Website Content Guide Pages

I read over at SEO-Theory about "Using Content Page Guide Optimization", and realized that I had completely quit using content guide pages. I have been having a bit of trouble holding my rankings for Goatsmilktavern Studios and I was looking for a way to make it a bit more stable. A content guide page may be just what I was looking for.

Content guide pages are pages on your website that act like a table of contents for the site. You have a link to each page on your website and a short, 25 or so word description of the page. These descriptions need to be very keyword dense in order for it to be any benefit to your rankings, however, I always encourage people to remember to write for the users, then write for the search engines. Content guide pages can be a great deal of help to users when you have a large site with many pages, but for the most part and for my purposes I will make it for the search engines.

On the users end, content guides give the reader a rundown on what each page on your site is about and why they should go and read it. Content guides are not the place to make sales pitches, but they are the place to stuff some good keywords. These descriptions should be much like your meta description, only more compelling.Make your descriptions clear and concise so the reader will easily be able to find what they are looking for on your website.

Another good use for content guides is they are a possible solution to the problem Google has created by devaluing Supplemental Results Pages in its search results. If you have a site with supplemental results, you need to get them into the main index to make the effective pages on your site, there is no use having pages that don't rank on your website.

Links: Visibility & #'s

There are 2 approaches to link building, quality visibility and sheer numbers. Both are helpful to the web site, but which is best for the stage of the SEO campaign you are currently in. Separating your campaign into stages, or surges is important for building an effective SEO strategy.

I like to start my SEO campaigns with an increase in sheer numbers. A large quantity of links will help a web site establish its weight in the SERPs, but will rely heavily on the user finding the site. The best place to start amassing links is with directory submissions. Sit down and start a spreadsheet of all the directories you can find and start submitting your butt off. Directories are still a big part of SEO, but they are, sadly, mainly for link purposes rather than for the users. A directory may have a high PR that will show up higher than the site for specific keywords. When you submit to directories, make sure and use effective key words in the submission and you may be able to beat a high ranking site with this "piggy back" to the top. By gaining a high volume of links you are establishing the web site's presence on the web, but they may come from irrelevant places, therefore, becoming just numbers. When choosing directories to submit to, I choose them all, if you are too irrelevant, they will deny your submission, oh well. Remember to make clear titles that are keyword rich and that draw attention to the listing.

Set up a reciprocal link script on your site and start writing some link bait. Make sure you advertise that yo offer free reciprocal links on your site so other SEOs can find it. Just watch who you are link in to, stay away from "bad neighbors" and link farms. Contact web-masters that put your link on pages with more than 100 links on them and tell them to please move it to another page.

For more links you can start a site in your particular niche and do some "link laundering". I have said this term before, and I will get into laundering in another post, but I am sure you can find some information about it on the web.

Now that you have your troops behind you, it's time to give them tanks. Relevant, quality , traffic building links are the big guns to your SEO campaign. These will be links that may not help you in the SERPs, but will bring quality traffic to the site, after all we are trying to build traffic, not just good rankings. This is where your email writing skills come in, you have to ask for links in order to get them. Write a few press releases and articles with links to the site and submit them to syndication sites. Pay a little extra and have your press release on Google news and submit everything you do to the social bookmarking sites.

My idea of SEO is to get my clients away from PPC and into the SERPs. It is also my job to drive quality traffic to the site, which doesn't mean they have to be on the first page, just an increase of customers that spend money on the site. This approach will achieve both results. Build your easy numbers first, then send the buyers to the site.

Landing pages

Michael Martinez at SEO Theory wrote a great post today about "landing pages". I have always stressed the importance of landing pages, and optimized the pages of my site to rank for particular keywords. The key to landing pages is discovering what are the most important pages of your site that you want customers to find. I hate "about us" pages, and I believe the "about" information should be a blip on the home page, and the "home page" is probably the least important page of any website, unless it is a blog.

Each page on your web site should be optimized for 4 or 5 key phrases, every page targets different search terms. This will give your 5 page site the chance to rank for 20 or 25 different terms. Sales and product pages have to have optimized content on them, not just pictures and prices. Sometimes it is hard to get the client to go for so much text and you may have to do a bit of research and use more creativity, but it will payoff in the end.

Link building should be done site wide, I usually don't try to get many links to my home pages. Switch up your anchor text in comments and link exchanges to accommodate the key words for the target page. Really examine the content on the page your link will be from and choose the page on your web site that would benefit most from the link. If you do gain a lot of links to one page on your web site, make sure you direct some anchor text on that page to a weaker page on the site, don't keep all that juice on one page, optimizing your internal linking structure can dramatically improve your rankings.

