On Monday, Ryan discussed how Search Engines often change their algorithms. While the constant changes may sound discouraging, they give you an opportunity to blow past your competition. When one of your competitors misses a change in algorithms and you learn how to use it to your benefit, you become the big winner. Your website can quickly shoot higher up in to those coveted rankings.

Think about this:

• What do use instead of an encyclopedia?
• How do you research a product you are considering buying?
• Where do you go with your questions about science, plumbing, health or travel?
• How do you find specialized products?
• If you want to know the latest news, where do you go?

You turn to the search engines for most (if not all) of these questions. Just consider how often you turn to the search engines every day. As a website/business owner, you can see the power of the search engines. But search engines change their algorithms to bring better and more accurate information to the searcher. So, as a business owner, when your website caters to bringing more information to searchers, your business wins.

This is a strategy that you can win!

One of our coaches, Freddie Brister, has found a way to make the Google Panda Update work for his business and websites. Yes, websites. He has over 30, so getting good SERPs is important to him, just like it is to you. Read on, and find out what your website needs, Post Panda.

Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC

“Search engine optimization and search engine algorithms can be thought of as species in an ecosystem. They are in constant state of evolution.”

~ David George ~
Author of “The ABC of SEO”

Post Panda Link Building 

By Freddie Brister

After the Google algorithm update, also known as Panda, link building has changed. For the most part, the way my wife (and business partner) and I used to build our links was through article marketing. As an apprentice to Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins back before they launched StomperNet, we learned that link building through article marketing was hard to beat. And they were right!

We build a huge network of links through this manner and made quite a bit of money because of it. But as they told us early on, and one of the primary reasons I belong to such membership groups as StomperNet… Internet Marketing is a moving target. It is constantly changing.

The latest change was the Panda Update. What we saw in our own sites and the sites of our clients was that links coming from sites that had a lot of duplicate content and, for the most part all Web 2.0 sites, were discounted. This is not to say that they did not count, just that they did not count as much as they used to. Our clients that were heavily invested into these types of links and no other type of links saw a tremendous drop in their rankings.

Another way of describing these sites with the discounted links were they were sites that accepted massive amounts of articles that, in Google’s eyes, seemed to be only for the purpose of building links. Some examples would be Hub pages, Ezine articles, Squidoo and most of the article directories.

Our strategy had to change a little. The process of link building that we work in now still has some of the things we used to do, but we have had to add some new things into the mix.

Link Building

We still believe in the concept of Level 1 and Level 2 links… and probably more so now than ever before. The biggest change probably comes in our Level 1 strategies.

Before I go any further here, let me explain Level 1 and Level 2 link building.  Think of Level 1 as the easy, lower-value links. This is where we used to do massive amounts of article marketing.  Now, however, we believe that the best Level 1 links come from a combination of blog commenting, profile link building and article marketing.

The article marketing needs to be on a smaller scale, however, going out to massive amounts of places including blogs. (Just so you know, we found this to be the case through testing. We have over 100 sites that we use for testing these types of things.)

Level 2 has not changed much. This, for the most part, is the best kind of link. These are links from quality sites that are not in the business of giving links. The best kind of link from these type sites would be a homepage link. I have heard many gurus speak on this subject and say that it would be best if these were the only kind of links you should get.

I agree, except for the fact that in some markets (most markets I deal with), it is way too expensive to only get Level 2 type links.  If your budget allows for this, I agree… Level 2 links are the best.  But if you are like me, and you are building your business on a budget, the dual level system works just fine, and it is much less expensive.

Establish yourself as an authority

The first step… and probably the most important step… in building these links is to establish your site as an authority site. We believe you do this by looking at your site in Open Site Explorer or other SEO Software and building your domain authority up to at least a 70, and building at least 10,000 total links from at least 100 different Linking Root Domains.

Now let me push into this area a little deeper. You also want to beat the numbers of your major competitors. If your major competitor has 15,000 links from 400 linking root domains and a domain authority of 71, then you want more in each category. Also, if they have some of the other essentials of the algorithm, such as domain age and keywords in their domain, and you do not, then you need to beat them by an even bigger margin… to even those things out.

The main thing here is to focus on the things you can control and not worry about the things you cannot control. You have control over the number of links you get and from what type of sites they come from.

If your competition has a low domain authority, and you have a higher one than they do, but it is still in the low range, this does not always mean you will beat them. Again, they may have some of the other parts of the algorithm in their favor.

An example of this would be if they have a 30 domain authority and you have a 40, they still may beat you in the SERPs, because you still are not an authority site, and if they are ahead of you in other areas this will not matter. You should push ahead to get your domain authority to 70. Then you should not have a problem with them if they are still a 30.

We look at a site in Open Site Explorer and we build our links according. Remember, we are trying to build 10,000 total links from at least 100 domains and build the domain authority to 70. We do this in both the Level 1 and 2 modes.

Let’s first focus on the Level 1 mode. We have people on our team building profile links and doing blog commenting manually. We also have a person on our team taking 10 articles in 10 different categories, spinning them and submitting them out in masses with software. This is all for the purpose of building the total links and the total linking root domains. Our main focus here is to build up the total linking root domains.

How to get high quality links

Next is our Level 2 process. Again this is where we build our most valuable links. We have a person hired who goes out and finds high- quality sites that would be willing to give us links. I would compare him to an insurance agent.  Not everyone he talks to is willing to give us a link, but some are, and if he talks to enough people every day, we get a lot of great links. And, because this is all he does, he has become pretty good at it over time.

Another part of his process that makes our system great is that once he finds a person who is willing to give us a link, the first thing he does is test the link by putting a link to one of our sites on there. (I should say here that they don’t actually give it to us… they usually charge us a monthly fee.)

He gives it time to take effect, and if he sees good results out of the link, he goes back to the site owner and negotiates a better rate by using the power of our group.  If they were charging him $100 per month for the single links, he asks them if they will take $250 for 5 links or even less. He has done this so well that we probably only pay on average of about $10 per Level 2 link and we have some really great links.

This is where some people get nervous about our system. They worry about the fact that you are paying a monthly fee to keep these links. We have some clients that have maintenance fees of over $2000 per month to maintain the Level 2 links we have gotten them. However, they have seen their monthly profit grow to over $25,000! I don’t know about you, but I am willing to pay $2000 for the ability to make $25,000 anytime… and so are our clients that pay us to build links for them.

Once they have reached their ranking goals in the search engines, they can stop the program and put the Level 2 links on a maintenance program. We do this by simple charging them the cost of the links plus a $20 month fee for our Level 2 guy to watch over them.

You can do all of this linking program yourself, or if you are looking for someone to help you with it, we have a whole team ready to help you at StomperNet SEO Services.

By Freddie Brister

Freddie’s sports background and his wife, Joyce’s, background in computers were just what was needed to start building sports-related websites selling sporting goods. The discovery of Stomping the Search Engines and StomperNet propelled their businesses even further, now they have over 33 websites. Freddie is a StomperNet Coach where he works with some of the brightest and most eager Internet marketers around.

Video

King and Queen of Ranking:
By Melanie Benson Strick (FOH)

FLV / MOV

Everyone wants more time in their day.

StomperNet’s new “Done for You” SEO Services gives you more time to focus on things other than SEO.

Imagine a WHOLE team of SEO Experts at your disposal!

Click here and get StomperNet SEO Services

You know your website  wants our SEO!

