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In this Issue 5-minute SEO Tip You can learn a lot if you know advanced queries in search engines. Take this one for example, that shows pages that are stuck in supplemental results for your site. In Google, type "site:yourdomain.com *** -asdfasdf" without the quotes and replace yourdomain.com with your website's domain name. Look through the pages and you may find some remnants of an old site or content management system, programming artifacts or blog components, etc. If any of that shouldn't be indexed make sure to update your Robots.txt file or request the pages be removed. For pages that are there but you think shouldn't be, you may need to do some more link building, even internally on your site if nothing else. |
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Welcome to Our First Newsletter This is the very first newsletter from SoloSEO.com, and we thank you for subscribing! We aren't planning on bombarding you with newsletters, but we also want to keep you informed and give you great information right from your inbox. The newsletter is made up of several sections, most of which will be found in future newsletters as well. The "Freshly Squeezed" section is a fresh, new article, written specifically for the newsletter (as opposed to articles written first for our blog). "From the Vault" features an article from our blog that we feel is of significance to our subscribers. "Your SEO Tool Belt" will feature tools, features, and tips for getting the most out of the SoloSEO toolset. "Super SEO Articles" is a link out list of articles from fellow SEOs and Internet Marketers on various topics. Don't miss the "5-minute SEO Tip" on the left, or anything else we may decide to throw in there! Thank you again for subscribing! If you have any input, reply to this newsletter or email us at newsletter@soloseo.com. If you haven't read our blog, you can find it here. If you have a news feed reader, you can subscribe to our blog here.
Moving Beyond SEO to Internet (and Email) Marketing 
Words can be pretty funny sometimes, in 10 years time they can mean something completely different than what they originally did. SEO (often treated like a word, but actually an acronym) has really become an umbrella for all things "Internet Marketing". While the term SEO is probably going to be around for quite some time, that doesn't mean you have to only do SEO according to its traditional and basic meaning. We've got a challenge for you. This week we want you to step into the dark and approach another aspect of Internet Marketing (you know, SEO) that you haven't delved into yet. Here are some ideas (with links) for other "Internet Marketing" things to do beyond the basic methods SEO, and then we'll expand on email marketing:
1) Email Marketing (how to get started below) Set aside half a day to jump-start, and then at least an hour or two every day for the next week or two while you're still new at it. Start by learning everything you can about your new "method" of choice, reading blog posts, e-books, watching tutorials or other videos, and listening to podcasts. For now, we'll talk about just one, Email Marketing. Get Started with Email Marketing 
If you're undecided on which one to delve into, try email marketing. Email marketing has been around since the advent of email. Most of us think, oh email marketing is dead, I filter out my spam and delete anything else that comes through. That's true, and that has changed the world of email marketing. But we're not talking about spamming here, we're talking about sending emails to real, live, and interested consumers. The first place to start is deciding what you are going to send out. If you have a service, a product, or a blog consider doing a newsletter. This gives you an opportunity to do branding, build trust, increase knowledge, and sell all at the same time. If you are only interested in advertising through email, consider advertising through another's established newsletter. It can be tough to maintain a strong subscriber list if all they ever get are advertisements. Or perhaps instead of a newsletter or ad, you could do a tutorial that continues for 6 days (or whatever) with a new "lesson" each day, to create a following. Next you'll need an email list. You have to do it the right way or not at all when it comes to email lists. If you have a blog, a product, or even a website with any amount of traffic, you can create an opt-in subscriber list. You can also do "co-registration", using another website's signup to also include subscribing to your email campaign. Many companies will sell or rent their email lists, although usually what can be sent is to these lists is more restrictive and not as easily measured. We currently use a great service, CampaignMonitor.com. The various list management options are nice and simple, and it provides an easy way to measure clicks and unsubscribe rates. Be sure it is easy for your subscribers to unsubscribe, and to be clear that they actually did subscribe to your list. Now that you have a list and a purpose, it's time to draft the content. Use a template already created and then tweak it so it becomes your own. Include enough content to make it look informative and detailed/helpful enough content to give it substance and flavor. If you can, track the links inside the email (forget SEO, email links don't carry any weight). We suggest specifying to the recipient which email is being targeted (like we've done at the bottom of this newsletter) out of courtesy and convenience. Test it out. Preferably you have (or know