Pages with good CTAs are great for landing pages, they bring the user to your site and tell them where to go next. If you bring all of your traffic to your home page, you are relying on the user finding their way to your sales pages, and that is unreliable. I am not saying that your clientele is dumb or lazy, but that it is your job to direct traffic to where you want it most.

As an SEO, it is your job to direct the most qualified traffic to the best page for it, and the 9 out of 10 times the home page is the last place you want someone to start looking to buy something. So optimize your landing pages and watch your sales increase.

Big blogs and there no follow tags

Today Dave Naylor announced he has removed the no follow tags from his blog and replaced them with strict moderation. His blog is one of my favorite sources for SEO news and updates and this is a big deal because so many "authority" blogs wrap their links up tight and keep all their juice to themselves. If this becomes a trend across the board, you may begin to see more quality discussions on these blogs. By his statement alone he should at least triple his traffic from curious SEOs. www.davidnaylor.co.uk is a great source for information, but the best parts of some blogs are the discussions that follow the posts, blogs are meant to be interactive, and I believe he is simply encouraging more user participation.

They say that Web 3.0 will be completely user generated content, and by current blogs encouraging such interaction and participation, this maybe the perfect segway into the next development of the internet. Blogs with only a few pages could soon become giant sites with hundreds of pages of user generated content and quality discussion.

Strict moderation is the key, I have never been one for spammy comments. I much rather participate in the discussion and try to learn something while I gather my links. If you are serious about SEO and link building you should try to become a regular contributer on quality blogs. Genuine, intelligent comments could lead to so much more than just a link from a page that has 50 outbound links.

Thanks Dave.

SEO Quake plugin for Firefox

I am a Safari/Opera kind a guy, I guess I spend so much time making sure my HTML and CSS are valid that I only want browsers that read strict/valid code, but I came across this great Firefox plugin called SEO Quake that gives you a head start on competitive analysis. SEO Quake installs a tool bar in your SERPs that shows the # of pages in the directory for a site, the # of pages indexed on the site, the Google PR, the Alexa rank, the # of inbound links, and so on. Firefox may be slow, but this is a great tome saving tool for SEOs. SEO Quake even shows you the who is for the SEO guys that like to contact the owners for links. Check it out here

SEO: The second 6 months of a SEO contract

My last post was about what you should do in the first 6 months of a SEO contract. The first 6 months is the time when you establish your rankings, you should be able to achieve some decent goals within this time and be on the 1st or second page of the SERPs. If the niche is competitive, the second 6 months is when you start taking on the big guys in the top positions, this is where you need to get creative and even more diligent.

In the first 6 months you established a routine for regular updates, blog posts and content changes. These changes are based on keyword research that you have conducted regularly and use this research to adapt the web site to search trends. You should continue to monitor trends, make blog posts and change the content throughout the second 6 months. I am also a firm believer in redesigning your web site once a year, which is solely for the users, but this is not the job of a SEO.

Quality Link Building
Now that your onsite SEO is well on track and is proving results, you need to worry about gathering quality links to the site. You will need to do a bit of research and gain links from vendors, clients, business partners, other related sites, general directories, specific directories. Write articles regularly about the business the site is in and create press releases about the site, the business and niche news, and submit them to syndication sites. These links will help you with relevancy and will generate more qualified traffic.

Quantity Link Building
Now that you have your quality links it is time to get the sheer numbers you need to stabilize your positions. Quantity links are less reliable because many of them will be temporary, but they will establish the sites rankings once you get the ball rolling.

Social Media Sites: Use sites like Digg and StumbleUpon to develop a large basis of social media links. Submit everything you write to them and become active in their communities, this activity will create more links than anything as long as you work the groups and contribute to things other than your particular niche.
RSS: Develop a strong writing style and stay on top of blog posts to gain subscribers and make sure to syndicate your RSS.
Reciprocal Links: Find a simple reciprocal link code and put it on your site, these can draw links from many different markets, but we are just worried about numbers at this point.
Comment Tags: Become active on other blogs and forums within the nice and put a link to the site in your comments. Remember not to make spammy posts, becoming a valued contributer can lead to bigger things in the future.
Guest Posting: Become a guest poster on the blogs you read, this is your time to shine and double your traffic.

The second six months may sound much simpler than the first, but this is where all the work comes in. If you do wind up in a 6 month contract, you need to multitask an watch your analytics closely to see what is working and what is not, don't waste time on things that don't work.