Secret Sauce Checklist

Building Links Post Panda:

• Establish your site as an authority site
• Build valuable links

Stomper Buzz

Next Week’s Focus: The Value of Surveys

PUBLIC WEBINARS NEXT WEEK:

TUESDAY Feb 7nd, 2011 at 3:00pm Eastern

“How to Connect, Create, Convert and Cash In with Customers” with Jeanne Hurlbert

Whether you’re an absolute newbie or a seasoned veteran, you need to attend this power-packed office hour to learn:

• The BEST way to gain your customers’ trust
• Create new products all day long that are DEMANDED by your customers
• 3 winning ways to survey your list so you can find out what they’re REALLY thinking
• The power of quizzes to give your prospects a custom diagnosis of their problems so you can prescribe YOUR cure

There is a RIGHT way and a WRONG way to do each of these—you’ll see which is which in this office hour

Register Now

Let us know your thoughts on today’s issue.

Post Your Comments Here

Stompernet Blog

Your business does not stop changing. It evolves, as do your needs, your customers’ needs, the marketplace and many other variables. As a business entrepreneur, you can understand how and why your business continually changes. But just like your business, you really should not be surprised when search engines change… along with your rankings.

Search Engines change as the people searching for information demand better quality content and better results. Search Engines want to provide the searcher with the websites that match the search the best. Thus the algorithms change to fit those demands. Obviously, the SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Pages) change with the algorithms.

But what does all this change have to do with your website?

SEO is a never-ending process. Unlike your website appearance, which may be “set it and forget it” for a couple of years, you shouldn’t do that with optimizing your website for search engines. Getting and staying on the front page, especially the first position on the SERPs, requires constant work. Not only are the search engines changing…your competition is not setting and forgetting their SEO.

You are a smart business person, which is why you are reading this. This week we cover SEO and how you can use the latest changes to the Google Algorithms for your website and business success.

Talk soon and enjoy the resources below!

Ryan Taylor
Director of Operations
StomperNet, LLC

IMPORTANT:  Some of the resources shown are only available to members. With our all-new tiered benefit levels you can join us today for as little as $49.00and get instant access to the world’s largest SEO and Online Business community plus all the tools and resources you need (including upcoming free webinar replays) to enhance your existing business or start, build and grow a thriving Internet-based business!

Everyone wants more time in their day.

StomperNet’s new “Done for You” SEO Services gives you more time to focus on things other than SEO.

Imagine a WHOLE team of SEO Experts at your disposal!

Click here and get StomperNet SEO Services

You know your website  wants our SEO!

Curriculum Resources

• SEO Basics: Renee Corbett

Forum Posts

• New Google changes (Nov 2011)

New Media

• Learn the Ins & Outs of Fiverr:  Lee Vance
• Create Success on YOUR Terms in 2012:  Melanie Benson Strick

Moderator Office Hours
TUESDAY Jan 31st, 2012 at 2:00pm Eastern

“How to Build a Sales Funnel” with Lee Vance

Join Lee Vance and learn how to structure a sales funnel, followed by a general Q&A to follow.

StomperNet Members:  Register Now!

Free Live Webinars This Week

THURSDAY Feb 2nd, 2011 at 7:00pm Eastern

“Manage Your Marketing Campaign Effectively without the High Cost” with Nicole Munoz

During this webinar you will learn how to create an editorial calendar.  You will also learn how you can manage your yearly online marketing campaign like one of the high end marketing agencies, but without the high cost.   You will learn the exact editorial calendar document that Nicole uses and how it helps her marketing campaign.  Make certain you attend and listen until the end,  so you can get a special download link!

Register Now

Special Announcements

“StomperNet Open Forum” Fridays at 11EDT

We know everyone has questions about their business or different stumbling blocks. Well we invite you to bring them to the table during our Open Forum. With the combined training and experience of our Coaches you will get the direction you need to get you back on your road to success!

The next StomperNet Open Forum Call with our Professional Coaches happens next Friday at 11am EDT and we hope to see you there! These calls are intended to be live Q&A sessions and playback will not be available.

Stompernet Blog

One of the most effective marketing and SEO strategies currently available is your blog. With the ability to quickly add content for both visitors and search engines, it has become the way to share your information in a way that subtly increases your visitor’s interest. It also allows for their input which creates involvement.

Our article today “Four Pillars of a Successful Business Blog” is on our StomperNet blog, our own business blog. The blog format is one that cannot be beaten for building your influence on the marketplace. With the appropriate design, it is also a format that can add SEO for your website, with meta tags, descriptions, and more.

A common resolution among entrepreneurs and small business CEOs is how to model or remodel their blog to bring more traffic and conversions. Regardless if you have a product or service, you may have been struggling to build your thought leadership, authority, and SEO with blogging. The key is adding the appropriate elements, like Search Engine Optimization to each post that will encourage both visitors and search engines to find and refer to your site.

Of course, the goal of any good business owner is to increase profits. But you may be frustrated by your blogging efforts lacking in conversions, results, and profits. Fortunately, Sherman Hu has easy to remember acronyms for B.L.O.G and P.R.O.F.I.T.S that help you create better posts.

Talk soon,

Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC

“And it occurred to me that there is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a blogger. Blogging is just writing — writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology.”

~ Simon Dumenco ~
“Media Guy” of Advertising Age

The Four Pillars of a Successful Business Blog

By Sherman Hu

The Four Pillars Of A Successful Business Blog is written as a checklist. The acrostic or acronym – B.L.O.G. (Build, Launch, Orchestrate and Generate) will guide you through this checklist.   There are three reasons why you can benefit from these four pillars.

1. CONTROL

The lessons within the checklist below will give you insights to control your blog’s success. For some, knowing what to do gives them the power to control their blog’s success. For others, seeing the lessons in a clearly laid-out “checklist” will offer a format to easily work through the list of actions.

2. OPPORTUNITY TO PAY IT FORWARD

Your life lessons or experience shared on your blog can be priceless to your readers – if they can find it or be engaged by it. It makes sense to discover how you can gain more exposure to your blog, and engage your readers when they get there. This way you can help others with your product, service or knowledge offerings. Otherwise, your blog will not ‘exist’ – either on Google’s top ranks or in the minds of your visitor.

3. TANGIBLE AND INTANGIBLE RESULTS

Not only will you feel proud of building a successful business blog, you’ll also receive many profitable results. When you achieve a position of authority or thought leadership via your business blog, you can expect a boost in speaking engagement invites, coaching clients, product sales, strong affiliate commissions, joint venture requests, a strong database of subscribers who value your opinions, or other results based on your business model and offerings.

Let’s begin, shall we?

1. BUILD: Get in the right M.O.D.E. for success

I’ve created another acrostic in this ‘Build’ phase titled “M.O.D.E.” (Markets, Objectives, Design and Engineer). You need to get in the right M.O.D.E. for success.

MARKETS

Have you researched and selected your market yet?

A market gives you an opportunity to offer multiple, related offers over a period of time to the same audience (eg. ‘People who are interested in time management’ vs. ‘Getting Things Done (GTD)’).  Choose a market accustomed to spending money, one that can be presented with related offers and a market you’re personally attracted or interested in.

Have you researched the trends of your market?

Gathering trends will give you “intel” on your competition, what Google indexes in its top 10, universal search patterns, related search keywords, keyword suggestions, search volumes, questions commonly asked by your market, influential bloggers in your space and hot news.

Resource: “20 Ways To Research Trends, Competition & Keywords”

Have you profiled your perfect customer?

Flesh out a ‘perfect customer’ from your target audience to make your audience “real” and believable. Give this person a name, a stock photo and write their short story, including their pains. Print and keep this profile sheet visible. Focus on this ‘John or Jane Doe’ whenever you write copy or create your marketing.

