The Importance of Blogging for Increased Traffic
With all the changes in the Google algorithm over the years, one thing has remained consistent when Google determines the quality or relevance of a site, and that is content. If fact, some experts believe Google has effectively been able to reduce the gaming of rankings so much, that content has actually become more important […]
Value of Short-Term SEO Goals
SEOs tend to get infatuated with the latest tricks and techniques published on the hottest blogs. And while it’s enjoyable (and often extremely useful) to check out what other people are doing and to reassess your own process and projects, too much of this “blue-skying” can lead you down the road to severe anxiety and […]
Defining your SEO Core Competency – and Sticking to It!
What is a “core competency”? Simply put, it is the kind of work that you do best. We all wear multiple hats at our jobs. If you’re a journalist, you’re not only a writer but you’re also a reporter, a networker, a self promoter, and in some senses a psychologist (especially to your interview subjects) […]
Do’s and Don’ts of Outsourcing for SEO
Your SEO process is jammed. You want to speed things up, get things moving down the pipeline, and delegate the grunt-work that’s gobbling up your time. Outsourcing can obviously leverage your resources/budget — if you do it correctly, that is.
6 Steps to Effortless SEO
What’s the easiest way to make fast cash with search engine optimization (SEO)? If we knew that, we would be too rich to lower ourselves to write blog posts like this.
SEO: If you can’t do it at all, what do you do?
SEOs typically find themselves between Scylla and Charybdis. On one hand, you absolutely, desperately, 100% must leverage the power of the web for your business through some dynamic SEO strategy. On the other hand, you can’t possibly master all of the tactical nuances of things like Facebook marketing, twittering, website building, PPC advertising, and the […]
A Brilliant SEO Tip for Getting Links
Links. They are a key currency for any great SEO campaign. But how do you get them? Who do you get them from? How much time will it take you? And how do you maximize the investment of your resources so that you get the best, most SEO friendly links for the amount of time/money/energy […]
Finding Motivation When You’re “Not Feeling It”
SEO is rough, let’s face it. One minute, you feel like you’ve found the key to long-term wealth and high keyword rankings. The next minute, you read an article that makes you rethink your entire plan. It’s easy to get caught up in the emotional roller coaster — changes in attitude that can disrupt your […]
SEO 101: How to crank out content for SEO
It is a cliché in the SEO world that “content is king” – that to feed the hungry search engine beasts of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, you need to churn out targeted, keyword focused, and most of all useful content. This leads to the long-term passive pay-off that is the SEO pot of gold.
The Only Constant Online is Change.
As many of you know, Michael and I have put a great deal of time and effort into building SoloSEO as an important service, a recognizable brand, while hopefully providing our clients the best Do-It-Yourself SEO tools available. We were the first to offer a comprehensive set of online SEO tools, all located in one […]
9 Steps to Land & Keep Fortune 500 Clients
I’ve been inspired today by a post written by Demian Farnworth entitled: What a Cocky CEO Can Teach You About World-Class Blogging. The post was excellent, and as a small business creator and owner, I loved the points made in the blog on keeping our companies “focused, lean, fast.” Embracing these attributes usually keeps you […]
Can Twitter Help Small Business?
In my attempt to learn and grow, I have really focused on being a participant of Twitter the last week. It isn’t something I am comfortable with, I prefer to avoid the public eye, I prefer the shadows and the back row, to the sunlight and the attention. I wasn’t always this anti-social, it has […]
Don't be a Victim of Online Fraud
Due to all the mortgage fraud around here, and throughout the country, there have been public service announcements popping up, to better “educate” us about the dangers of fraud. Fraud seems to be a part of life, with new ploys being developed all the time to take advantage of trusting individuals. The last comment of […]
24 Hour Site Indexing Works Again
I created a new site on Friday, and by Saturday exactly 24 hours later it was in Google’s Index. I posted about this just over a month ago in my post, 7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 Hours. I had a lot of comments about whether or not Adwords was necessary, […]
Specialized Search is Simple Economics
There has been much speculation about how personal and local search, which I term “Specialized Search,” will affect search marketing strategies in the future. Although it feels recent, the discussion of more specialized search systems really started to heat up back in 2004, when Google’s Sergey Brin made comments concerning Google’s foray into Specialized Search […]
In SEO – Be A Tortoise, Forget the Hare.
On Aaron Wall’s site www.seobook.com, Aaron Wall makes a statement which makes me chuckle every time I read it, not because it isn’t somewhat true, but because I can imagine how it must drive others crazy. Aaron states,
Image Isn’t Everything, But It Is Something.
Taking a look at the corporate logs in the image to the left, how do you feel about those brands? Do you feel anything? Much in marketing is focused on influencing the public’s perception of our companies, our products and our brand. We want others to think our products/services are high in quality, a good […]
The 3 Legs Intro to SEO – A SoloSEO Sketchcast
Patrick Gavin of TLA and some others launched SketchCast.com today, and I was in on the beta testing. I created a SEO tutorial that helps people get started with SEO, which you can view below. And don’t forget to try out sketchcasting yourself!
Hey Businesses… Its about Blogging time.
A good friend of mine, Thayne Peterson, called up yesterday and asked what he should do with his website to just help it perform a bit better. As you can imagine we get that question quite a bit around here, especially now that more people have kind of figured out what SoloSEO is about. This […]
The Googlerithm
The Googlerithm is the “Google algorithm”, rolled into a single, catchy term. Ask a programmer what algorithm means, and he’ll probably tell you something like: “An algorithm is a set of instructions to accomplish a task.” In the case of Google’s algorithm, the task is to take a search term and end up with a […]
Taking the Ordinary to Extraordinary
Stuffed animals have been around as far back as Ancient Egypt. Undoubtedly if you have kids you have a collection of them. Although stuffed animals are no longer stuffed with straw or beans, they haven’t really changed much at all over the years, until now. A new company has created the transformer of stuffed animals, […]
Learn SEO Basics: Anchor Text of Inbound Links
Anchor text for inbound links is one of the most important factors in search engine optimization. According to SEOmoz’ search engine ranking factors (v2), anchor text is the 2nd most important positive factor.