Once you get the links rolling in you should be set for a stable next few months and you should have reached the positions you wanted. Always remember, don't stop, persistence is the most important aspect of SEO. This strategy should take you throughout the end of the contract and generate satisfying results for both you and your client.

SEO Contracts

Search engine optimization is not something that will just happen overnight, it takes time and many adjustments. When you offer SEO services you need to make it perfectly clear that for best results the client must enter a long term contract of at least 6 months to a year. I don't really like the 6 month option, because that is only enough time to build a strong base optimization, and if the client is satisfied after the first 6 months and wants to stop paying for SEO, then the web sites rankings may drop. If the web site starts to fall, the client will come back to you and want another 6 months, then you will have to build the site back up to the point where it was before you can begin to give additional results. With a 1 year contract, you have enough time to build a good SEO foundation for the web site and you are able to spend more time on link building for the web site.

I have outlined 1 approach to working within a 1 year SEO contract, these are not rules that have been set in stone, but merely a guide to how to get started when optimizing a web site.

The first 6 months
In the first 6 months of the contract you should concentrate on competition research, optimizing the web design's layout, cleaning up the code and optimizing the onsite content through keyword research. This may take a couple of weeks, depending on how large the site is, but this is the most important step.

My first step is competition research, competition research is the fine art of discovering what makes the top ranking web sites in that particular nice so successful. I look at the layout, keyword density, number of pages, internal linking structure, domain age(I swear it doesn't really matter, but it is good to know) and inbound links. I look to see if the competitions web site has any blogs, and if so how active they are. Also during this time I begin conducting keyword research and I start writing content and submitting it to the owner for approval if they ask. Remember, your keyword density should be higher than any site in the nice.

Next I optimize the web design. Study how the spiders crawl and position your keywords accordingly. If the web site was designed by a web design firm that neglects SEO, I may make a few web design changes, but I don't like to undo what has already been paid for. I edit the CSS and create headings 1-6 and implement them with keywords throughout the design of the site. I then replace "text as images" that may be strewn about the site, and work on a strong internal linking structure within the content. Remember to clean the code, many "web design companies" use WYSIWYG web design editors that create gnarly code that needs to be either removed or re-written. If the site is PHP, ASP.net, etc., you will need to clean up a bit more code than a basic HTML or CSS web design.

Now you can begin working the site into your daily routine. Create new, original content for the site on a regular basis, or change the content , this will make the spiders return more regularly and help you see what works and what doesn't without waiting a month for an update. Create a few blogs the web site and make posts regularly. Make sure your blog posts are good link bait so you can begin the begin building links before you begin the link building phase. You will find there are many ways to create new content for the search engines without ever typing any new content.

Once you have established a good routine for both you and the search engines, now you can begin the link building aspect of the SEO campaign. I won't get into link building, because my fingers hurt. While building links, always monitor what people are searching for to find web sites like the one you are optimizing and make the proper adjustments to your content and internal linking structure.

Remember to always keep good analytics for any site you are optimizing.

Next Post: The Second 6 months of a SEO contract

Tool: PR Checker

I really hate when people worry about PR, but I need to start posting some tools on this blog, so here you go. Honestly, page rank has nothing to do with SERPs and comes naturally when SEO is done "right", so don't get all tied up in the "My PR goes up to 11" thing. I believe the only good thing PR is good for is it gives you a good pricing scale when you are selling links(don't tell Google I said that).

Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly:

This free page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service

Remove Dotted Border Around Link in Firefox

Firefox is growing to be the majority in web browsing, but it still has it's quirks. When you design a new web site you HAVE to test it in different browsers. Most people have noticed that Firefox will put a dotted border around links that have been clicked on, here is a simple bit of coding to stop that annoyance.

a:active, a:focus {
outline: 0
}

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A Bit About Bustin' Ass

Today a guy asked em where I got the energy to manage a graphic design firm that creates 4 publications weekly, manage a web design company, and run my own business, Goatsmilktavern Stusios. I gave him some spill about it being about the "end goal". I have thought about his question all day and would like to thank him for forcing me to reflect on the topic of "bustin' ass". The true answer is love of what I do and ambition. I would like to talk about the effort involved in design and SEO.

The job of a designer is to constantly study, surf the web and notice cool things and effective things. You can never stop improving your trade, I don't know everything, and I know that. I don't think I will ever know everything, but I am always willing to learn. Designers should spend a little time everyday in the many tutorial sites across the web trying to learn a new trick everyday. This goes for print design and web design.