OBJECTIVES

There is power in knowing your destination before you begin. Without keeping your objectives in sight, you may fall victim to distractions that may take you astray. Set a S.M.A.R.T. objective that’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.

DESIGN

You want to look professional and be taken seriously, right? So get your own domain name.

Keep it short, memorable and ‘radio-friendly’. If you were on radio and had to share it on the air, would it be easy to say and spell (without you spelling it out)? If you have an existing site, setup your blog in a sub-folder titled “blog”, so your blog URL will be www.YourDomain.com/blog.

Select a Blog Theme.   Showcase your business individuality and personality. Google for “free WordPress themes” if you’re using the WordPress blog software. For professional blog themes, I’ve used StudioPress.com and WooThemes.com with satisfaction.

Do you have creative (logo, icons, masthead graphic) ready for your blog? Showcase your business brand and personality! Either design it yourself or contract/outsource. Consider 99Designs.com or DesignOutpost.com.

Have you set up communication channels (i.e. ezine autoresponder service, contact email, telephone number, RSS feed etc) for your blog?

How are interested visitors going to contact you? For ezine autoresponder services, I recommend Aweber, Mailchimp or iContact. For blog rss feed management, I recommend Feedburner.

ENGINEER

Have you chosen which blog software you’re going to use? Choose a platform or software that’s easy to publish, search engine friendly, includes commenting features, pre- scheduling content, updates blog directories automatically when you publish new content. For free, scalable and self- hosted blog software, I recommend WordPress.org hosted on your own hosting account.

Have you registered for your hosting account? A hosting account will host your blog and media (i.e. video, audio, PDFs, images etc). For stable and good customer service, I recommend NameCheap.com and Hostmonster. com. Others claim great satisfaction with Hostgator.com, Dreamhost.com and Bluehost.com.

After registering for your host account, point your domain’s DNS to this new host so visitors to your domain will see your blog/site at this host. Your hosting service will provide you with tutorials or support on how to accomplish this.

Have you installed your WordPress blog on your hosting account? The first step to getting your blog-site up and running. The hosting services recommended above should offer simple, 1-click installation features to quickly install WordPress to your hosting account.

Have you customized your WordPress blog settings? Customize your blog to suit your business purpose. If you need instruction, consider WordPress.org support, WordPress. tv or WordPressTutorials.com for tutorials.

Now that you’ve built your “M.O.D.E.” for success, let’s “Launch”. Time to set up your launching P.A.D. to establish authority and visitor engagement.

2. LAUNCH: Your launch  P.A.D. to authority & engagement

The general public seeks the opinions of thought leaders and influencers for their perspective on trends, strategies, best practices and habits. In the same way, you can build your blog over time to gain credibility, authority and influence.

Here’s the acrostic P.A.D. and a checklist to help you build your authority and engagement with your visitors:

PUBLISH

Are you catering your writing to your target market (or perfect customer)?  What are your perfect customer’s biggest pains/ problems and are you blogging about it?

What are your perfect customer’s visions/goals/dreams and are you blogging ways they can accomplish it? Are you case-study-ing your customers’ success? Are you telling stories?

ASK

Are you seeking feedback and comments from your readers?  Are you asking specific questions in your posts? Are you leaving your posts open-ended to encourage your readers to comment? Are you making it easy for your readers to comment instead of adding registration “hoops” they have to jump?

DEPLOY

Are you deploying content that’s actionable, insightful and meaty?  Are you embedding images, audio, video and other cool media to engage your viewers?  Are you responding to industry information and topical news?

Are you drawing in your readers with sexy, irresistible headlines? (For instance, think of those magazines in supermarket lines) Check out Brian Clark’s “10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work”

Have you added elements to your blog to show credibility? - bio photo, bio, contact info, social media profile links, media room, magazine tear sheets, radio interview recordings, TV segment clips, certification logos, association badges etc.

Now that you’ve set up your Launching “P.A.D.” for success, let’s “Orchestrate” your S.Y.M.P.H.O.N.Y. of traffic.

3. ORCHESTRATE: Coordinate your  S.Y.M.P.H.O.N.Y. of traffic

Sharing all the strategies to get traffic to your business blog could occupy a full report. However, we’ll squeeze as much into the acrostic S.Y.M.P.H.O.N.Y. to coordinate your traffic efforts:

SYSTEMIZE

Have you systemized your blogging with pre-scheduled content?  You can modify the timestamp of each WordPress blog post to publish in the future. So take advantage of this feature.

Have you added additional search engine directories to be updated automatically when you publish your posts?  In your Dashboard, go to Settings > Writing. Scroll down to “Update Services” box. Click the link above the box to grab more search engine directories to add to your box. Now you’ve extended your reach whenever you publish blog posts.

Have you systemized your search engine optimization?  You can do this with plugins for basic SEO, or use StomperNet SEO Services if you want a team handling all your search engine optimization.

YANK

Are you ‘yanking’ as much exposure to your blog through the use of videos? Video styles include screencasts (see Camtasia Studio or Screenflow), newscaster (“talking head”) style, live video broadcasts (see Ustream.tv) or dynamic video slideshows (see Animoto.com)

Are you leveraging video syndication services?

MOBILIZE

Do you mobilize your readers to easily Word Of Mouth or share your posts with their tribes on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc? There are many plugins to help you with this task. On ShermanLive.com, I use “ShareThis”, “Damn Sexy Bookmarks” and the “TweetMeme” plug-in.

PROMOTE

Are you promoting your blog posts via Social Networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Squidoo etc? Are you promoting your blog posts via article directory sites like EzineArticles.com?

HEIGHTEN

Have you heightened your chances that your blog posts will receive more inbound links via Social Bookmarking sites like SocialMarker, OnlyWire, StumbleUpon etc?

OBTAIN

Have you obtained additional inbound links and exposure from Press Releases? See Marc Harty’s http://OnlinePRMadeEasy.com for an instructional course on this topic.

NAVIGATE

Have you navigated your opt-in list system for a web-form to add to your blog?  Have you navigated the system to add a series of drip marketing pieces?

YIELD

Are you yielding the power of viral reports, viral blog posts and viral videos?

4. GENERATE: Produce P.R.O.F.I.T.S. today

Now that you’ve Orchestrated your “S.Y.M.P.H.O.N.Y.” for success, let’s move on to “Generate” “P.R.O.F.I.T.S.” today.

And finally, the “G” in “B.L.O.G.” stands for “Generate”. How can you “Generate P.R.O.F.I.T.S. with this acrostic? Let’s unpack it now…

PUBLICIZE: Have you publicized your product or service offerings in a prominent location on your blog?

RECOMMEND: Have you offered recommendations to 3rd party merchants with an affiliate link (in full disclosure, obviously) within your posts or in the sidebar?

OBTAIN: Have you obtained likability and trust from your audience through value-add email broadcasts?

Have you obtained trust with (and knowledge of) your customers to make solid recommendations to them to solve their problems?

FACILITATE: Are you facilitating irresistible offers packed with so much value your customers can’t say no?

INTRODUCE: Are you introducing upsells, cross-sells, down-sells, one- time offers, and the like, when your customer shops in your store?

Are you introducing your offerings in different formats so interested customers will buy from you again?

TEST & TRACK: Are you testing and tracking your offers to increase your ROI?

SERVING: Are you serving your customers with seasonal offers and packages?

Remember, there’s practically a holiday each and every month of the year.

Now we’ve completed the how to Generate “P.R.O.F.I.T.S.” checklist in the acrostic “B.L.O.G.” If you work on this checklist, you will experience dramatic results.

STOMPER Speed Boost

Last month we hinted this was coming.

