board at BabyCenter, I’m a known member on boards like Mothering.com and The Baby Wearer, I read and comment on other blogs in my vertical… Basically, I’ve built up a personal reputation with the breastfeeding community over the last year and that has helped them not only find my blog, but also to recommend it to others.

I’ve tried some new style marketing as well. I joined with four other breastfeeding bloggers to start a “Carnival of breastfeeding” each month. We accept guest submissions each month as well as our own and the results have been a nice traffic boost and easy introduction to new readers. I also took advantage of social bookmarking and social networking when I had my little run-in with the National Pork Board. That works very well for spreading the word about my problem, but it also helped drive a lot of new traffic to the site, many of which stuck around after the furor died down.

I say all that to say that the key is to learn about and understand ALL of those types of marketing, but to realize that no set pattern works for every site. Try them out, take note of what is successful and strategize your future plans from there.

Do you have any favorite posts or content from Search Engine Guide that can help people who are just starting to learn about SEO to understand it better and make some immediate improvements?

Probably the most popular series for people just starting out is the “Zero dollars, a little talent and 30 days series. That one chronicles the first 30 days of the Lactivist. It talks about exactly where I spent my money, what types of marketing I tried, what worked, what failed and so on. It’s a great primer to getting a small business started online.

A few of my favorite individual articles?

The Why Links Matter Series

The How to Win Links and Influence People Series

Search Engine Algorithms: Understanding the Pinocchio Effect

Link Building is Relationship Building

The Number One Rule of Organic Search

The Number One Rule of Paid Search

You’re also a work at home mom with a small baby ‘round the house. How are you balancing baby time, work time, and mom time?

Oh, if I worked on a web cam instead of via email, people would know the secret of that. My house is a wreck. Seriously, a friend showed up out of the blue yesterday and we had to sweep stuff off the couch so that she could find someplace to sit. (Now in my defense, it’s not usually like that, but I’ve just come off a speaking trip, a funeral, the flu and planning the launch party of the Ohio Breastfeeding Coalition…so sometimes housework suffers…LOL)

I actually work from home with my daughter (2 and a half) and my son (7 months) and a very barky dog. I found that all those sites that say “You have to schedule work time” were clearly written by people that weren’t working from home with small children.

I’ve learned how to work in “bursts.” I might get a twenty minute burst or an hour burst, but I never know when those times will come. I’ve had to learn how to immediately shift into work mode rather than taking time to ease into a project because if I ease in, I’d likely never get started!

In reality, I’ve been very blessed. Both of my kids have happy, easy going personalities. They’re good about playing on their own and I’ve learned to type one handed while nursing Emmitt. (In fact, I’m typing this interview one handed…)

Oh, that was just work time and baby time…I don’t think mom time comes back into play until Emmitt is about two, but we’ll see. Working at home means some sacrifices. It’s hard, it’s not for everyone, but I count myself very blessed to be able to do it.

Thanks again for your time on this one, Jennifer!

• Metty won a copy of Aaron Wall’s SEO Book (It rocks!!)
• Joe Hauckes won a free year of SoloSEO from Michael Jensen (I’m so jealous!!)
• Gayla won a custom SEO optimized site redesign from Shazia Mistry (Gorgeous designs, too!)
• Mike Thomas won a copy of Meet & Grow Rich
• EVERYONE who linked won a coupon for $500 off of Elite Retreat
  (EMAIL ME for the code!)

I’m off for the evening to celebrate my niece’s birthday party, so I’ll be in touch with all of you soon to grab your info to deliver your prizes – congrats again!

She’s dug up 5 more SEO friendly WordPress themes that are free, so you no longer have to stress about losing out if you can’t afford a custom redesign!!

Also, Chris Pearson’s Cutline Theme is, of course, one of the best out there.

Sandbox is good too, but it needs some serious tweaking to look pretty, imho.

Hope you don’t spend your entire weekend tweaking code – make sure you get out and enjoy the nice spring weather (well, just grin and bear it if you’re in the Midwest, like me).

Here’s a roundup of her posts, suitable for both the absolute beginner as well as the experienced internet entrepreneur:

Part 1 – Page Optimization

Part 2 – Subscription Feeds & Bookmark Tabs

Part 3 – Article Submission and Distribution

Part 4 – Building Reference Pages

Part 5 – Republishing Feeds/Blogging on Limited Time

Part 6 – Technorati Tags

Part 7 – Setting Blog Traffic Goals and Reaching Them

Part 7a – Tag Clouds

Part 8 – Link Exchange Directories

Part 9 – Search Engine Current Tips, Tools & Techniques

Part 10 – Press Release Distribution Websites

Part 11 – Blog Directories

Part 12 – Link Text

Part 13 – SEO Tools

Part 14 – Sound HTML coding practices