SEO HELP - Just The Facts

I have put this page together to summarize and break down to the bare essentials the SEO and Link building ideas to make it easy, everything on this page will be straight forward with no little story in between just the facts. I have also included some great SEO links that you can follow as I did and read them for yourself and possibly grow your own web site.

There are 8 keys to getting your site notices:

1st. Choose your keywords carefully
2nd Use your keywords wisely
3rd Make sure to Test keywords, the best way is with pay-per-click advertising.
4th It is essential to Build up the links to your site from other sites, try and make sure the links are relevant to your site. The more relevant the better.
5th Don’t forget to Submit your site to the search engines. If you do not submit your site they will not know how to find you.
6th It’s a good idea to Monitor the progress of your SEO, but be patient, your site like any other business takes time to grow and get known, it won’t happen overnight.
7th and of course the never Ending Blog, it is a must have in order to promote your site.
8th Last of all if you are finding it to over whelming and have the money you might consider outsourcing your SEO.

CHOOSING YOUR KEY WORDS:
Quality research will pay off in the end. Do a search phrase on the major search engines and see what your competition in the phrase is like. If the results display something like 1-10 about 3,610,000. Then that tells you your competition for that phrase is relatively high.
Another source of research for keywords is your server log files. When a visitor finds your site using a search page, the words they used to find you are entered in your server log files. By looking at this information you can find out:

1. keywords to target
2. phrases to target
3. ideas for new pages

There are some excellent tools to help you develop new keywords, The Key Word Tracker tool from Word tracker displays what other words have been used in actual searches on a topic or phrase. This is also a great way to find some of the less competitive keywords.

Always think like your Audience. If you sell Baseball Equipment, you would want pages based around bats, balls, gloves, brand names and specific products related to baseball. Over time you slowly create more and more pages using phrases like ‘Louis vile slugger’ for example to cater for specific searches.

If you want to get really technical about your keywords, you might want to know the density or word count of keywords on your pages. A part of search engine optimisation is researching the ideal density of keywords on the pages - around 5 to 10 per cent is considered about right.
A page needs to feature the keywords prominently but not appear like they were added purely to boost your search rankings. A Great tool to help you do this is Website grader by Hub spot.

USING KEY WORDS WISELY:
Your site's keywords should appear in each of your pages. The "meta title" appears at the very top of the browser window, above the menu bar.
Your keywords should appear regularly throughout the opening Web page. It is also important that they appear frequently in the opening paragraphs of your site. You must always resist the temptation to overuse keywords. This is called "stuffing." The search engines can spot it and might reduce your page rankings. There are plenty of Tools available to help with optimal keyword density, I use the ‘Keyword Density’ not only does this site have this tool but it offers more useful tools that I also use.
SEO golden rule: Never sacrifice quality of content for keyword placement. This can and will affect your ranking. Not only that but, your site won't appeal to visitors.

TESTING YOUR KEYWORDS:
Google's Ad Sense, MSN ad Center or another pay-per-click advertising program which will test keyword effectiveness. You will be able to see if your keywords will bring traffic to your site. You will also ensure your keywords target paying customers. Pay-per-click advertising can be expensive. But used correctly, it can bring targeted customers to your site.Pay-per-click advertising is not a replacement for SEO; it should be used in conjunction with SEO to help you evaluate keywords. If your results are poor, you may want to consider changing your keywords.

BUILDING LINKS TO YOUR SITE:
Search engines view inbound links as a vote for your site. So the more incoming links, the higher your site will rank.
There are limits. The search engines must view the linking sites as quality addresses. Having disreputable sites link to yours can harm your rankings.
Offer to exchange links with sites that are related to your business. If they have a higher rank, all the better. I personally use ‘Link Market’ even though the free version only allows you to request 5 links per day; I find that has been more than sufficient for me. I also use ‘Links Room’ these two sites have been by far my most useful sites for finding and exchanging quality links.

Don’t be afraid to ask disreputable sites to remove any links to your site.

To pull up a list of sites that link to yours, try using a search engine. Simply type Link: yoursitename in the search box.