And you’ve been asking for it since we opened our doors 5 years ago.

What is it?

Click here to find out!

Secret Sauce Checklist

B.L.O.G.  for Success

• BUILD: Get in the right M.O.D.E. for success
• MARKET: Research
• OBJECTIVES: Set a S.M.A.R.T. objective that’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely
• DESIGN:  Look professional
• ENGINEER: WordPress.org self-hosted

• LAUNCH: Your launch  P.A.D. to authority & engagement
• PUBLISH your writing to your target market (or perfect customer)
• ASK your readers
• DEPLOY  Content that’s actionable

• ORCHESTRATE: Coordinate your  S.Y.M.P.H.O.N.Y. of traffic
• SYSTEMIZE with pre-scheduled content
• YANK as much exposure as possible to your blog
• MOBILIZE your readers with social media plugins
• PROMOTE your blog with social sites
• HEIGHTEN your chances with Social Bookmarking
• OBTAIN inbound links and exposure from Press Releases
• NAVIGATE  your opt-in list system
• YIELD the power of viral

• GENERATE: Produce P.R.O.F.I.T.S. today
• PUBLICIZE: your product or service
• RECOMMEND: 3rd party merchants with an affiliate link
• OBTAIN:  likability and trust
• FACILITATE:  irresistible offers
• INTRODUCE: different offers
• TEST & TRACK: to increase your ROI
• SERVING: seasonal offers and packages

Stomper Buzz

Next Week’s Focus: Focus on SEO

Stompernet Blog

On Wednesday, we covered some great tips that you needed BEFORE you started on your website. So what does your website need AFTER you covered those basics?

Some basic search engine optimization tips can help your website push higher on the page rankings. Yes, you may think you know basic SEO, but we all need reminders of how important it is to our business success. There may be some wonderful tips you may have forgotten or you may not have ever learned… like using the page numbers on web pages.  It surprises me that some websites still use the page number instead of name, yet it still happens.

And while you’re busy doing all the SEO work on the website, it becomes really easy to forget that search engines rank the pages individually as well. These little things may not be much by themselves, but together they add up to results that can really help your search engine ranking.

All these pieces come together like a puzzle to create your search engine ranking and create a site that helps visitors know you have what they want. When you combine a good ranking with multiple pages that offer visitor-related materials, you will have a much greater chance of converting them to consumers.

Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC

“SEO is not rocket science (or anywhere close to it). But it certainly can get as technical and detailed as you want to make it.”

~ John I. Jerkovic ~
SEO Warrior

LAST DAY!

It’s finally here…and you don’t want to miss this sale!

SEO Basic Factors

While you may think SEO is important for your website, ranking is important for each individual page.  Each page has its own rank in the search engines, the whole website is only a part of the factor.

Based on experience the three strongest elements to a page are its Domain Name, Title Tag and Back Links, and depending on the level of competition for your search phrase, an adjustment to any of these can increase your page anywhere from few up to hundreds of spots.

There are some other elements as well, that I will also cover in this article.

Domain Name

Include keywords, if possible; however, don’t make it “spammy” with too much hyphenation! My personal rule of thumb is no more than 2 hyphens. If your niche is wedding favors, and all the “good” domain names are taken, you could consider beautiful-wedding-favors.com, but I wouldn’t recommend the-very-best-wedding-favors-ever.com. Get the picture?

The Title Tag

I think of it like the mullet hairstyle: business in the front, party in the back. Your most important keywords should be in the front, and it should be followed with a compelling reason to click the link:

Beautiful Wedding Favors: We ship your Wedding Favors for Free

Beach Wedding Favors: Free Shipping on all Beach Theme Favors

You don’t have to “stuff” the title tag, and in the search results it is the most prominent, clickable element. You want to design it to help you rank higher AND get more clicks than the other folks.

Back Links

It has been said that enough back links can solve any ranking problem, and that’s probably true, but you do want to make them work well for you. Remember, anchor text matters! Your best links will include keyword rich words and phrases, not your URL. For example:

Buy beautiful beach wedding favors from my-great-sites.com

…is MUCH better than…

Buy beautiful beach wedding favors from my-great-sites.com.

Hint: Your links should look NATURAL. In other words, they shouldn’t all say exactly the same thing. Immediately having 10,000 back links to a site that’s been online 2 days, with all the same exact links just doesn’t “feel” right.

ALSO … Remember that you want to get links DEEP into your site, not just the home page. It has been suggested in the past that no more than 50% of your links should point to the home page, so be sure to get links to categories and even product level pages (if you’re in eCommerce)!

The next element that I work diligently on to make keyword rich is the actual page name. Consider the keywords that are targeted for the page, and name the pages accordingly – even in eCommerce and database driven sites.

Page Names

Do you have a generic domain, or a custom domain? (www.mydomain.com/seo-expert-tips.html vs. www.mydomain.com/?3z42.php)

Your pages should be themed based on relevance. If the page is about beach wedding favors, keep the content relevant. Don’t stray and add extra content about wedding shoes and the dress – unless it’s appropriate.

Meta Description

The Meta Description should NOT be ignored. While it will not affect the search results, it can alter the results of the search and drive a higher click through rate. This is the second feature anyone will notice about your site, BEFORE they ever arrive on the page. So use keyword rich content with compelling text to encourage them to click on that search engine listing to visit your site. I have seen occasions on our own site where we were getting higher click throughs at #2 than the listing at #1, and our only conclusion is that our meta description copy was more compelling to the user.

Meta Keywords

Meta Keywords are certainly not used for ranking, but I add them to each page so that I can keep track of what the page theme is ranking for. Some folks are concerned that using them this way would allow others to “steal” your keywords, but frankly there are so many other tools out there that they don’t have to view my meta keywords to find out what I am trying to rank that page for.

These are just the basics that can help your page rank better.  There are additional factors that you may want to add depending on your site.

By Michelle Chance-Sangthong

Michelle has proven her ability to transform lackluster websites into dynamic profit-generators. Through her company, Red Hawk Strategies , Michelle is now offering consultations, workshops, and seminars that will help you increase your company’s marketing efficiency by making your website a beacon for your target audience. Contact her at michellechancesangthong@gmail.com

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Secret Sauce Checklist

The Strongest SEO Elements:

• Domain Name: Include keywords, if possible. Don’t OVER HYPHENATE
• Title Tag: The tag should be targeted AND clickable
• Back Links

Also Consider these SEO Basics

• Pages Names:  Named according to the page content
• Meta Description: What people see on the Search Engine Results and can get you better click-through
• Meta Keywords:  While Search engines don’t use these, you can use for tracking purposes

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Join Lee and learn how you can use Crowdfunding to get funding to market and develop some of those awesome product and development ideas.

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Let us know your thoughts on today’s issue.

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Stompernet Blog

By Michelle Chance-Sangthong

Greetings, Stompers! Let’s talk ‘pre-SEO’ strategies today, shall we? For many of you website owners, redesigning a website simply means putting a “new brand” on an existing site. You know, changing the colors, updating style and in the end, it looks new, but you really haven’t “changed” the site; you’ve simply improved its look.

In this article, we are not focusing on a site re-brand, we are going to re-visit specific “challenges” I’ve encountered on clients’ websites, and I will teach you a variety of ways you can avoid treacherous pitfalls in creating an SEO plan for an expired domain name or an existing website makeover.

When you’re beginning with a brand new site and brand new domain name, there is really nowhere to go but up. When you are redesigning a website, you could make some choices that may actually cause you to lose ranking if you don’t know that to look out for.

