Friday, November 27, 2009

Building A New Website

Well I decided to try building another website to see if there is a diffrence between non-commercial and commercial websites. This website is about Edgar Allan Poe all of his works and biography. If you guys want follow check back time and again to see if it takes off faster than this blog or my site How To Make Money Online. Personally I think it will do much better since not only does it not sale anything there is really no way for me to make money. Money is not even mentioned. I think this will be the diffrence between a website reaching high rank and PR easily compared with a fight day in and day out.

So what do you guys think? Does the category of a website matter when it comes to rank and PR?

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Keep Track Of Your Websites Placement

One important aspect is knowing where your website is within the serps and other stats which are important for your website. There are many different checks you can do for your website. First is the simple backlink check. Personally I use two different checkers which are Yahoo's site explorer which you use by going to Yahoo's Search Engine and typing link:http://www.yourwebsite.com Yahoo will bring up the number of links and a list of who is linking to you. The second website which I trust to count backlinks is Google's webmaster tools. To use this checker you will need to sign up for a Google account and then sign up and verify your website at Google Webmaster Tools. I use to use third party websites until I spoke with another experienced webmaster and asked him which counters he used and he told me the only two that matter. He said why use a website which does not decide where you will be placed in the serps when the search engines you are so worried about will tell you exactly which links they are counting and how many of your links actually matter. It seems pointless having a website which has no authority of your placement tell you how many links you have if they say 10 million and Google says 50 guess what you will be at the bottom of the SERPs.

Webmaster tools has become imperative for webmasters. Now only will they tell you how many links you have and give a list of the top thousand websites linking to you they go much more in depth. My favorite aspect of Webmaster Tools is the SERPs tracker which tells me my top hundred keywords I am ranking well for. They not only let me know what keywords I am ranked well for but the keywords which are actually getting the click throughs. Here is a little example of my top ten keywords which my website How To Make Money Online ranks well for:
# Query Position
1 make money online free 4
2 earn money online free 6
3 how to make money online for free 8
4 make money online for free 8
5 how to make money online free 5
6 make money free 5
7 make free money online 7
8 making money online for free 9
9 making money online free 6
10 make money free online 3
Updated Nov 26, 2009

Anyway you can see what I am ranked for so I don't need to actually go to Google and type in each and every one. What is also nice they make the query into links so I click on one of the terms and it will go right to my position proving to me that I am ranked for that word. Anyway I don't know what I would do without webmaster tools and if you are not using it you really need to start.

Now the next step is keeping track of your visitors. For this again I have two main sources first Stat Counter which is a free counter that will give you decent reports on how much traffic you are getting where it is coming from and where they are leaving. I also really like Google Analytics which is a great resource with tons of graphs and reports that will tell you anything you want to know about your site. Both of these are great alone I prefer to have both, but really it is not neccessary.

The last subject I would like to cover is the value of a search term. Now for this I have two resources which I use both are quite powerful and will provide you with excellent info for whatever term you are wanting to learn about. The first is Google Adwords Tool. This is the tool which will tell you the search volume of a keyword for the previous month. Not the best for a long term unless you check the keyword monthly for a couple months. Now this is usually what makes me decide on what keywords to go after since I can see how many times last month any given terms was searched for. Now for the long term I use a diffrent tool which is Google Insights which is STILL in its beta, but offers very valuable info. This tool will tell you the popularity of a keyword over a period of time (1 month - years). You will be able to find up and coming terms and if a term has spiked and went back down. In other words let say you go to the adwords tool and they say for last month the key term website marketing had 2 million searches. You think it is a good term with plenty of traffic, but when you go to insights it says that the term had a 1000% increase over previous months which means more than likely it was a fluke month and the term will drop back down to its average. Anyway a great tool for those wanting to know what terms are popular and what terms should be avoided.

I hope you guys liked the post if so please share it with a friend or on a forum/blog/website wherever. Also let me know what you guys think of the tools.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Keep It Simple Video

Here is my newest video on keeping your web presence simple and to the point. The main focus is making sure you are doing what you set out to do rather than getting tied up in the new marketing ideas. Anyway I hope you enjoy be sure to leave a comment.



If you are looking for affiliate programs to market or want to see the site I spoke about in the video go to How To Make Money Online.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Build Links To Internal Pages

As any internet marketer knows links are the driving force behind the web and should be done by anyone to get their website to the top of Google and other search engines. Most out there choose to only build links towards their main URL/Index/Home page. This is a great way to start and should of course be done, but it should only be a starting point and the rest of your website should not be forgotten. Personally I recommend making sure every page that you would like someone to land on (click on from a search engine) has content worth building its own links, but being in the make money niche I know from personal experience that this is not always possible and there are alternatives for those who have a difficult time providing a steady stream of rich useful content on every single landing page.