Does SEO work in Hawaii?
I was gone all last week, in Maui. Yeah baby. It was our first time to Maui, and I loved it. I didn’t even think about writing a post the whole week, I am sure you understand. We had a great time, we enjoyed the beauty of the island, stayed in an amazing place with […]
SEO for the Rest of Us – The SoloSEO.com Newsletter
This morning we sent out our first SoloSEO newsletter. Our newsletter’s main title is “SEO for the Rest of Us”, and anyone interested in learning and doing SEO, from beginner to professional, can benefit from the content we deliver.
Starting your SEO Business: 10 Ways to Make Your Small SEO Firm Look Big
Nowadays you don’t have to be big to get big clients. After 3 months of starting up (early 2006) our own web content firm (Applied Content), we landed a big deal with a Fortune 500 company (actually in top 30 though!). It’s not that we looked like a giant corporation, but we looked big enough […]
Bloggers Lack Respect
Due to our launch of SoloSEO and our foray into blogging, I have been more sensitive to the plight of all bloggers, and to the generally less than optimum reputation of bloggers. I knew about blogging before our launch, and I got a sense from the talking heads of TV land, and the faceless voices […]
Small Business Ingenuity with a Wok
A television station who couldn’t afford the $20,000 commercial link for their station enlisted the help of a wok and saved $19,990. The story goes beyond the pringles can wireless antenna because it’s not just hobby anymore, they actually use this for their business.
10 Reasons to use Paid SEO Tools instead of Free SEO Tools
If you take a step back and look at it, the SEO industry is rather odd. SEO experts who are paid thousands of dollars by companies will also freely share tips, tricks, principles, pricing structures, and SEO advice. Then we come to the tools, where there are literally thousands of free SEO tools spread across […]
Out SEO Your Competition
We all know SEO assists a site to perform better in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), but the reasons people SEO can differ. Some just want to share their knowledge with the world and aren’t selling anything, (like in informational blogs), some want to rank as an authoritative site to increase the revenue in […]
SEO vs. Paid Search Marketing Clash
If you have not gone over and read about the tussle between Dave Pasternack and SEO pros, you must take a minute to review it, it has been quite entertaining. Our friend Michael Gray has jumped in with both feet, and his post called Dave Pasternack of Did-it.com – How to Fix Your Problem is […]
Misinformation in Entrepreneurship
On January 25, 2007 Guy Kawasaki posted a blog called “Ten Questions With Donald Trump” at the very end of the article Mr. Trump is asked to give advice to entrepreneurs, and he recommends entrepreneurs should be passionate about what they do, so they won’t give up when times get tough. I was kind of […]
Local Search SEO from 20 Experts
Michael Gray, AKA Gray Wolf, has started a series called Local Search Tips, Tricks & Secrets where he is interviewing 20 SEO experts about local search. He has already done four of them, with Aaron Wall (SEOBook), Dean Bloomfield, Bill Slawski, and Scott Smith.
5 Minute SEO for Your Blog
Your blog is an important part of your business, so why not optimize it with the rest of your site? You’d be surprised by how many people, even big names in SEO, don’t fully optimize their blogs. I’m obviously not the first to write on this topic, but I have some of my own ideas […]
Can Web Designers do SEO?
An excellent post by Lee Odden over at the Online Marketing Blog brings up an interesting issue about if asking your web designer to do SEO is a good idea or not. More and more we see web design companies offering SEO services, so the big question would be to ask, “who actually does the […]
Building the Perfect Link, the Ultimate Guide
Small Business SEM has an excellent post titled Ultimate Guide to Building the Perfect Link. This is a great read for anyone considering or getting into links. The guide walks you through all the various aspects and things to consider when link building. A snippet from the guide…
Your Mom Can Understand SEO Too.
I have the opportunity to discuss SEO quite a bit, even my mom wants to understand SEO and our newest venture. However, within seconds of me starting the SEO intro, I get the look I give my dentist when he informs me of my next pending root canal. In these SEO discussions rarely does anyone […]
New SEO Tool – Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer
Last week we announced a new tool every day (except New Year’s), and we thought we’d kick off this week with one more tool announcement. We just finished the “Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer”, and are excited for you to start using it. This tool checks the backlinks for your site (or any site), and then […]
New SEO Tool – Top Subpages Tool
This week we have announced a new tool each day, starting with the dead link checker that checks your site for internal and outbound links that point to a dead (not working) URL. Next we announced the XML Sitemap Generator now integrated with SoloSEO, so with just a click of a button you can create […]
New SEO Tool – XML Sitemap Generator
Today’s new tool in SoloSEO is an integrated XML Sitemap Generator. Previously you just had to create your own, now we’ll do it for you! All you have to do is initiate the process by clicking a button, and the Sitemap is created while you go on with your SEO. We’ve made it easy to […]
New SEO Tool – Dead Link Checker Tool
This week we are announcing a new tool each day (so stay tuned by subscribing). Today’s new tool is the “Dead Link Checker” tool. Many of you have probably seen Google’s tool (inside Google Webmaster Central) that reports pages on your site that can’t be found in their crawl. Although this is helpful, it falls […]
Manifesto on Do-It-Yourself ___________
Hugh, at GapingVoid.com is taking < 500 word manifestos and is posting some of them on his blog. Todd Malicoat (StuntDubl.com) already got his Manifesto on SEO Marketing featured by Hugh, so I brainstormed for another topic. Here it goes: