Posts filed under 'SEO'
Posted by Michael D Jensen on February 12th, 2009
The Big 3 search engines have agreed on a meta tag standard for identifying a page’s “permalink” or “Canonical URL”. One problem a lot of sites experience is having the same content show up with different URLs due to search features, categories, etc. This can hurt your pages and your site, and so having this solution can really help out with the problem.
So now that the big 3 are all going to “honor” this new tag, how do we implement the “Canonical Tag”?
Step 1: Identify what the permalink URL is for the page. You need to figure out the one URL that you want used when search engines (and people too) look for and list that page.
Step 2: Now you need to figure out how you are going to dynamically call that URL from each page including when the page is pulled up from different search parameters or what not.
Step 3: Once you know how to get the URL, place the following tag inside the <HEAD> tag with the canonical URL:
<link rel="canonical"
href="http://www.mysite.com/mydir/mypage.html">
If you have any questions about this, please leave a comment!
Visited 8816 times
February 12th, 2009
Michael D Jensen
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Posted by Michael D Jensen on February 12th, 2009
 We’ve developed a new iPhone app that I think you and all SEOs with iPhones will love. The new Analytics App for the iPhone and iPod Touch gives you anywhere access to your Google Analytics data. I had a lunch meeting the other day with a buddy of mine that I’m helping do some PPC and SEO for his site, and using Analytics App we could talk over lunch about keywords, PPC campaigns, and other sources of traffic. I think you’ll find it handy in many ways too!
With more than 29 reports available, as well as unlimited custom reports, all your analytics data is just a button away. Change the date to see any date range, and there’s an easy Today report that any Analytics addict will love. Why Google doesn’t have a button for that is beyond me…
You can download Analytics App for $5.99 from the iTunes AppStore.
For any subscribers to the SoloSEO.com tools with an iPhone or iPod Touch, email us with your username (info at soloseo dot com) and we’ll give you a free promo code for Analytics App!
Visited 3877 times
February 12th, 2009
Michael D Jensen
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Posted by Michael D Jensen on February 2nd, 2009
I’m a huge Dilbert fan. The artist, Scott Adams has a way of just nailing real life business things right on the head.
For any company seriously deciding to leverage employees or a 3rd party vendor to write fake customer reviews (hi Belkin), I would rethink your decision. There’s really no substitute for real, authentic customer reviews.
Visited 5004 times
February 2nd, 2009
Michael D Jensen
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Posted by Michael D Jensen on January 30th, 2009
For anyone starting out in SEO, or looking to sharpen their skills, it can be overwhelming the number of resources to digest. Thanks to Matt McGee and the SEMMYS, it’s fairly easy to find the best of the best on all the varying topics underneath the Search Marketing umbrella. I had the opportunity to be a judge this year in the SEMMYS, in the category of Social Media. It was fun to dig in and read several articles and posts that I had quite frankly missed, and find some new blogs to subscribe to.
Even the SoloSEO blog had some nominations, four in fact! Here are the four that were nominated:
SEO Category:
Learn SEO Basics: Long Tail Keywords
7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 hours
LOL Funny Category:
LinkedIn Wants Me to Accept or Deny Jesus?
What the Customer Actually Wanted
Even though we didn’t make it as finalists, we’re glad to be recognized as providing a source of great SEO material, and some laughs as well!
Now that the SEMMYS nominations have been reduced to 3-6 per category by a set of judges, it’s a great time to absorb that material and maybe find some new blogs to start reading as well.
Visited 4943 times
January 30th, 2009
Michael D Jensen
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Posted by Aaron R Stewart on January 23rd, 2009
 I have to be completely honest going into this, I am not a big fan of Facebook for personal use. I had a personal Facebook page for a while, my school kind of did this blitz to all alumni and encouraged us to set up a Facebook profile, within the school group. It was ok for a while, my wife would send me those flair things, which was nice. I actually had a friend from Japan, who I had lost touch with, find me again through Facebook, which was amazing. But over time Facebook began to be a royal pain. People you hadn’t seen in years, and some of them by choice, were showing up requesting to be friends. I even had old girlfriends find me, and then attempt to contact me, seriously? I’m sorry, old boyfriends and girlfriends contacting each other, chatting online, being friends, just seems pathetic to me. Get on with your lives, there is a lot more out here in the present world that is new and exciting. I am glad to be out of high school, I have no desire to go back to those times. Just as a note, I have also removed all the rearview mirrors from my cars too, I just don’t like to look behind me.