SUBMIT YOUR SITE:
You want to make sure your site is indexed by the search engines. If your site has numerous inbound links, the Web spiders will find it automatically. Web spiders crawl the Internet and update an engine's database with site/sites information. If your site doesn't appear automatically (most don’t), you can submit it for indexing through a submission service or on your own. I use ‘traffic Seeker light’ it allows you to submit to multiple engines at once, saving time.



MONITOR YOUR PROGRESS:
SEO doesn't happen overnight, consider SEO just like a project, It will take months to get good page rankings. Trying to rush your SEO campaign can lead to mistakes. And the consequences of these mistakes can be severe.None the less it is important to monitor your ranking progress. Do searches with the major engines for your keywords to see how you rank. You might be surprised to find you start popping up for related terms. If so that’s a bonus.

Results can and will fluctuate. Rankings change daily and even hourly. Check frequently for an accurate gauge of where you stand. Don't worry about the minor ups and downs. However if you notice a downward trend, take action immediately.Some good tools for keeping up to date with your sites ranking are

1. Alexa
2. Search engine position
3. GeoSEO

As your site traffic increases, so should your sales. If your sales are not increasing, you may want to re-evaluate your site content and navigation.


CONSIDERING OUTSORCING SEO:
Search engine optimization is an ongoing process, and can be a full- time job. There are many companies who specialise in SEO.
Hiring an SEO company to optimise your website is expensive. Shop around as prices will vary depending on your site, the services offered and the length of time the firm works for you. The advantages might make it a wise investment. If you are thinking of going this way just remember you would be hiring experts, Chances are they can achieve Much better results than you. Their expertise and knowledge will more than likely increase business for you, and in return cover the cost plus.

Back Links, Anchor Text, Reciprocal Links, One way Links.

FIRST: I found that Reciprocal links are good but unfortunately you have to look at their content and page rank very closely, first make sure their content is related to yours, you are creating these links to generate possible targeted traffic, if your site sells paper and the site you are exchanging links with sells cars the chances of anyone from the car site will click on your link as they are there looking for a car NOT paper.

You also should watch their Page Rank (PR) as the higher the number they have obtained from Google the more value Google will put on your link exchange. This is not to say that you shouldn’t exchange links with sites that have a PR of 0 as you yourself are probably at a PR0 also. Earlier I told you about the two link exchange sites I use and I still use them but I have started looking to exchange links with similar content but that have a PR2 or higher, I still exchange with sites who have a lower page rank but similar content. I have noticed this type of move seems to slowly be bringing my site farther and farther up the Organic Search Results (OSR).

SECOND: I found that Google puts a higher value on ONE WAY LINKS (links to your site with no return link) than Reciprocal, however these are ery hard to come by and they usually cost. The more one way links you have the higher your PR becomes and let’s be honest we all want page one as that’s where the traffic and money are at. So how do I get one way links? Well go online type in free one way links and start the research phase again. Out of the hundreds of sites offering free one way links I have finally found one that does exactly what it says it will do. I don’t have to sit online surfing for hours a day just to get one free back link, honestly I just don’t have the time to do that. But this free traffic system does it for me, I can add my site or blogs to help gain some targeted traffic and one way back links or I can just place a banner on my sites to help generate the first step of my one way links. So far I like the fact that it is pretty much an auto pilot system but not totally, which for me is good because I still want to be hands on but with a little help to lighten the load.

THIRD: Anchor Text was another SEO factor that I thought I was doing correct, however after my continued learning I found out that my theory was there but I was doing it TOTALY WRONG. Let me walk you through what I have discovered an Anchor text should be.

Ok so anchor text is a hidden link, and as I have already learned is links are good, but what I had not learned till recently is that you should use anchor text as part of your SEO and key words. Anchor text looks something like Electronics at discount prices Now with anchor text the idea is instead of displaying the URL you display a word which links to the URL, the word is the anchor text. So in the example http//www.wholesale-mega-store.com would be the hidden link and the anchor text would be Electronics at discount prices. Great for me as I have been placing links all over the internet, the only problem is my anchor text has NOT been geared up to my key words so although I thought I was doing good, in reality I did myself very little in the way of promoting my key words, which in return hinders my rankings for said key words. So what I really want to do is place anchor text (hidden links) with words that are part of my key word and overall SEO.