SEO is a different creature all together. Your job as a SEO provider is never done, rankings change hundreds of times each day. At 5pm I had the top 2 positions for "new orleans seo" and 2 minutes ago one of my SEO pages fell to page 3. I will work on it, that is what we do. SEO is a constant battle and you need to strap in whenever one of you pages falls behind and pull it up.

In the world of design and SEO, hard work and constant education can go a long way, never get complacent. Technology and methods are constantly changing, if you stop to breathe for a minute, you may get lost.

Read industry blogs and participate in the community, become part of the movements ahead. People will begin to recognize your name, and if your input is valued then so are you.

Keep "bustin' ass" and your efforts will pay-off.

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The Store, New Orleans CBD Restaurant

This post is mainly just to get the web site for The Store indexed, but I could take a moment to talk about the power of Blogger. I personally like Wordpress much better than I do Blogger, but one day I realized, Google owns Blogger. If you have a Blogger blog that has frequent updates, Google will crawl it every time you ping a new post. So I will keep this blog active to get new sites indexed as well as a place to rant about SEO.

Over on the Wordpress blog, I went on and on about how web sites are more than just online business cards, that was for people interested in or already own a web site. This site has more "how to" type information. I enjoy writing about SEO and will continue to do so here.

The Store will be opening Monday, August 6th. I hope the best for all New Orleans businesses, especially restaurants with great food.

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Keyword Research: The Competition

One of the most important thing to know when going into a SEO campaign is how much work is going to be involved. I would never advise anyone not to partake in a good fight, it could be fun, but you should always know if you will need to pack a lunch. When you research your keywords and have a good list of what you are going to use, check out the competition for the phrases.

First thing you need to do is check out the keyword density of the competing site. Look at the amount of text, meta tags and alt tags. You should take serious notes about every page and apply these numbers to your site. You have to beat them in this category, no questions. This research will give you a serious, temporary advantage. The key to maintaining top positions is keeping track of what the competition is doing to catch up.

Search for the keywords you have in mind and check out the top sites. Look at how many pages they have indexed (site:www.sitename.com), if they have 300 pages to their site and you only have 12, you will need to either strap in for a long one, or put it on the back burner. The size of the site matters in terms of relevant internal links. You should also check out the page rank of those pages.

Next, look at the amount and quality of inbound links the competition has. The link:www.sitename.com method will show you the links that Google has indexed, and some people say only inks with a PR<4 show up. Download a good SEO browser plugin for your favorite open source browser, they tend to show you the inbound links recognized by all the major search engines. Taking note of how many inbound links the site has will help you evaluate how much effort you need to put into link building. If the competition has thousands of quality inbound links, you may want to hold off on that keyword for a bit, until you have enough momentum to gain big links. If the competition has only a few links, you may be able to get by with a few blog comments and a reciprocal exchange.

Lastly, watch the site for a while. Do they make regular updates? If the competition is a stagnant web site, then the search engines may reward you for frequent updates. Fresh content that is chock-full of keywords may be all it takes to push you over the competition.

Giant sites that are as old as the internet itself are not impossible to topple, and if you are like me, you will love the fight. The proper amount of knowledge about the competitions site can go a long way. Just remember, when you do reach the top, don't stop and relax. Your new goal is ensuring your site maintains it's position. SEO is more like a marathon, than a sprint, but there is no finish line. And of course I only encourage whitehat methods, no dirty stuff.

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Relevant Links- Social Bookmarks, Reciprocals & RSS

Over the past few years of studying search engine optimization I have read and been told that my sites need to concentrate on building "relevant" links. I understand the issues with relevant links and trust ranking and avoiding link farms. I also understand that if most of the information on the page is centered around the subject matter of my sites it will help with keyword relevance to the page, but I started thinking about the trends of Social Bookmarks.

"Just when I thought I had it all figured out, I go and start thinking." -Murry Daniels, 2007

I recently added a page to Goatsmilktavern Studios web site that allows people to add their links to my links page, provided they add a reciprocal link on their web site. The system works fine and dandy, but I am linked to sites about everything from vinyl siding to tourism in Turkey. Will this really hurt me under the new algorithm? After all if I submit this post to Digg, will only SEO web sites link to it? I doubt it.

Social bookmarking is a great way to gain a lot of links fast, but how many of them are relevant? I have spent the past week weeding out the irrelevant sites that link to mine, but should I really do that? I mean, some of the sites that are linking to me have some pretty good page rank. If someone with a PR 7 web site picks up my RSS and displays it on their home page about industrial mayonnaise will some of that link juice slide down to my site, or will Google say, "web design & SEO≠industrial mayonnaise" and ignore the link from a powerful site? I am able to control what sites I link out to, but I have no control over who links to me…Can one bad link undo all of my hard work for quality links? I have read on many blackhat blogs that linking to porn and gambling sites can have a negative effect on your PR, but will a link from "Tourism in Turkey" really bring my PR down?