There are 3 simple goals when creating an SEO plan for existing websites or domain names:

- Preserve Site PR and Backlinks

- Protect Individual Page Rankings

- Increase Targeted Traffic

The “Used” Domain Name …

Recently, I had a client come to me very excited about finally acquiring the domain name that matched their corporate name exactly, AFTER they had already built a new website – on a new platform – with this “new to them” domain name.

I checked out the Page Rank and backlinks and quickly discovered that the thousands of backlinks had anchor text that was completely unrelated to my client’s services. And they were not reusing the pages that had the lion share of the “link love”. So, while the domain had “age” and “Page Rank”, it had NO REPUTATION even remotely related to my client’s services.

In other words, the domain was good for branding, but was not going to give them the instant SEO boost they had hoped for in their own market. This meant we actually had to do MORE link building to overcome the domain’s “old reputation” as we established a new one for them.

The Point: Get the history on a website before you buy an old domain name if you plan on using it for a “money site”. Knowing the full history of a domain name or website can help you leverage the page rank and reputation for faster success.

The Baseline …

One of the most important things you can do BEFORE starting any SEO plan is to have a baseline for the analytics. Know what’s ranking and how much traffic is being driven to the website. Think about it like this: you’d never start a diet without establishing what you were measuring. Some folks measure in weight, others in inches, and others in how certain clothes fit.

In short, you have got to know where you started to successfully measure your progress. In fact, I no longer start SEO activities right out of the gate if the website does not have Google Analytics, Google Webmaster code, and Google AdWords properly setup, installed, verified AND containing a reasonable quantity of data available.

In this scenario everything seemed right. Both Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools were verified, the site was receiving traffic and we created “starting” reports based on organic (non-paid) keywords and visitors.

The client “did their own” Google AdWords campaign and did not want us involved, so we ran our reports with non-paid results, to be sure we weren’t giving ourselves credit for the AdWords / Pay Per Click visitors. A few months passed and we were getting only mediocre organic SEO results. A conversation with my client helped me to discover that he in fact had been continuing to purchase AdWords, although the Google Analytics showed that all of our visitors were coming from NON-PAID traffic.

Note: Inside Google Analytics you can choose between total, paid, or non-paid traffic.

After receiving the clients’ permission, I investigated the Google AdWords account and discovered that his AdWords and Analytics were properly connected; however, there was one setting that was preventing Analytics from properly reporting AdWords (paid) traffic. The client had UNCHECKED Auto Tagging, which means that none of the traffic that was sent from AdWords was labeled as PAID traffic! This led us to discover that our Baseline reports were inaccurate AND that our subsequent reports were inaccurate, as well.

To re-establish the baseline traffic we used the traffic reports in Google AdWords, and we painstakingly went month by month and adjusted our prior reports to get the most accurate baseline and ongoing reporting we could. It turned out that much of the initial traffic on the site was Pay Per Click and not organic search traffic at all.

After re-evaluating the data, the work we had done for the client had generated a 700% lift in ORGANIC (non-paid) traffic to his website. We believe that he could not see the difference in his business because as he got “busier,” he was letting his AdWord spend decrease.

The Point : Make sure you have all your ducks in a row; you can’t accurately improve if you’re not measuring!

The Platform Shift …

In the past the actual redesign may have been as simple as changing the site colors and slapping on a new logo, but we have seen the advent of many new, SEO friendly platforms where the redesign is really a full reformat of the website, including category structures and page names: think Magento, Joomla, WordPress, Drupal and others.

In this last scenario, our client is moving from a web-based drag-and-drop editor to WordPress, and to make it more exciting, the client was doing pretty well in the SERPS (search engine results page). With the platform change the page names would have to change though. In this instance we had an opportunity to give their site better page names.

And because of this online editor many of their pages were named with simply numbers like http://www.sample.com/567456.html instead of a domain name with words like http://www.sample.com/great-keyword-for-a-page-name.html.

What is important to track? The Current Page Name, Title Tag, Meta Description and Keywords of the current pages AND the FUTURE page name that it will be on the NEW platform. Why does that matter? Because you’ll need to establish a 301 Redirect for EVERY SINGLE ONE of your pages on the OLD site to correspond with their replacement on the NEW site.

For instance, the old page may be http://www.sample.com/services.html, but with WordPress it may become http://www.sample.com/services/. (Stomper side tip : In WordPress there is a specific plug-in you can use to easily manage the redirects called Redirection from Urban Giraffe found here: http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/ .)

Once the redesign is complete (on a development server) and you’re certain that all the pages have been re-created and the appropriate redirects have been completed, it’s time to go live long and prosper!

Regardless of the platform, you need to create an inventory of the pages on the website so that you don’t lose your “ranking” results. You can use an online tool like XML-Sitemaps.com to generate a crawl of all the pages on the website, and then download a text file that you can open with Excel or other spreadsheet program to establish the tracking check list for the pages.

Throughout the years I’ve had the privilege of managing my own websites, and I’ve also earned the trust from my clients to work with them through their SEO planning and redesign. So remember: when you are creating your SEO plan for a new design on an old domain name, or when it’s time to upgrade to a great new platform, these simple steps should help you avoid a few of the pitfalls that can really hamper SEO success.

Going through the necessary ‘pre-SEO’ motions ahead of time can really save you a noticeable amount of time, money, and stress when you’re ready to really modify your campaign. Stomping the search engines is an involved process, but with a little practice, you’ll be an SEO wizard!

Michelle Chance-Sangthong has proven her ability to transform lackluster websites into dynamic profit-generators. Through her company, Red Hawk Strategies , Michelle is now offering consultations, workshops, and seminars that will help you increase your company’s marketing efficiency by making your website a beacon for your target audience. Contact her at michellechancesangthong@gmail.com .

SEO for Service Professionals:

by Darrin Mish

FLV / MOV

Stompernet Blog

By Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz

As the worlds of web design and SEO merge ever closer, we’ve been seeing design-specific elements produce a positive impact on SEO for the sites that employ them. It’s terrific news for SEOs who love design and are capable of, and passionate about, making it part of their repertoire.

It’s also great for designers who find that, as they evolved from Flash designs to machine-readable CSS and separated markup from content, they’ve earned more links and more organic search love.

In this article, I’ll walk through examples of those design practices in use, and describe how they can help improve your opportunity for organic search rankings and traffic.

#1 – Designing That Elicits & Conveys Emotion

A phenomenal article from Aarron Walter of Mailchimp on ThinkVitamin.com – Emotional Interface Design: The Gateway to Passionate Users – deeply explores the trend of designers using their talents to imprint emotion on users. Personally, I love this practice, and professionally, I see it as incredibly valuable for SEO, too.

Rather than simply providing a user with information, these sites attempt to convey a sense of the companies, products and services they represent, in a tangible way.

For McMiller’s Sweets; on the left, the website expresses the brand’s humor, whimsy and obsession with their product. I only wish I could buy online – there’d be a few boxes headed for the SEOmoz offices right now.

On the right Box.net, an enterprise-focused software company, aims to achieve an air of simplicity and a feeling of the ease that comes from using a basic consumer application, but targeted at a business audience. Their redesign has me convinced – it’s light and airy, it’s up in the clouds (perhaps a double-meaning since they host in “the cloud”) and it even calls out the “sexiness” of the application.
When users are emotionally invested in the websites they visit, they’re more likely to:

• Link
• Share
• Contribute Content
• Participate
• Remain Loyal
• Invest in the Experience
• Browse more Pages

All of these have either first or second-order impacts on SEO in a positive way.