So for my site, which dealt with electronics at discount prices I should be using anchor text like (electronics, discount, wholesale prices, discount electronics) and so on, unlike the anchor text I have been using such as “learn more” “look no further”, plus many more WRONG type of words related to my site.

Google Adwords & PPC - Should you use it?

Ok so I have been at this for some time now and if you have managed to get through my rambling and can handle another 10 minutes of reading then this is where I share my experience with Google Ad words.

Pay Per Click (ppc) Now many will say it's not worth it but I believe everyone needs to decide for themselves.

Ok so I set up my Key words my Meta title and even my Meta description, as already stated earlier. Then I started an account on Google ad words and began using that to generate some business. So I set up the account run a few ads and wow I am getting traffic, not a lot but over 200 and out of that I seem to be making sales, nothing I can retire on but it's sales. this goes on for November December and yes every click costs me money but I figure I spend two hundred dollars for some traffic and after all the expenses I make a few thousand dollars, good return on the investment. However by December 28th 2009 I start getting what they call charge backs and before I know it over 75% of all my sales for November and December were fraudulent and I had to give the money back. OK no problem however my payment gateway doesn't pay back the fee they charged me so that has to come out of my pocket not to mention they charge me another fee to dispute the claims. (Which buy the way I lost on all accounts)? But that's part of doing business what I need to do now is find out why my site has so many fraudulent card uses and where they are coming from.

WHERE TO START: I decide to start with my web host and they tell me to look for multiple attempts at a purchase, actually to take a look at the card used for the attempts as their site has the ability to show the last 4 digits of the card that was used. So I start looking at this and HOLY cow there are some attempts for purchase that are 15 tries. Well I don't know about you but I don't want to sit here for 8 hours a day just checking all these attempts. So I call my host and they tell me I can block ip addresses one by one or I can do a range so that anyone with that ip address range will not be allowed onto my sit. Yep you guessed it I spent the better part of two days going through my logs and writing down all ip addresses that have multiple attempts. then I go the admin section of my site open settings and then go to IP Firewall and proceed to add the ip addresses, then I discover that I can limit the attempts per each user, So in settings I go to IP ADDRESS SECURITY RULES AND SETTINGS, there I limit the amount of attempts a person can make per day. Now this should eliminate any fraudulent use RIGHT? WRONG although the sales from stolen cards are down I notice there is still a vast amount of fraud ATTEMPS going on. Now I need to find out where they are coming from as I am not on the first page of any search ending....YET....., after watching the activity of my site as the activity on any of my other sites I use to advertise I notice that the only thing I have not changed is my Google ad words campaigns, OK well I will suspend them for a month and see what happens. Well low and behold the fraud attempts come to a halt, now being a thinker I figure it may be coincidence that that happened so I start my ad word campaign again and in less than 24 hours my site is busy again but with about 90% of it all fraudulent purchase attempts. I suspend my campaign and guess what happened, YEP the fraud attempts came to a crawl.
No Ad Words, Now What?

So Now with Ad Words out, my traffic has come to a halt, not to mention my so called page rank went from 78 to 0. So now what do I do? Well I will have to work on getting good Organic Search Results. So back to my meta description and meta tags, load them up and see what happens, and let me tell you when you read other blogs that say DON’T SPAM your KEY WORDS trust me and DON’T , I did and my site fell of the face of the map with Google and alexa traffic rank. Now I have to figure out how to get it all back and to do it the right way.

Back to the books (so to speak) and get it right this time. So I start by looking for somewhere I can get some insight as to what I need to do (as there are lots out there) and I found Hub Spot and it has a great grader that tells you what you need to do to improve your site. After running a scan on my site it said I needed to shorten my title (as it was to long), I needed to set up a blog and a twitter account not to mention I needed to have a de.li.cious book mark. So I shortened my title, changed my key words and set up a this BLOG then I proceeded to set up my Twitter account. After I set them up I had to link them to my site and that I did.