Anyway, so Facebook became a major distraction, a major pain, and basically sucked. Every Facebook email that came in, all the requests, it was a joke, so I shut it down. I have been very happy about it since. I now listen to others talk about their Facebook page, and what’s going on there, and I say to myself “losers.” (My wife and her sisters aren’t going to be happy about that comment, but it had to be said) Spending time on a personal Facebook profile, is just flushing good time down the crapper. I don’t want to be that personal online with many people, if anybody. I don’t have time for it, and it does me more harm than good.
All that being said, I think using Facebook to set up a business profile is a pretty great way to go. While I don’t like talking about myself personally online, talking about our business, our products, our services, and providing another opportunity for potential clients to find us makes perfect sense. Facebook gives companies another opportunity to get their brand out there, to interact with current and potential clients. Companies facing online reputation management challenges can use Facebook to potentially take one of the spots on the SERPS, because Facebook pages and profiles are now indexed. Anytime you can take a spot on the first page of the SERPS with any keywords about your business, it is worth the effort and leaves one less place where a naysayer can take a negative shot at your firm.
I would suggest keeping the business Facebook page very clean, stay away from joining all those ridiculous groups, don’t align your company with anything controversial, or questionable, don’t even join The Office group. We actually have a client that hates the show, so you never know. I would not add flair or any of that other clutter, just keep it simple and professional as possible. Too much noise, which is frequent on Facebook pages, can distract from the true purpose of conveying the company vision and message. Also, there are many Facebook addicts that will love the fact they can find you where they spend much of their time, and if they are impressed with what they see, this will drive new traffic to your actual site.
So in short, Facebook for personal use is a colossal waste of time in my personal, yet humble opinion. Facebook for business, an excellent way to go, if it is done professionally and the focus of the profile remains squarely on your business.
Visited 10865 times
January 23rd, 2009
Aaron R Stewart
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Posted by Aaron R Stewart on November 26th, 2008
 Due to the rough economic times we face together, the leaders here at SoloSEO have decided we are going to start taking out loans in the names of our people, and confiscating retirement funds for company use. We have learned recently that some of our vendors are really struggling, so we will be using these funds to help them through these difficult times.
As an example, the good folks who provide our bandwidth have lost quite a bit of money lately. It is mostly due to some Internet based companies going under. Many of these site owners were provided Internet bandwidth at almost no cost for the first few years, because they couldn’t afford the monthly fees normally charged up front. However, there was an agreement in place to raise the monthly fees over time, when hopefully the site owners could afford it. Unfortunately it didn’t really work out, and many, if not most of these clients never could pay the rising fees, and they just abandoned their sites and moved on. These site owners are now pretty upset at our vendors, and feel like they got tricked into having a site in the first place. Now I ask, how could our vendor know these individuals, who couldn’t afford to pay to start, would not be able to pay later? It is impossible to predict, and it would have been unfair if these economically challenged citizens didn’t have the same opportunities others who could afford the services were enjoying. Just as a note, I must say I love this vendor’s facilities, they are simply gorgeous. All decked out with the finest leather and fixtures. It is really an amazing place. You should see the entrance, breathtaking. And wow, they take care of their management team, every one of them has a BMW leased for them by the company. What a great idea. It would be a pretty sweet life to work there. All that being said, SoloSEO doesn’t want them to fail. Too many other companies might have to find services elsewhere, and that would be a bit difficult. Or worse yet, what if some other competitor heard of our vendor’s financial troubles, and just came along and offered to buy this vendor’s assets and accounts for pennies on the dollar? That would be a shame. Anyway, we must not let this happen.
Another one of our struggling vendors provides our servers for us, and they build them right here in the good USA. Now while the quality of their servers isn’t the best, and their features are a little behind the times, and their servers are a little more expensive than ones made by foreign owned firms, it really isn’t their fault they are bankrupt. We have learned that the contract our vendor has in place with the union factory workers is almost 100% higher than the agreements the same unions have with foreign owned, US-based server manufactures. How can we expect our vendor to compete fairly in such a hostile marketplace? It isn’t fair, they need more money to make another go of it, and be hopefully be profitable this time. Now we aren’t dumb, we are requiring this company come up with a plan to repay us. We hope it works, and we hope we will get your money back eventually. One the other hand, the bandwidth guys are free to use the money for us anyway they want, they just need to promise they will pay us back eventually. They were essentially forced to give away bandwidth to these failed clients in the first place by some of our managers, so we have to cut them some slack. And, just so our vendors know, if more funding is needed in the future, we will be able to take our more loans our people’s names, and also the rest of their retirement funds to help you, we are sure they will understand.