people who have) a few different email accounts (gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail, and a simple web server). You'll want your email campaign to avoid the junk filter in these different mail services. There are several tools for identifying optimized emails, but we have yet to find one we can officially recommend. Send it out. Even if its just 5 users, why not send out a newsletter. The mere exercise of preparing an email campaign can teach you a lot about the whole process, and you'll be that much better when your list grows to 500 or 5000 names long. Nope, not done yet. Look at the stats from the link clicks and unsubscribers. Analyze how your campaign went, even follow up with some of your recipients, where possible, and get some feedback. Stump the SEO: Adwords and Outbound Links in SEO Mandy asks, "Is it true that I have to do google ad words and put links to high traffic sites on my sites???" Great question Mandy, thanks for playing Stump the SEO! Google Adwords is not required for SEO at all, however there are 2 benefits. First, we like to start Google Adwords on new sites as soon as they are up and going. The idea is that it puts your site on Google's radar, and tells them "hey, I'm a real site, and I'm willing to put money down to prove it." It probably doesn't affect your rankings, but it doesn't hurt to be on the first page of keywords you don't already rank for. The second part of your question, about outbound links, is a great question too. We recommend you link out to important and authoritative sites in your industry. Others recommend it as well. Think of it this way, if you were a search engine and wanted to rank a page for a search term, would you consider who they link out to? At least a tiny bit, yes! If you want to play "Stump the SEO" send your questions to us! Just reply to this newsletter or email us at newsletter@soloseo.com. Jumping on Keywords When they are Hot 
Recently a big story hit the news about Google modifying their algorithm to fix googlebombing. When news hit, my first instinct was to start buying PPC ads for classic googlebombing phrases, like miserable failure. It was a good instinct, as we got some decent traffic from our market audience who, just like me, needed to see it for themselves in the search results. I wasn't the only one that started advertising, as there was at least one other company that had an ad up on Google. And interestingly, Rand posted about predicting search queries over the weekend. A very similar situation happened to me a few months ago after Aaron Wall posted about the keyword "trust rank" and how it wasn't being utilized at all by PPC campaigns (can't find the post, sorry Aaron). Being the thinker I am, I created a page about Trust Rank as well as Page Rank, and then created a simple PPC ad and put it up. Minutes later...traffic. Not a whole lot, but definitely traffic from our market audience. Being able to predict search queries would be fantastic. However, I think being observant (reading blogs, talking with people, being attentive in your audience's shoes) will keep you in the game and help you to catch search terms quicker than others. This not only applies to PPC, but also to blogging, where if you can get to your audience before other communities do, then you're more likely to get further credit when they blog or comment. Your SEO Tool Belt: New Tools Since Our Launch As you probably know, SoloSEO has the most comprehensive set of tools on the planet, all web-based, and all in one place. SoloSEO has powerful keyword research tools, ranking and competitive reports, link building tools, content optimization tools, and even a built-in task management system. We've been busy this year implementing new tools, some suggested by users just like you. We wanted to highlight some of these new tools to keep you up-to-date with what we offer. Dead Link Check Tool This tool crawls your site and looks for dead links, to pages of your site as well as external sites. You'll be surprised what you find! Top Subpages Tool For link building, it helps to know the strongest page on a site to request a link to. This tool helps you gauge the most linked pages on a site, without checking each page manually or taking a wild guess. XML Sitemap Generator Create your sitemap right through SoloSEO.com and keep it updated easily with our automatic update code. Search Engine Viewer View each page of your site like your customers do, in a search engine format. This tool also checks for duplicate titles and meta descriptions and checks the character length of titles and meta descriptions.. Competitive SEO Report This powerful report helps you compare yourself with your competitors. Compare important SEO site statistics and rankings among a group of competitors. Weekly and Monthly Ranking Reports You don't even have to log in to SoloSEO to benefit from it now. Set up a monthly or weekly keyword ranking report and the results are automatically supplied to the garage. If you haven't tried SoloSEO yet, or if it has been a while, take our free 2-week test drive and see for yourself how SoloSEO can improve your SEO. Super SEO Articles Making the Most of Meta Description Tags, SEOmoz Where to list for local search marketing, a comprehensive list, LocallyType.com Getting Filtered instead of Penalized, Aaron Wall Best Practices for Title Tags, SEOmoz Full Referrer Tracking with Google Analytics, Reuben Yau 25 Action Words for Writing a Newsworthy Headline, PRLeap Thinking outside the box in Affiliate Marketing, PepperJam Blog |
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