Next I wanted to find somewhere that could draw some traffic to my site and I found linkreferral, now this has actually turned out to be a great help in my learning and growth because not only does it get traffic to my site but in the forums I can ask questions and there is all kinds of people to help and they do help. So I’m on there now for a few months and I am getting all kinds of help but there was one that took the time to explain to me and give me some examples on proper use of title, meta description, meta tag . So I spend the next 2 weeks back at the drawing board. I needed to start that section all over again but didn’t want to use the same sites I have already used so I start searching for a new key word/Phrase program and I come across WEB CEO, and it makes finding key words and phrases much easier as it shows the monthly search traffic and the competition that there is for such word and phrase, another great feature is it also shows your KEI (Key word Effectiveness Index). The higher the KEI is the better but you want to make sure that you pick the high KEI with the lowest competition. This tool is great and has made a huge difference in how my site is graded and looked at now that I have done some of the proper steps in SEO.

With all the current changes from the above my site has started showing up in searches.

So what now do I just sit around and wait for all these tweaks to start working? NO, I need to track what's going on with my site so I did some digging around and found go stats that will track exactly what's going on with your site, including page turns average time per visit and of course the all important return visits. All I have to do is install this little (invisible) snippet on my site and then sit back watch. Now I will make some adjustments one at a time so that I can see the results from each action, if I advertise on a site I can sit back and see if it has a positive or negative effect on my traffic.

Starting up a online store, what to expect

So I decided that I would start an online store, at least it will keep me busy and possibly make me money. With all the drag and drop software out there building a website should be easy right?

So I decided on Wholesale Electronics, you know such things as cell phones, Digital cameras along with gadgets, yep that’s what I would will sell online, because I like electronics. So I search around for a supplier and find one, then set up my account. Once done I proceed to purchase a Domain to start to set up my new venture.

Once template was set up I went to my supplier and picked the products I liked and wanted to sell, I placed them all in my website along with some descriptions and pictures, set up my emails and payment option. Awesome my store is ready to bring online.

With all that done it is time to Bring my store online & wait for the magic to happen (people coming to my site), yet no one there so what do I do now? Research yep I think I will do some research. Well first thing I find is I need to build up points with the major search engines, <> so now it’s more research, as I do this research all I keep saying is what the hell is anchor text (It's the text displayed in the menu bar of a websit), meta tags,(Key words the search engines use to find your site) key phrase, meta description(a brief description of words that people may use to locate what it is you have) oh and the dreaded SEO(Search Engine Optimization). How does one know what to use and where to place it? Let me be the first to say that had I know about the key phrase and words I may have picked a different domain name and possibly a different product due to http://www.wholesale-mega-store.com and wholesale electronics, cell phones gadgets are not the easiest to try and set up with anchor text and the market is full of electronics people are trying to sell. Anyway I spend the time and finally find some anchor text that I think will work, along with some Meta tags, set that all up and still nothing? So back to the books, I find out that in order to gain traffic you need to advertise, well how the hell do you advertise on the web? Links links links, ok so I need links and back links, so I continue my education down html lane and spend most of my days setting up accounts with link sharing sites, I go online and start finding places I can place my site name and link for free.

Now it’s time to check out my 10000 gazillion competitors, and find that a huge majority of them are selling the same products as me only at around 20% less than what I can buy it for, WTH? So back to square one find out how and where they are getting their product so I can at least be competitive. After endless hours of searching I found a new supplier who has great products at a much lesser cost to me, which will ripple into less cost for my customers, this now allows me to be competitive in the market. I set up the account with them and proceed to head straight back to the start, I now have to take out the old supplies and put in the new stuff, along with pictures, descriptions and yep you guessed it SEO Meta tags. After all that still nothing, no one visiting my site or even leaving me any emails to tell me what they thought. It is at this point I start thinking about paying someone to set all this up for me, but I’m stubborn and will have to learn it eventually so I will do the research and do this myself. I found a great little web site that explains Meta tags and anchored text very well. http://www.30minutebacklinks.com . Even though it says back links it walks you through how to set up anchor text and key word fraises.
The learning Curve