Now, unfortunately our employees have no choice as to how much or when we take their cash, and it doesn’t matter if they disagree with us, we are a team. And as a team of managers, we have decided we are going to do this, and believe us, it is in all your best interest in the long term.
Oh, oh, oh, I almost forgot… Some great news, we did work something pretty cool out with our failing, borrowing vendors. If any of our employees need a little financial help from time to time, they will be able to borrow some money from our vendors!!! For this service, they will need to pay some interest on the money they borrow to the vendor. Then the vendor will have more revenue to help them pay us off. Don’t worry about it. Just think of it this way, the loans we are taking out in your names to fund all this, you won’t even have to pay all the way off. No these loans are so large, that they will need to be passed on from generation to generation. So your kids and grandkids will be paying the bulk of all this money, not you!! Brilliant huh?
Now I know there will be some of our smarter people who will think this is a terrible plan. They will ask why they should be forced to pay for another firm’s mistakes. Then they will be angered when they figure out they are now going to pay interest on money forcibly taken from them and given to the vendor in the first place. But come on, can’t everyone in the room see the wisdom in the plan?
I hope anyone reading this knows that is a moronic plan, and this is essentially going on right now to all of us, just substitute Congress for SoloSEO management, Citigroup and AIG for the bandwidth suppliers, GMC, Ford and Chrysler for the server manufacturer, and all of the American tax payers as SoloSEO people. We are getting screwed.
I love this country, I just hope the guys in Washington (especially the new guys coming up) start thinking their decisions all the way through. I am terrified for small businesses in this country right now, and I hope the future proves to be brighter than it is today. I hope we all face this financial storm and pass through safely to the other side, but forgive me if I don’t give Washington any credit for any sort of turn around, they will have had nothing to do with it, it will be hard working, inspired small business owners who make it happen.
I guess that is why it doesn’t say “In Government We Trust” on our currency, because the governments create the problems, and someone else has to clean them up.
Visited 3092 times
November 26th, 2008
Aaron R Stewart
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Posted by Aaron R Stewart on November 24th, 2008
 When we create a site, we want to communicate a clear, informative message about our company, and about our services/products. We want our message to be seen by as many people as possible, and we hope this exposure will eventually, if not instantly, increase sales. In SEO we talk a lot about keywords, content, links, and reports and we discuss strategies to get us up in the search results pages as quickly as possible to increase traffic. Then once we get the traffic and exposure we are hopefully diligent enough to keep our sites there with smart and consistent SEO efforts.
However, sometimes in this constant pressure to promote, I think many of us get too wrapped up in our brands and image. We use our brand as a keyword too much, we focus our content around the brand, we make sure our internal link structure uses our brand as anchor text over and over and over. It may make us feel like we are really making headway, but in reality, in search marketing unless those searching know what we are about, and what we do, pushing our brand isn’t going to do much for us in most cases. Let’s take kitchen faucets as an example. I have a kitchen faucet, I know there are brands of kitchens faucets, but I couldn’t tell you which one is best, and frankly, I really could care less. So if you are trying to get me to your site based on my awareness of faucet brand, it isn’t going to happen. If I were in the market for a new kitchen faucet, (I do hate ours, but I don’t know the brand, so no brand bashing today), I would go to a search engine, and would search for something like “best quality kitchen faucet.” Well, the results for this particular search stunk. There was only one organic result, and 11 paid ads.
As I refuse to click on Ads (Sorry Google), I would need to expand my search. The point being, because I don’t know faucet brand, I have to be educated about faucets first, then I can decide on a brand, and search from there. So if you aren’t talking about quality faucets, or best priced faucets, or something more generic, you are missing out on clients that may buy from you, if you educate them a bit.
Just as a note, due to the poor showing in the SERPs using faucets as a keyword, I just might get into the business. In fact this post might just start ranking well for kitchen faucets in about a week. 
Now there are some sites that can push popular brands without a problem, but usually the original manufacturer of this brand, has spent millions of dollars to educate the public, and create amazing brand awareness, so reselling these branded goods is made simpler. So while there are situations where just going with the brand in your SEO strategies may work, widening the breadth of a site’s coverage in an industry will never hurt, and for those attempting to build their own brand, it can help tremendously.
As small business owners online, especially those of us who were originally offline, we may need to adjust our mindset a bit. Online we need to get back to communicating the basics of what we do in our business. If we sell stuff, lets talk about that stuff online in very basic terms, making it easy for the search engines to know what we are attempting to present. By widening our approach, and taking it down to the lowest common denominator, we improve our chance of being noticed initially. Once we have our base set, then we can become more focused on the specifics of our business, eventually building brand awareness for our company, which will tie our brand back into our general business description.
