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

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.

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.

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.