So now I am on week number two of my crash course in online business, so what have I learned so far this week? ha ha well let me tell you.
First I have learned all about links where to go to advertize yours and how to set up a reciprocal links page on my website, not easy for those of us who don't have the first clue about html, but I did it. (HOW, well I added a separate category on my site and called it Links to Friends, then in the description area I add their link they supply) however that left me with the problem of no spaces between the different links not to mention that when you would click on a link it would open in the same window taking people away from my site, soooo with a little research I found out how to add to their supplied link to allow for opening in a new window AND having spaces between the different links. The code looks something like this.

Wholesale Mega Store
We are a site devoted to providing electronics at wholesale prices, we supply cell phones car accessories and affordable blood pressure monitors and much much more.

Ok so if you are like me a week ago you are looking at this going WTH, ok a little break down. Target="_blank" this is what opens the link in a new window when someone clicks on it.

this is a page break it is what makes the line space between the links on my page...it looks nicer. Feel free to cut and paste on your own site and play around with it, that's how I did it.
so now it's time to do some real marketing so I head to a few sites and exchange my link but still nothing going on at my site so I keep plugging away at it until I found this great site, sonicxpressmail.com it has two options one FREE and one for a small fee, I went with the free and still had some hits and visitors to my site within 3 hours, yep I said it VISITORS, no sales but there was someone there and this site even notified me via email when someone went to my site via the Link I provided.

Ok so now I have some marketing so onto the next learning curve and that is SEO, well where do I start with that? Same place I did with the rest of this venture, research. I know I need to get my site optimized as best I can in order to compete with the Wholesale electronics companies that are already established. I started by trying SEO with no help and found that it just didn't seem to be working, so after a day of online searching I found this site submitexpress.com it will score your websites SEO for you. After a Full day of testing and changing and testing and changing I managed to fine tune my wholesale electronics websiteto the 90% + range, now the plan is to continue to do what I have been doing and hope that it all helps in getting more than a few people to my site.

Next was an issue with payments, for some reason ALL credit card transactions would be declined. So after calling my host and PayPal for a few days we finally get to the bottom of the issue and I should be able to receive master card and visa. While this was going on I managed to make a few sales...ish...
one from a gentleman who stated he wanted to get a cell phone for his nephew in Nigeria but because my site would not accept credit cards at the time he asked if I could send him a PayPal invoice and he would pay that way. COOL a SALE...that's what I thought, so I go ahead and do the invoice and send it off, I recieve a paypal receipt stating that the funds are on hold from paypal untill I provide a tracking number to verify the shipment has left. I proceed to order the phone but my suppliers won't ship direct to Nigeria without payment being a bank transfer. WTH? So I order the phone to come to me, then I will package and re-ship to the original destination. I mean I have the PayPal receipt so the money is there. while I wait for the phone to arrive I do a little research as to why no one ships to Nigeria and happened to find out that there is a lot of scams going on there, so many in fact that PayPal won't even set up shop there. so I keep looking and reading and turns out the scam is someone contacts you states he/she wants to send a gift to their family member in Nigeria, you send them a PayPal invoice THEY hack the invoice to get pertinent information, then THEY send you a PAYPAL payment received email/letter stating that the funds are there and will be released as soon as a tracking number is provided...the only problem there is there is NO FUNDS and once you send off the package you have no seller protection, the goods are long gone the people on the other end get free stuff they can sell for whatever as it cost them nothing and you everything...WATCH OUT FOR THIS!!!!!!As they change names and emails on a regular basis. So I went online to PayPal and checked out what countries they are set up in and those are the only countries I can and will ship to...it's unfortunate that a few bad apples wreck it for everyone else but that's the way it goes.

I have been exchanging links with other websites in the hopes to increase my rankings with the engines. This is a long and tedious task but must be done. However I did manage to find a few good free link exchange sites. http://www.linkmarket.net/ is a pretty good one I seem to get 10 to 20 link requests per day, although I can only send out 5 requests per day but that is ok as you don't want to build up your links to fast or the engines may penalize you for link grabbing...