I don't rely on links from social bookmarking or RSS feeds, but they help temporarily. I was just wondering if the algorithm has changed dramatically, or were we wrong for all those years? Will a link to Goatsmilktavern Studios on the front page of Digg kill my page rank if the rest of the diggs are about Paris Hilton and Top Chef? If not, then why are we so worried about relevant links?

Any input would be much appreciated because my freakin' brain hurts when I try to remember the rules of SEO.

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Note about keyword research: Frequency and Distribution

When choosing keywords one must keep in mind the frequency that the targeted term is searched for. You shouldn't optimized your site for a keyword or term that gets only 10 or so searches a month. When using the different keyword tracker tools, look for a high traffic keyword or key term to be the primary focus of your optimization. Leave the words or phrases that get around 100 searches a month to be your secondary keyword for that page. The object of keyword research is to find out what people are searching for when they look for products and services like yours, you can't force people to search for anything.

If you have a new product that no one has ever heard of, it is best not to use the product name as your primary keyword until the brand is established. If this is the case, use terms related to the product, or function of the product.

Remember to use individual landing pages with only a few keywords related to each individual page, don't try to work all your keywords into one page. Optimizing a site is exactly that, optimizing the entire site. You are not just trying to get traffic to your home page.

When building links, route different links to the pages they are most related to. If you business is web design and SEO, you should have one or more pages about web design a a few about SEO. Links from web design firms should go to the web design pages, and links from SEO companies should go to your SEO related pages.

Some niches are harder to break into, so do some background research on the sites that are scoring high for your target terms. Find out how many links they have to that page, the age of the domain, and the keyword density. It is not impossible to break into a niche with established sites, but it will take more onsite and offsite SEO to do it, but don't be scared.

Keyword Density, Spamming and Stuffing

When optimizing a website for the search engines you have to weigh your keyword density and how it effects the quality of your content. The most important thing is providing quality content your readers can use and content that gives them a reason to either come back or link to your website or blog. If your keyword density percentage is too high, it could interfere with the delivery and readability of the content. As a general rule, your keyword density should be between 3-5%, that is just enough to say what you have to say without suspiciously over emphasizing, or repeating the same words over and over again.

Having your keyword density too high, say 10-12%, will interfere your message and could be seen as keyword stuffing to the search engines. Keyword Stuffing is simply that, when your keyword density is so high that no reader can get any use out of the content containing the content.

Good SEO copy:
Goatsmilktavern Studios is a New Orleans based SEO company, we have provided Search Engine Optimization for many clients, whilst keeping up to date on the latest search engine changes. gmtS can design your website in a search engine friendly way and optimize it with the latest SEO strategies.

As you can see this copy delivers a clear statement that is not hindered by the terms SEO and search engine optimization.

Pushing the SEO copy (might not get you banned):
SEO Goatsmilktavern Studios is a New Orleans based SEO, Goatsmilktavern SEO has only Done Search Engine Optimization for many SEO Clients, whilst keeping up to date on the latest SEO and search engine changes, This SEO found designing the sites for SEO Clients, that we could control on their SEO needs. For more on SEO, contact Goatsmilktavern Studios a New Orleans SEO.

That example might not get you banned, but can you see how it is harder to read.

Almost or good chance of being banned by the almighty google:
SEO Goatsmilktavern is a New Orleans based SEO, this SEO has only Done Search Engine Optimisation for large SEO our clients, whilst keeping up to date on the latest SEO and search engine changes, This SEO found designing websites for SEO Clients, we could concentrate on their SEO needs. For more on SEO, contact Goatsmilktavern a New Orleans SEO.

Tags : Seo, Search Engine Optimisation,Search Engine Optimization, New Orleans SEO, SEO in New Orleans, not Cheap SEO

Bad SEO Copy and keyword stuffing (will get you banned)

I stole that pic from Dave Naylor's weblog because there is no way in hell I'm gonna type it on my site.

Keyword spamming is using keywords that are not relevant to your website. For instance if you are selling shoelaces, don't put plasma screen TVs in on your website, it is not relevant and will interfere with you selling shoelaces. The coolest example of this can be found at Matt Cutt's blog.