#2 – The Scroll-Triggered Call-to-Action

Sometimes you don’t want to overwhelm content with calls-to-action… at least not until you’re fairly certain your visitor has finished reading. That’s where the brilliance of the scroll-triggered call-to-action comes in.

Browse any article on the New York Times website and you’ll see this behavior in action, driving you to read the next article in the series only after you’ve reached the bottom of the current piece.

It’s great for boosting page views, but also drives more awareness of those pieces, improving links and driving up visibility for previously less-well-publicized works. My guess is that clicks are quite high.

In the next example, the blog.OKCupid.com leverages precisely the same tactic. This case might be even more brilliant. After wrapping up a remarkable article about what statistics tell us not to do in online dating, my first instinct is to share the piece with some single friends. OKCupid’s flawlessly timed dropdown overlay synchs with this internal compulsion and makes it easy to tweet, like, stumble or buzz away.

Scrolling + triggers = more browsing, more awareness and more sharing (and I think the potential applications for SEO are far greater in quantity than just what’s been shared above).

#3 – User Badges

If your users are passionate about your site and their experience or participation, why not make it easy to share?

For years, sites have been offering users the virtual incentives of points, badges and status to encourage greater participation. Andrew Follet from Concept Feedback authored a brilliant piece analyzing this precise behavior and exposing some terrific examples.

We’ve noticed an interesting behavior as it relates to user badges as well, and it’s spurred me to whiteboard the following chart numerous times for those who have online communities considering SEO.

The lesson? Make great communities, encourage participation and reward your users with badges that will make their sites look good. It’s the online equivalent of giving out high quality, well designed t-shirts – fans won’t just wear them to bed; they’ll actually show off your brand.

#4 – The Animated HTML Multiheader

I wrote about the multiheader a long time ago, and the evolution of design has made them tremendously more compelling and useful since then. Case-in-point, Unbounce, who has 5 different messages/features on their homepage all accessible to engines and all part of a single multiheader.

The advantage is two-fold – more content on the homepage that’s accessible to search engines (thanks to clever CSS/HTML usage) and everyone who links to any one version is concentrating the link juice singularly on the home page. In some cases, that could cause problems, but in others, it’s a great opportunity to leverage design to focus the links you acquire where you need them most.

BTW – Speaking of Unbounce, If you have yet to read Oli Gardner’s 12-Step Landing Page Rehab Program, you’re seriously missing out.

#5 – Sexy, Embeddable Infographics

Infographic linkbait is certainly all the rage these days, and I think it’s a well-justified trend. The brilliant part is that you benefit by producing the infographic and other bloggers benefit by sharing it and attracting views, attention and links of their own. So long as the embed works seemlessly and the infographic is compelling, you’re off to the link acquisition races.

Some examples I enjoyed came from Smashing Magazine, who put together this piece on programming (and the how-to behind it’s creation).

As with badges, the “beauty rule” applies – the sexier your infographic (and the most interesting/useful/compelling the content), the higher adoption will be.

#6 – Designing Around Illustration (with CSS)

It used to be that I’d see a website built around illustrations and artistry and shake my head in sadness, knowing that the beauty of the UI was unlikely to be experienced by anyone except those coming via type-in. Today, with the amazing progress of CSS, sites like CarbonMade.com can have their design cake and eat their SEO, too.

Google’s “text only” cache shows every word you can see in the screenshot – we’ve come a long way indeed. And, darn it if that design doesn’t make me want to just climb a mountain and jump off a cliff into an octopus-filled lake below… errr.. make an online portfolio (yeah, that’s the one!)

#7 – Creative Content Formats Unleashed

Sometimes, you visit a site that stands out from everything else you’ve seen on the web in the past. Historically, many of those sites have also been tragically obscured from search engines. Nowadays, a new breed is emerging, showing off massive creativity, brilliance in design innovation and a compelling combination of link-worthiness and search-accessibility.

A few of my favorite recent stumbles into this realm include: shopsanctuaryt.com and heartdirected.com – a great place to find more remarkable creative formats, though lacking the machine readable content to be an SEO example itself.

It’s a great time to be on the web, thinking about SEO, design and the brilliant things that can happen when they overlap strategically. Here’s to hoping that more of us who invest in organic search traffic will bolster that task with the power amazing design can bring. It’s not just more links – it’s greater engagement and a higher liklihood that sharing of all kinds will occur. However the search engines evolve, you can be sure this is the type of behavior they’ll seek to reward.

PS. If design inspires you, I’d recommend checking out Drawar and Six Revisions list of 10 Fresh Galleries for Inspiration

Rand Fishkin is the CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz, a software startup focused on simplifying SEO and sharing it with the world. He co-authored the Art of SEO from O’Reilly and was named among the 30 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs Under 30 by BusinessWeek. Rand has been written about it in The Seattle Times, Newsweek and the NY Times among others and keynoted conferences on search around the world. He’s particularly passionate about the SEOmoz blog, read by tens of thousands of search professionals each day. In his minuscule spare time, Rand enjoys the company of his amazing wife, Geraldine. Contact him at rand@seomoz.org.

Build Your First Website in 20 Minutes
by Bryan Azorsky

FLV

Stompernet Blog

Everyone wants top results on search engines.  This is the big thing that I heard while at SEO Pro with Joel McDonald and our other experts.  It may be you or your clients.  The trick is getting the best results without getting banned.

You may have clients who want a site full of their favorite keywords, they don’t realize this is exactly how you get booted off search engine results.  Search engines have penalized over-optimized sites for years.  Thus your goal is to find that happy medium between the over-optimization and not enough keywords or “throw away” keywords.

You may ask “How do I find that keyword balance?”

Fortunately, Joel is going to explain how to find the right blend of keywords for you to build natural organic links and traffic.  Fortunately it is not as hard as it sounds, creating that right blend that will help you build links and search engine rankings.

Check out his “Scientifically Natural Keyword Building” you will learn how to find the keywords that bring in money making traffic.

Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC

“You can have the best product or service in the world, but if people don’t buy – it’s worthless. So in reality it doesn’t matter how wonderful your new product or service is. The real question is – will they buy it?”
~ Noel Peebles ~

Scientifically Natural Keyword Building

I get into discussions all the time about “natural link-building” with SEO. Natural link building, by the way, is referring to building links in a way that appears organic. In other words, if you’re trying to rank for “Blue Widgets”, you’ll get penalized if you drive too many links towards your site with anchor text of “blue widgets”. The idea here is to mix it up with other “random” links that make it appear like your links were acquired “naturally”. The best way to do that is to include links with varying anchor-text like “discount blue widgets”, “blue widgets online”, and even your website; BobsPretendBlueWidgetStore.com.

I couldn’t agree more that the best way to avoid over-optimizing for a certain keyword is to make your link-structure appears “natural” but by no means does that mean that you should waste keywords with junk that won’t make you money.

Your Plan to Manufacture “Natural” Looking Links:

Here is a relatively cheap, scientific way of determining the best keywords you can use to avoid an over-optimization penalty. By applying this plan, you will not only make sure to build links with a naturally varied link structure, but you’ll make sure that every single keyword that you “naturally” rank for is a keyword that has already proven itself as a keyword that can make you money as well.

1) Set up an AdWords account.

I know, I know – you’re thinking, “Wait a minute! Joel was talking about organic SEO!” I don’t want to turn this into a topic on the importance of doing your research before jumping into a link, but suffice it to say without doing at least a little bit of research, you could be targeting the wrong terms. The best way to avoid that is to first buy traffic for the terms you want to target. Only after they’ve proven themselves, do you start to optimize for these terms.

2) Generate a Conversion Code.