There are too many instances where friends and associates of mine have launched sites that are so specialized, it is hard to imagine anyone is going to find them. In fact, in some cases, if a potential client doesn’t know the exact domain, or isn’t searching for the specific brand, with some specific localized terms, the site is essentially invisible, probably forever if they don’t change. I have suggested to some of these friends they might want to consider being a bit more generic on their site, discuss more basic stuff, to which some have replied their brand (of Snowboards) is so superior, they will be just fine. Good luck. They have decided to take the word of mouth marketing or die stance, and between us pals, they are going to die, ignominiously. Their product seems to be pretty good, but snowboarding sucks, ski or nothing.
So if you aren’t getting the traffic you had hoped for, you might want to take some time to look your site over, and make sure it speaks to the those that have absolutely no clue about your business or products.
Here are some steps to widen the net of your site.
1. Have pages that discuss the history of the industry, use words as if you were introducing the company to your child’s elementary school class. I have learned that when I speak to a classroom of kids, I can easily get away from work jargon, and I use words and phrases I know they will understand, while still communicating clearly.
2. Have pages on your education of the industry, and your knowledge, and how you felt when you learned certain points you found interesting. How you got involved, why you were attracted to it, and how you feel about the industry it now, maybe where you think the industry is going in the future. This is a great way to generate content, and to pull in keywords associated with your industry.
3. Discuss the history of your business specifically, what made you decide finally launch and grow. Many don’t like to discuss how tough starting a new business can be, but so many people like to hear these stories you will be amazed. I think there are some out there, who want to start new businesses, but just can’t seem to make themselves make the leap. Your stories will be valuable to them, and might bet you a loyal client.
4. Feel free to post questions others have asked about your business, and then take time to answer them. Chances are, if you have heard the question once in your business, there are hundreds more with the same question. Many searching out there are online to just get answers to questions, if you answer enough of them, you will position your site as authoritative, and that is priceless in the world of search.
Getting back to basics is something I used to hear a bunch growing up. It was a reminder to all of us to simplify things, re-prioritize, and make sure we are taking care of the fundamentals. Getting back to basics online just means we need to make sure we are casting a wide net on the net. Communicating clearly who we are to the search engines, and to the most novice of clients. There isn’t a site out there that couldn’t benefit from doing a little of this time to time.
Visited 3482 times
November 24th, 2008
Aaron R Stewart
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Posted by Aaron R Stewart on October 28th, 2008
Back on October 15, (I just read it today, I’m a bit behind in my reading) Andy Beal had a post about blogging and making a living as a blogger. I like Andy, I like his presentations, I like his business sense, and I just like the guy. He is one of the few that has made a decent living (I assume) as a blogger. But I have to tell you, as a small business owner, with a little knowledge on how to set up a business, the very thought of attempting to make a living as a blogger isn’t one I would try. Andy discusses how the price advertisers are willing to pay for an banner spot on popular blog is dropping, and then finishes his post by sharing 9 ideas on how he and others have generated revenue through their blogs. I have to be honest, of the 9, only two seem to have real direct revenue potential, and the other 7 would not generate enough to make much separately, but combined they might eventually contribute to some decent revenue, if the blog enjoyed tons of traffic.
Ok, now I am more of traditional guy, I think most reading our blog are too. In fact, based on the types of companies/sites using our SEO Tools (yes we do go out and visit your sites to see what you are all up to), and I think we are all in a similar boat. Most of us sell stuff. We sell products, we sell services, we sell whatever anyone will buy. If there is a market, and we can find a product to sell in that market, we will set up a site and go for it. That is what I think is a true online business ultimately should be. These Adsense, content, blogging, and other type sites just don’t make much sense to me.
So personally, I would never suggest to anyone that they should get a blog site going to watch the money roll in from advertising dollars or whatever else. There are just too many other good products and services to sell online. As I see it, a blog should always be a supplementary tool to benefit your site, it isn’t a direct revenue stream, but instead it provides an outlet for an important aspect of SEO and supports your message.
For most, if not all our clients, we suggest creating a blog. It is an excellent way to get content up, communicate with clients, entice potential clients, deal with customer service issues, and discuss new products and services. What a great way to keep the conversation going, and for getting your site indexed on a regular basis. But let’s not get too fixated on it, concentrate your efforts on selling your stuff, and use the blog to assist in the sales efforts.
I hope there is no one out there who is considering setting up a blog only site for big profits, it doesn’t make sense. It’s like voting for Obama and expecting the world to be a better place November 5th. The likelihood is slim to none, and slim just left the building. Focus on what makes money, moving product, use your blog to assist you sell, then your blog will be all is should be.