The website in the example is selling the secret to eternal youth and says that being banned by Google is a conspiracy to cover the truth, and has nothing to do with the invisible text field at the bottom left hand side of the screen.

Here is the text field:

As you can see keyword spamming can look quite sill, and yes, you may get away with it for a while, but you will be "covered-up" by the almighty Google eventually.

My point is, say what you need to say and give your visitors good information and the search engine gods will reward you for helping make the internet a better place. I'm not saying don't do keyword research and don't tailor you content to your KEI, just don't make your copy sound like crap.

Using Google Alerts for SEO

The rel=nofollow experiment has been put on hold for the time being, the 4 weekly publications I make have been taking all my time due to a shortage of manpower. I would like to talk about an important part of my strategy for the experiment, Google Alerts.

Google Alerts is a service provided by Google to tell readers when links have been indexed by their spiders containing keywords set by the user. If you are interested in "internet marketing", you could set an alert to be notified when Google indexes a page containing "internet marketing". You can set the frequency of these notifications so your inbox doesn't fill up with junk from Google.

I am using the service to tell me when a page is indexed with words like "goatsmilktavern" or "new orleans web design". This takes some time out of the pains of discovering which pages with links to gmtS have been indexed.

There are a lot of tools available to you that can be used for SEO, just get creative. Anything to save time and help you with your analytic reports for your clients is a good tool to keep handy.

murrydan, Goatsmilktavern Studios, a New Orleans based web design and internet marketing company.

nofollow tags?

As part of your job as an SEO specialist it is your job to test the limitations of the search engines. I will be performing a series of "experiments" this weekend with websites and blogs that have nofollow tags to see if Google is following them. I have been reading on blogs like Dave Naylor's and Matt Cutts' about how some link juice trickles through the nofollow tags found on some blogs and websites like Wiki. If the nofollow tags don't work this could lead to a few changes in how people SEO their websites. I have always used blog and forum post to get indexed, but never used them as a link building strategy. I should have a report by the middle of next week.

New Orleans Web Design and SEO

Quicky: About Choosing a Domain Name

There are many theories about choosing a good domain name. Domain name has very little to do with your influence on the search engines, content carries more weight. For example Goatsmilktavern.com is doing just fine in the SERP's for "New Orleans SEO", "New Orleans Search Engine Optimization", and so on. This site is doing well because my content is about SEO, but I don't even show up in the top 100 for "goats milk". According to most SEO theories I should rank quite highly for a search about "places that sell goats milk"

When choosing a domain name you should consider these things and your SEO should do just fine.

• Easy to remember


• Easy to type, Goatsmilktavern is a stretch on this one


• Keep it short, www.new-orleans-web-design-search-engine-optimization-blah-blah-blah.com would be a bad domain name


• Branding, going with your company name is always a good idea to get the name out there


• Domain name should be unambiguous


• The name should reflect something about the business or services provided

Choosing the best domain for your site shouldn't be a struggle, when you envision your new site it should just come to you. Unless you are in a highly competitive niche, you should be able to get away with anything.

Food for Thought.

I came across a post at Dave Naylor's website that got me thinking. It seems the W3C website is not using nofollow tags on their "registered members" page, so is this considered a paid link?

W3C is transferring a lot of link juice to the companies that "register" with them, including Google. According to their new "law", will they penalize these "members" for a paid link?

Read more HERE.

About Keyword Selection "Phase 2- Refining Core Terms"

Now that you have brainstormed and discovered the basic keywords that you will be using, it is time to refine that list into a list of keywords that people are actually searching for and them map them to your pages. During the brainstorming process we didn't think about what people actually search for, now we will discover these magic words as they relate to your site. This phase of the process will require the use of a few online tools, don't worry, we are gonna stick to the free ones.

The Overture Keyword Tool is a great place to start for this step in the process, but Wordtracker is one of the best. You can also use the keyword selection tool at Google Adwords, just sign-up for adwords, and use the tool, you don't have to give them any money.

Keyword Clusters
Now, to use the keyword selection tool, just enter in your keyword one at a time and we are gonna look for the top 10 variations of that individual keyword. Examine the variations of our keyword and note whether or not they are relevant to your web site, if so write them down. These will be your keyword "clusters". You want about 10-15 clusters that you know for certain people are searching for.

Prioritizing Your Keywords
Let's talk about prioritizing these clusters, some of these keyword clusters that you have stumbled upon maybe niches that are impossible to crack without spending thousands of dollars on links. I would go to the big 3 search engines and just scope out the pagerank and amount of links the competition has. If #9 has a pagerank of 9 and 300,000 inbound links, maybe you should take another approach.