Under the “reports” tab in your AdWords account, you’ll be able to generate a conversion code that should be placed on the “thank you” page of your website. Whether you have a product for sale or are simply collecting emails to build a list, by placing this conversion code on the confirmation page of your site, you’ll enable AdWords to keep track of exactly how many conversions each keyword generates for you. Knowing that information is priceless.

3) Bid on Keywords.

After doing a little research in your market, bid on 10 to 50 keywords you think would be solid keywords. Then drive those keywords at the most relevant page on your website. The important thing is to bid on the search network only (disable the display network) and bid on exact match only. The best way to do this is to simply place [brackets] around the keywords when uploading them into the AdWords system. (If you’re using AdWords Editor, just check the “exact match only” checkbox.) Broad match and phrase match are great, but those are to get you traffic from keywords you didn’t think of, that’s not the traffic you want when doing your SEO research.

4) Decide on best keywords.

Here’s the hard part . . . after bidding on your keywords, you have to wait until you have enough traffic to decide on what 5 or 6 keywords get you the most business. This can be really hard to do, but it’s extremely important.  What you need to know is exactly which keywords are generating the most sales for you, and broad match, phrase match or display network traffic won’t do that for you nearly as cost effectively as exact match in the search network.

5) Wait.

How long you should wait depends on how much traffic your keywords get. It could be a day — it could be a month, but it will be worth the wait. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and the keywords you thought would be your best ones end up generating the most sales for you. Sometimes, however, you’ll be surprised at what keywords generate sales for you. It’s this research that will make sure you squeeze every ounce of profit out of your keywords as possible.

After you’ve found your 5 or 6 optimal keywords, it’s now your time to start building links and start implementing your organic SEO plan. If you had just jumped in and picked a bunch of random keywords, you’d certainly keep the search engines happy by “being natural”, but you might not be happy with the sales those “naturally varied” keywords generate for your business.  Adding this simple plan can double, triple, or even quintuple your sales once your carefully selected “random” keywords start to rank on the search engines. Good luck, and happy stomping!

Joel McDonald is a StomperNet Faculty Member and an AdWords Consultant with 2020ppc.com.

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Secret Sauce Checklist

Tips on how to get the best keywords for your business

• Get an Adwords account.
• Use a conversion code to track your results.
• Research your market.
• Using exact match bid on keywords in the search network only
• You want the right keywords, so wait for results.
• Study your results and choose the best keywords.

This Week’s Hot Forum Topic

Stomper Buzz

Next Week’s Focus: Outsourcing

FACULTY OFFICE HOURS NEXT WEEK:

TUESDAY October 4, 2011 ~ 2:00 pm Eastern

“How Can I Possibly Do All This Myself? A Guide To Successful Outsourcing” with Andrea Warner

As an online marketer you have to wear many hats. You get to be sales, marketing, run the PPC campaigns, answer the phones, take orders, write the sales pages, answer customer emails, write articles…WAIT!!! Can you really do it ALL?? Maybe. But can you do it all well?!?  Join Andrea Warner as she takes you through her Guide to Successful Outsourcing.  StomperNet Members: Register Now

FREE LIVE WEBINARS NEXT WEEK:

TUESDAY October 4, 2011 ~ 8:00 pm Eastern

“Creating $250k Unsecured, Zero-Interest, Tax Free Cash!” with Georgia Gotthardt & Ari Page

Would you like to have unsecured business credit, available as cash to help fund your business quick,fast and easy? Join Georgia and Ari as they show you how getting funding can be fun, fast and easy and how It’s YOUR Tax dollar money givento the banks – so that they must lend it to you! Register Now

WEDNESDAY October 5, 2011 ~ 12:30 pm Eastern

“How to Crush Your Competition Online Using Market Me Suite In Only 30 Minutes A Day!” with Tammy Kahn Fennell

Last week MarketMeSuite gave away 5000 licenses and the first question we received was “Great. Now how do I use it”. Tammy Fennell, the CEO or MarketMe Suite has agreed to do a webinar to help you use this new tool to the utmost extreme. She will get you set up managing your social media so you can learn to crush your competition with as little as 30 minutes a day.

You still have until Tuesday to download your free MarketMe Suite license. There are still a couple 100 left. But they are going FAST. Register Now

*NEW* “StomperNet Open Forum” Fridays at 11EDT

We know everyone has questions about their business or different stumbling blocks. Well we invite you to bring them to the table during our Open Forum. With the combined training and experience of our Coaches you will get the direction you need to get you back on your road to success!

The next StomperNet Open Forum Call with our Professional Coaches happens next Friday at 11am EDT and we hope to see you there! These calls are intended to be live Q&A sessions and playback will not be available.

Let us know your thoughts on today’s issue.

Post Your Comments Here

Stompernet Blog

By Joel McDonald

So you’ve identified your top keyword, and have outlined an SEO strategy so you can start ranking for that phrase… Great! Depending on the competitiveness of your keyword you can expect to get it to the first page of Google 3 to 12 months from now. Good luck!

Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, what about a strategy that can start getting you profitable traffic as early as next week? It’s not going to be high volumes of traffic, but at least you don’t have to wait months and months before seeing a dime. You could, however, start seeing small profits from your efforts by next week. It’s called the “long tail” approach, and I’m going to show you how to accomplish this!

For those of you thinking low-volume search phrases aren’t worth the trouble, here is a little story about two blogging Realtors. It is inspired by an old favorite show of mine – “Newhart”.

Meet Darryl and his brother Darryl.

Both are Realtors, and both work separately in the same market (which we’ll call “BIG CITY”).  They both started a blog at the same time, and both learned the same SEO strategies about search engine marketing.

Fast Forward 1 month:

Fast Forward 3 months:

Fast Forward 6 months:

Fast Forward 1 year:

Darryl 1 eventually sold his website to Darryl 2 and now works at the Waybury Inn.
OK, OK — I realize that is a bit of an exaggeration, but there are a few lessons here:

1. Anyone can write, and it doesn’t have to be earth-shattering journalism. The important thing is that it is written with the reader’s benefit in mind.  Optimize for the right long-tail topic and you’ll get  good search engine rankings (and highly qualified traffic) with     almost no effort at all.
2. Cumulative traffic from dozens of long tail phrases with low search volumes can easily equal (or surpass) the traffic of one heavily searched     phrase, and it’s usually far easier to obtain.
3. By definition,     long tail traffic converts at a much higher rate than highly searched for terms, so even if it doesn’t have as much traffic as your more competitive phrases, 1000 visits for long tail phrases could possibly generate more traffic than 10,000 or even 100,000 visits for more common, but less targeted phrases.

In summary:

Whether selling real estate, consulting services, or cameras — the same rules apply…

You can spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on the hope of getting to the first page for “Canon Camera” and get tons and tons of traffic a few months from now, or you could spend a few hours – and little to no money – to get to the first page for “Canon Rebel EOS xsi”, and start earning money by next week!

Long Tail Keywords Can Grow Your Business!

PS – All of the above assumes you’ve done your homework and first verified that you can actually sell something on your website before lifting a finger on any SEO efforts. You’ve done that by driving PPC traffic to your site for your desired keywords… Right?

Joel McDonald

Stomper Faculty member Joel McDonald has been self-employed all his life and has generated over a billion dollars in sales for his online companies. In addition to being in charge of online revenues for his own companies, he does AdWords consulting for companies such as Mars Botanicals (a division of Mars® Incorporated), REMAX®, Disney® Resellers, as well as several Stompernet Faculty members.

Joel uses AdWords as the foundation of every single business he has ever owned or consulted for, and regularly shares all of his tips and tricks with you as a valued Stompernet member.