First I would like to discuss internal link structure since like building links to sub pages is a forgotten art of today’s webmaster. Your internal link structure consists of all links that are on your site that point to another page (or same page), but do not point off your site. These are the links that you should have set up from an seo point of view. A couple of rules when setting up your internal link structure is first always and I mean ALWAYS optimize the link for the keywords you would like the page to do well on in the search engines. This means between your starting anchor and ending anchor you should place your keywords. The second thing about internal link structure I would like to discuss is the hierarchy. Your primary page or home page should only have links to your most important sub pages. Your important sub pages can carry the rest of the links outward/downward into your site. Every single page should have an optimized link to your home page and it is also good to have each and every page point towards your important/landing sub pages.

The next step after you have completed a linking campaign for your home page is to begin building links off your website towards your sub pages that are worthy landing pages. Remember just like building links towards your home page they should have keywords suited for the sub page between the anchor tags. When evaluating your seo be sure to pick ten or so keywords per serps position and track how well your sub pages are doing within the search engines rather than only worrying about your home page. Building links to your sub pages will also help build authority for your home page since the authority will pass from the links you build to your sub pages then as your sub pages build more authority they will pass it to your home page.

Just Remade My Website Need Your Help

Well after some time thinking about it I had a couple of thoughts which I am going to share with you. The first being clutter is bad. As I got better and learned more about building websites and online business I found I loved adding things even if they did not work with my number one goal of making money. This was the biggest prompt that made me change my website. I also think that it has a more professional look and feel to it. Anyway would one of you guys look at it then tell me what you think in a comment I would really appreciate it. Here is a link to my site:How To Make Money Online

I would really like to hear what you guys think:)

Monday, November 16, 2009

SEO Evaluation

Where I have made the majority of my money and one of the most important aspects of internet marketing is SEO. A SEO evaluation is when you go over your website and look intensively at your competition and keywords. This post is aimed at what you should be looking at for a basic evaluation. Usually when I do one for a client it usually takes me 12-24 hours of work before I am finished with the results analyzed. The evaluation I am going to go over with you should only take 6 hours or so since you will not be going into the same depth as when I work on my clients website. I will probably be going into more depth at a later time so be sure to become a reader and keep coming back. If you have read through this blog you will notice that I cover all aspects of web marketing from topics such as web 2.0 to building links and of course SEO (my favorite aspect of web marketing).

The most crucial part of a SEO evaluation is an overall understanding of keywords and how they apply to your web presence. First you need to decide which keywords you will be working with both on site and off site. I have found having around 10 keywords is a good rounded number and allows you plenty of leeway when marketing. You do not want to few since it will look to Google as if you are building links rather than having them come natural. You also will not want to many since you won't really get anywhere so between 5-15 should be your range. Once you have decided which keywords you want to attempt to reach the top of Google for the next step is make sure your site is SEO'd for those words.

After you have the list of keywords you want to reach the top for run them through Google adwords checker at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal to make sure that the keywords have enough traffic. The number it shows is a monthly average rather than the exact amount of searches. I have found around 50,000 searches monthly to be very profitable though the competition goes up with the amount of numbers. When you have ran your keyword selection through this tool and feel you have enough keywords and the search volume is appropriate pick your most searched word and place it in your URL (uniform resource locator) as well as in a h1 tag at the top of your site. It is also helpful to place it a couple times throughout your site being sure that you do not go over board. You should also put the rest of your keywords/keyterms at least once throughout your home page.

Next you will want to check to see your competition. Personally I stick with Google since they handle 60% or so of the worlds search volume. Search Google for each term and look at the top ten search results since you will want to be in the top ten for all of your keyterms and if you work hard enough this is a very realistic goal. You should not have a list of 100 sites that you will be looking at. This is the most time consuming process of the evaluation. First run every site through Yahoo's site explorer to see how many backlinks each of these have. Now thinking about it you will only need to run a couple for each term through to get a rough estimate of how many backlinks you will need (the more the better estimate).

Something that is interesting is the regular search on Google does not show exactly who is placing the keyterms in their anchor when building links. To see who is the top link builders for a certain term you will need to do a more specific Google search. For example if you look at my site How To Make Money Online you will notice that for the search on google make money free it is in the second place, but if you look at who is building links for make money free by doing the inanchor search I am number one. To do this search go to Google and type inanchor:"make money free" and this search will show me who has the most/best backlinks for this certain keyterm. I am number 1 for this search and have been so for quite some time though I am number 2 for a search of make money free. Anyway this shows that building links is the best way to reach the top for a keyword or term.

Well this is at least a start for you. Now if you are not sure where to build links the way I have reached the top of Google for hundreds of keywords is using this system at Free Backlinks. This will give you a base to start your backlink campaign. Also if you have any questions about what I have covered or comments please leave a comment.