Modifiers and Localization
For each cluster, you need to come up with a list of modifiers like "free". Go back to your keyword tool of choice, and add a simple modifier to a keyword, and look at the top 10-20, you will see "free", "tips, "help, and so on. Write these down, we are going to add these modifiers to to our keyword clusters whenever possible.

Localization means adding your city and state, or region to the clusters so your neighbors will be able to find your services in their area.

The next phase we will cover will be "Mapping Keyword Clusters to Pages.

Author: Murry Daniels
Murry Daniels is the owner of Goatsmilktavern Studios, a web design and search engine optimization company located in New Orleans, LA.

Free Reciprocal Link Submission at Goatsmilktavern Studios

Goatsmilktavern Studios has added free reciprocal link submission to their website. The process is simple and painless. Create a link to your website or blog in a matter of seconds, all we ask is that you place a reciprocal link on your website or blog first, then, BAM, you have a link to your website or blog.

This is the easiest SEO on the web. Submit your link to Goatsmilktavern Studios today.

About Keyword Selection "Phase 1- Brainstorming"

Keyword research is the cornerstone of SEO, without good keyword research, your chances of a well optimized website are pretty slim. Keyword research is no longer just for a long list of terms in your keyword tag, but from an optimization standpoint, it will dictate the wording of most of your websites content.

Understanding keyword research and development begins with understanding how your clientele use the search engines. First of all you should brainstorm with a pencil and paper and come up with 5-10 "major" keywords that best describe your website, these should be one or two word phrases, like "web design" or "SEO". These 5-10 keywords will be the backbone of your keyword development strategy.

Core Terms
Now, using the 5-10 "major" keywords you should expand them to 2-4 word phrases, try to get about 10-20 of these. These "core terms" will not cover all of the searches people use to get to your sit, but they will cover about 60% of them. Try to keep some sort of organization with the core terms under the major keywords, when doing keyword research organization is very important. I use diagrams to show the relationship between keywords to make sure they overlap and cover every topic on the site I am optimizing.

Singulars and Plurals
Search engines can't discern between singular and plural versions of a word (yet?), so you need to account for all the people who search for "concert ticket" and those who search for "concert tickets". Keep in mind some singulars and plurals are not as important as others, like "shoe" and "shoes".

Stemming and Misspellings
Stemming and misspellings are a major pain, but let's face it, most of us either don't look when we type, or are bad spellers. I put these two into the same category because they are the "real world" problems you will encounter when optimizing your keyword selection and usage.

Stemming involves words with a suffix, like "web design" and "web designer". Stemming can include all the "-ing, -ed, -er" versions of your keywords. When you write your optimized content for your web site, try to use as many versions of your keywords as possible to cover all the potential searches.

A couple of tips to discovering misspellings are to type the word phonetically, leave out letters, or use letters next to it on the keyboard.

Stop Words
Stop words are common usage words like "a, and, the", there are hundreds of stop words, so just use your head when you look for them. Try not to use stop words in places like title tags and heading tags.

Related Terms
The last step in brainstorming is finding related terms. Related terms are keyword phrases that are closely related to your website, but not exactly what your site is about. Optimizing your related terms will help with your offsite optimization efforts like link popularity and link relevance.

The next phase will deal with finding important keywords you didn't find in the brainstorming process, and refining your list of keywords.

Author: Murry Daniels
Murry Daniels is the owner of Goatsmilktavern Studios, a web design and search engine optimization company located in New Orleans, LA.

Goatsmilktavern SERP results

Check this out! I just checked my rankings in the Google. SERPs, I am doing pretty good. I haven't really done that much offsite SEO to the Goatsmilktavern Website.

I had intentions of really slamming the search engines when I was done writing all of the content for the site, but I am creeping up without any links. I really thought it would be harder than this considering I am competing with other, larger SEO companies. When I start my link campaign I should be on top of every key phrase I am targeting. It appears that "New Orleans web design" will be the hardest nice to bust into simply because of the age of the other sites (mine is only a year old). I would like to concentrate on SEO, but I still love being a web designer.

I made a post on my other blog that is more fitting for this one about how to get indexed in Google in 24 hours. you can find it here. The company I work for is now selling websites and I had to get one indexed fast, and it only took me 1 blog post and about 4 hours of waiting to do it.

I am working on a series of tips to move your site up the search engines, so look for them here soon.

New blog added to gmtS

I have added a new blog to the Goatsmilktavern website. This blog will be for posts dealing with projects by Goatsmilktavern Studios. You can find it at http://neworleanswebdesign.wordpress.com.