Oh, just as a quick editor’s note, if Obama wins…. SoloSEO and the rest of our companies will be raising prices to compensate for the higher taxes we will face, and we will most likely be letting a few folks go (as will the rest of the small business world), sorry. I guess higher prices and higher unemployment do constitute “change”, so there is one politician not lying to us, which is nice.
Visited 2729 times
October 28th, 2008
Aaron R Stewart
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Posted by Aaron R Stewart on September 19th, 2008
 In honor of the Ryder Cup starting this morning, I thought a little piece on the similarities of golf and SEO strategy would be an interesting challenge. I love the Ryder Cup, and I love the match play format, it is much more interesting than the stroke play format found at most other professional golf tournaments, so the Ryder Cup is just grand. 
SEO and golf, so here we go. First and foremost, the online marketplace, like match play golf, is a competitive situation, and you must perform better than your competition does to win (visitors for your site, or a better position in the SERPs). We don’t have much control over what our competitors do, but we can perform in a way which gives us the best opportunity to win. My philosophy on SEO is probably a bit more practical than most, but so is the way I play golf.
There are so many golf teachers, gadgets, philosophies, and techniques out there, it is rather confusing to figure out which golf swing to learn or which equipment to buy. Much the same can be said about SEO. Many SEO pros will give us quips about their little tricks and tips, many will cheat or be black hat, and there are others that just white hat it and are good at what they do. However, I don’t think any technique, on the golf course or in SEO is worth much if it doesn’t work well for you in your situation. In my mind knowing your competitor is where SEO must start.
If you don’t understand your competitor’s online strategy, then you have a greatly reduced chance of doing well online. Every business owner, or potential business owner should/must take a long hard look at what is out there in their market, and then make a decision as to if they are going to enter and how they are going to compete once launched to succeed.
SEO shouldn’t be about finding as many Keywords, creating as much Content, and rounding up as many Links as possible, that isn’t a smart SEO strategy, and can eat up all kinds of time. As small business owners, time is our most precious asset. SEO is about seeing what is working in your online marketplace and then implementing those SEO strategies and performing them better than everyone else. None of us will ever know exacly how Google or Yahoo really evaluate our sites, and rank them accordingly, but I don’t think it is important information anyway. Like golf, everyone has their opinions what makes a good golf swing, and there are many who will claim they know what a good site is, but for both golf and SEO the proof is simply in the results. If you are starting to score better in golf, or if your site is doing better in the SERPs, then you have found something that works for you, stick with it, and hone it, make it yours. One thing in SEO, if it is working for your competitor online, you can be sure it will work for you. Save time and focus on those items first.
In one of our businesses, we are going after a rather large (Fortune 500) account, and we needed to understand more about the client, and the vendors the are currently using. So we called the vendors up and got price quotes for their services, and asked them their businesses and their philosophies. The information was/is very valuable as we move forward. Sam Walton, of Walmart fame, used to go into his competitor’s stores and look around, he would copy the techniques that he thought worked well, and ignore the rest. This also is where he learned the pricing strategies of his competitors, and we all know the Walmart philosophy on pricing… (go to the bottom of the Walmart home page, and see the running total of the money “they have saved American families.”) I wonder how many American jobs that savings equates too? Interesting question… At one time, probably 7 years ago, we were wholesaling a product Walmart wanted to put in their stores, it was a total nightmare dealing with them, but that story is for another day. If nothing else Walmart is an excellent example of knowing your competition and just out-competing them head to head.
In golf as in SEO, know your competition, then find out what’s works for you, and you will improve in both.
SoloSEO has some of the greatest online SEO tools to know how your competition is performing online. Once logged into your SoloSEO account you can set up to have reports about your competition created periodically, and then adjust your SEO strategy once you know what they are up to. It really is that simple.
Now, it has been 6 years since the USA has won the Ryder Cup, they are getting ready to tee off here in just a few minutes. Go USA, bring the cup home!!! As a final note to family, friends, associates, and all others, please don’t try to get hold of me today, I will be unavoidably detained.
Visited 2663 times
September 19th, 2008
Aaron R Stewart
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Posted by Michael D Jensen on September 17th, 2008
We all need a little break, and a good laugh. Matt McGee delivers us a fun list of the Top 21 Signs You Need a Break from SEO. SoloSEO even gets a mention!
If you don’t already subscribe to Matt McGee’s blog, do it now. He’s one of the most informative and entertaining SEO’s around.
Visited 3073 times
September 17th, 2008
Michael D Jensen
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