Mapping Keywords to Content

Flv

Stompernet Blog

You’ve got to figure out from where you are going to hire. Are you going to outsource from the variety of websites available such as oDesk, Elance or Freelancer? Are you going to hire from local resources such as a college or Craigslist? Or are you going to try outsourcing overseas to the Philippines, India or Croatia?

After you consider this initial WHERE…the next part of the process comes in to play. How do you make sure you are REALLY getting the right person? Can they really do what they say they can do?

It would be GREAT if there were a golden answer to that question! The fact is you have to do your best to ask the pointed questions to find out as much as you can about the person you are considering hiring. While a portfolio from a potential outsourcer is good, you still need to ask some direct questions and see how they answer them.

While there are a variety of positions that you can outsource, SEO projects are a top one. Read our Stomper Intelligence Report to find out How to Interview an Outsourced SEO. It will also give you some good ideas for handling other outsourcing positions!

Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC

“If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you’re putting yourself out of business.”

~ Lee Kuan Yew

How to Interview an Outsourced SEO

by Jerry West

There has been a lot of discussion about “Interview Questions” in the SEO space, but let’s face it, you don’t have a lot of time to ask a lot of questions, let alone review the answers. So, here is what I do, having adopted the Howie Schwartz method of “hire fast and fire faster.”

Your number one goal when interviewing an SEO expert is to test their knowledge and ability to learn and grow. You also want to uncover their ability to BS.

How do you do this? Easy. Give them a test project, one that should be completed in less than 30 minutes, to gauge their ability to analyze, process, and recommend a solution. And if they cry because you are too mean, well, that’s a bonus.

Here are a list of questions I ask when I outsource an SEO project. It will give you an understanding of how well they can communicate and write in English.

SEO Interview Questions

1. What SEO tools do you use on a weekly basis?

You want to know how well-versed they are in the particular market. An SEO’s toolset says a lot about them, the same way a carpenter’s toolbox does. So check their browser. They should be using the SEO extensions for Firefox. For keyword research they should mention at least one of the following: Google Keyword Tool, WordTracker, and Keyword Discovery. For other general uses: SEO Elite, IBP, OptiLink/OptiSpider, etc.

2. What kind of strategies have you implemented for your clients? And what is the domain name?

Then run a backlink check on the site they name, using something like SEO Elite. Are there any shady links? Paid links? Link Farms? If it looks solid, ask them to put your name as the author (temporarily) in the meta author tag, or place your name somewhere on the home page to verify they have control over the site. If they start to make up excuses why they can’t or say, “Oh, we just finished the project last week so we don’t have the FTP info anymore” they are lying and you can move onto the next candidate.

3. How do you evaluate whether an SEO campaign is working?

Hopefully the answer here is “conversions” and not “traffic” or worse, “ranking.” The SEO must realize their job is to drive BUYERS to the site, not just TRAFFIC. Anyone can drive traffic, but it is the exceptional SEO who understands clearly the difference. That is the SEO you want to hire or you will wind up with a lot of traffic and no customers and that just sucks.

4. Of the well-known SEOs, to whom do you pay attention to and whom are you not likely to pay attention to?

I love this one and you should look up their answers to see if you like what those particular SEOs stand for. If you can’t find any information on the SEOs the person mentions, that means who they look up to doesn’t know how to do SEO either.

5. What industry sites, blogs, and forums do you regularly read?

This is a great question and they better rattle off less than a dozen or it is a warning that they spend too much time reading and not enough time working. Again, you want to check out where they hang out and see if those are places which fit your criteria.

6. Tell me your biggest failure in an SEO project?

Good question – watch them squirm in their seat. If they say they have never failed, they are lying or this is their first ever project. Either way, you don’t want to hire them. I fail. I failed last week. It happens. You learn and you improve. Those who cannot admit failure are an unrealized outsourcing nightmare. Avoid it before it begins.

7. In what areas of SEO are you strongest?

Once they answer, test these areas heavily to make sure they are really strong in those areas. You test with a small project at first with a domain you don’t care about and see if they can really achieve what they claim.

8. In what areas of SEO are you weakest?

Make sure they actually admit to a weakness. Those who state “I’m too organized” or “I pay too much attention to detail” are red flags. Everyone has weaknesses.

Finally, don’t forget to do a Google search on this candidate’s name (If you cannot find them, that’s a red flag. And if you can’t find them ask why not.)

There you go. That should give you plenty of information to really assess their worth, while not burying them and you with too many unneeded questions

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Watch for more information next week. In the meantime, contact The Net Effect Managing Editor Suzanne Roese-McGee with any questions at: stompersuz@gmail.com

SEO Secret Sauce

SEO Interview Questions:

1. What SEO Tools do you use on a weekly basis?
2. What kind of strategies have your implemented for your clients?
3. How do you evaluate whether an SEO campaign is working?
4. Of the well-known SEOs, to whom do you pay attention to?
5. What industry sites, blogs and forums do you read?
6. What is your biggest failure in an SEO project?
7. In what areas of SEO are you strongest?
8. In what areas of SEO are you weakest?

Let us know your thoughts on today’s issue.

Post Your Comments Here

Stompernet Blog

Search Engine Optimization …it conjures up a whole new set of words. Link building, key word research, articles, PPC, social media, meta tags and so much more!! Where do you even START to get information about what to do and how to do it?!?!

That’s what StomperNet is here for. It’s what we do! One of the best overviews that we have on Internet marketing and search engine optimization is the Incubator series. If you are a member and haven’t watched it yet, I suggest you check it out! The modules are broken in to 30 small pieces. You can watch them one day at a time, or all at once.

If you’re not a member yet, it’s well worth the $1 trial membership to check it out. You’ll get an excellent idea of the training materials we have available to you, and you’ll learn a tremendous amount just from that one series!

No matter where you are in your business, StomperNet has something for you. Check out some of our resources below on Search Engine Optimization. We have it split in to beginning, intermediate and advanced, but you’re welcome to check them all out!

And if you haven’t checked out the forums lately, take a look at some of the threads on SEO from the past few months. I challenge you to post YOUR most pressing question on SEO in our Forums this week. Keep our SEO theme on the forefront! Make sure you go in to take a look to see what others are saying as well!

Talk soon and enjoy the resources below!

Ryan Taylor
Director of Operations
StomperNet, LLC

IMPORTANT: Some of the resources shown are only available to members. Not a StomperNet member? Join us today for just $1.00 to get access to the world’s largest Internet Marketing community plus all the tools and resources you need (including upcoming free webinar replays) to start, build and grow a thriving Internet-based business!

Curriculum Resources

(Members:  Click here for links)

AN ENTIRE OVERVIEW OF SEO:

Beginning

• Beginning Your Optimization

• SEO Strategy Step by Step

Medium

• SEO For Service Professionals

• 4 Keys to Killer Keywords

Advanced

• Video SEO

• Pinocchio SEO: “Is It All One Big Lie” A Case Study

FORUM POSTING:

• Article Marketing After Farmer?

• Google Showing Stronger Brand Preference?

• More Than 1 H1 Tag on a Page?

• Level 2 Linking Question

New Media

(Members:  Click here for links)

• Mobile Marketing Overview with Dan Hollings

• LinkedIn Secrets You’ve Probably Never Heard Before with Flyn Penoyer

• The Psychology of AdWords with Howie Jacobson

* Free Live Webinars This Week

TUESDAY June 21st, 2011 at 8:00pm Eastern

Public Webinar: Spanking Google with WordPress Best Practices with Marty Rozmanith.

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Stompernet Blog