SEO- 9 Ridiculously Easy Steps to the Top 10

Search Engine Optimization companies are making a fortune by doing the menial work that is overlooked by many designers. It is ridiculously easy to do most of the work done by most SEO companies, all you have to do is create good habits.

There are 9 main points you should focus on:

• Keywords
• URL Text
• Description META tags
• TITLE tags
• Image Names
• ALT tags
• Header tags
• Content
• Hyperlinks

The focus of these 9 steps is to load your pages with as many "keywords" as possible.

Keywords
Keywords are the most important aspect of good SEO, this is where you tell the Search Engines what your site is about. Search Engines use an algorithm to determine the "Keyword Density" of your site, this formula is:

Total Words ÷ Keywords= Keyword Density

Use this formula on your competitors web site and see how they score, then aim to beat that score.

Choose keywords that best relate to the information, products or services that you are offering. For instance, if I am designing a site about "Web Design", I want my site to include the words "Web Design" as many times as possible.

However, most people don't just search for just one word, they type phrases, so you should consider the phrases that best suit your sites target market. For example, if I am creating a site about "Web Design" in New Orleans, I would include "New Orleans web design" in my keywords. Another way around this is to not separate my keywords with commas, just use spaces, and the Search Engines will make the phrases for you. The most important thing to remember is that the content of each page is different, so only use keywords pertaining to that page.

URL Text
When you name a new page you have the option to call it anything you could possibly think of, why not se a keyword? After all, the URL address is the first things a search engine comes across when indexing your pages. You have to remember content doesn't come easy to everyone, so you gotta slip in your keywords when the process gives you an easy one.

Description META tags
These tags are dwindling in importance since Search Engines are now looking at content, but every little bit counts.

Optimize your meta tags to match your content, products, and services, and the Search Engines that still look at meta data will reward your efforts.

TITLE Tags
Title tags are the tags that tell the Search Engine the title, or formal description of the document or page. This is the word or phrase that is seen at the top of the browser window. The most important rule about title tags is, don't put anything between the title tags but keywords. Once again this is an easy time to slip in your keywords, so don't miss out.

Image Names
As I said before, content doesn't come easy to everyone, so slip in your keywords whenever possible, this applies to image names. If you are saving a picture of a guy working on a computer for your web design web site, don't call it "some_dude.jpg", call it "web_site_design.jpg". The Search engine will look at the code for the site and see the image pertains to the content of the site and this will be another relevant element on that particular page. You have to take the easy ones when you are given a chance.

ALT tags
Alt tags are keywords that you can attach to images, giving more weight to the image since Search Engines can't analyze the content of the image itself. Here is a chance to slip in more keywords without writing great content, use it.

Header tags
Heading tags are associated with the bold font that leads into a section of text. Like this:

Web Design
Web Design Inc. offers custom web site designs…

Your heading tags should only be keywords, and should be presented in the order that your META tags follow.

H1= first meta tag, H2= second meta tag…

Try to utilize all 6 heading tags on each page to ensure maximum page optimization.

Content
As every expert will tell you, "Content is King." Each web page should have at least 350 words on it, and the more the better, but keep in mind the formula for keyword density. You don't want to fill a page with 1500 words of jibba-jabba and only 5 keywords in it. Some people get hung-up on how browsers display text, and use images with text in them because they want a cool font, but browsers can't read the text embedded in images, so this content ads no weight to the page in a Search Engines eyes.

Linkbaiting is the new trend among high ranking sites. Linkbaiting means writing quality content, or articles that other web sites can display on their pages as long as they give credit, and a link to your site.

You don't have to be a vi or emac expert to write good web content, just be thoughtful of how you word things and incorporate your keywords.

Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks are text links to other pages on your site. The rules of SEO and hyperlinks are easy:

• Use hyperlinks so the Search Engine will have a text link to follow to the next page
• Don't use one word links, use long link phrases, preferably keyword phrases
• Use bullets, or some sort of small image that you can attach an tag to, this will ad more importance to the link, and throw in a couple of free keywords for you.

Keep these 9 aspects in mid when designing a site, and you are sure to have a leg up on the competition.

Murry Daniels is the owner of Goatsmilktavern Studios, a web design and internet marketing company in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Welcome to SEO-NOLA

Here you will find articles from aroud the web about search engine optimization (SEO) and web design. I will do all the hard work for you and find great articles to help you optimize your site, all you have to do is come here and read them. I will try to post something new every day. For more information go to Goatsmilktavern Studios