SEO on a Shoe String

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) may be a time consuming project, but it does not need to be expensive. It all depends on how eager you are and whether or not you are prepared to do some homework. In times of economic crisis, I think, we'll find more and more people willing to do their own homework so cut costs and save money.

Before we talk about how to conduct a successful SEO project on a shoe string, let's take a look at what a typical cost of an SEO project ran up to now:

Small SEO Project for a Non-specialized Consumer-oriented Website

- keyword analysis - somewhere between $250 and $1000

- 10 pages of new content @ 350 words + 5 outbound links per page = $500 (general consumer topics only!),

- 100 inbound links @ 12 per link = $1200

- 50 additional outbound links @7 per link = $350

- site's folder structure optimization = $250

- 20 existing pages optimization @25 per page = $525

- PPC AdWords campaign (setup and management) = $300 for 6 months

- custom landing pages = $150 per page (one page per campaign)

- blog postings (social media marketing) @ $10 per blog = $200

- PR distribution @ $300 per release distribution plus $200 for release writing (2-3 paragraphs)

TOTAL: roughly $4000

It is also important to consider that it will take 2-3 months for the SEO project to be completed and bring results. It is also important to consider that a typical SEO project would position your site for only a few keyword phrases (1-3 on average) for this price. Furthermore, some of the costs are recurrent, such as PPC campaign management. All this can add up to a handsome sum!

So what can you do to cut costs without sacrificing quality. Here is a plan:

- purchase $80 monthly subscription to WordTracker and check to see whether your keywords are really popular with users. If not, select other keywords. This is the most important step in your entire SEO campaign. Expect to spend 2-3 hours

- set up your own PPC AdWords campaign, just follow Google's instructions. Use Google keyword tool to add more keywords to your list. use Google Suggest tool to see how popular these keywords are (in addition to WordTracker). Use Google Sponsored Links tool to see who else is "buying" these keywords. Expect to spend 2-3 hours on campaing setup and 2-3 hours on additional keyword research.

- Note: the effectiveness of your SEO campaign is indirect correlation to the amount of time and care you devote to your keyword analysis.

- Subscribe to Google Analytics (free) and link your AdWords account to it (follow step-by-step instructions provided by Google)

- Watch your statistics for a couple of weeks and note which keywords generate the most clicks and impressions. If you get enough impressions, but no clicks, then you need to edit your ad, tweak to make it more enticing.

- Find a good foreign-based partner to build one-way back links. Back links are the most important thing for your SEO project. Make sure to partner with a reputable SEO firm. Expect to spend roughly $10 per link. The more links the better.

- Write your own press release. Do not make it too formal. ePR is different from traditional PR in that the style can be simple and conversational. Get it reviewed by your family members and friends. Use free PR distribution services: http://www.annatulchinsky.com/Resources_SEO_Blogs_Social_Media.htm . Use several of them at once. Make sure to include a link back to your site! Create and distribute your press releases every two months, as most sites do not store documents for more than 3-6 months, so you'll use your back links if you don't distribute press releases regularly. Store all your press releases on your own website as well, under a separate section.

- Based on the best performing keywords you've discovered through Google Analytics and Google AdWords, create 5-7 pages of content, 500 words per page, and make sure to repeat those keywords IDENTICALLY as often throughout the page as you can without sacrificing quality of your text.

- Do not worry about META tags, ALT tags, etc.

- If you do want to do some "optimization", the main thing for your home-made SEO project is to re-name all your web pages by including your most important keywords. So, for example, instead of 'Products.html', rename your file to be: 'Products_my_best_keywords.html'

- If you want to be very responsible, change your page Title tag and H1s to include your best keywords as well.

- Include these keywords inside the links you provide as additional resources. For example, instead of saying: for more information, click here. Say: "for more information about products with my keywords, please visit our products keywords page".

- It is very good to use links in the body of all your pages. Just don't forget to use your best keywords

- Focus on press releases and back links. Use your keywords there as well!

- Ask as many people as you can to bookmark your site on Del.icio.us. This alone will boost your ranking! Just don't expect everyone to comply. It might take 2-3 weeks before you get 20 people to bookmark your site. The more bookmarks you have, the better.

- So, in a nutshell: here is the work you'd need to do for your SEO project:


1) run a PPC campaign on Google AdWords, having done a good keyword research
2) create a Google Analytics account and link it with your AdWords account
3) create 10 pages of text for your website containing your most desired keywords, based on what you've observed on Google AdWords. Place outbound links inside those pages leading to reputable sites in your industry. All your links should contain your best keywords as well.
4) write a short press release (350-500 words) and submit it to free press release distribution sources. Submit to a few of them, not just one.
5) get friends to bookmark your website
6) build one-way back links, continuously. Check results: www.marketleap.com

TOTAL: $80 without back links. For back links, even a 100 links would generate great results. So if we assume $12 per link, your total would run to $1280. That's 70% savings compared to $4000. And if you skip link building, but capitalize on PR distribution, your costs will remain under $100.

If you work hard, the whole project can be completed in 2 weeks, as opposed to 2 months. Why? Because you don't have to rely and wait for other people, you don't need to depend on their schedule.

Note that your SEO results might take another couple of weeks to show. And your SEO efforts need to be continuous. However, the bulk of your SEO efforts, 80% of it, will be done in the first 2 weeks. The rest is maintenance: more PR distribution and more back links! Note that by storing your PR releases on your website, you automatically add more content to your site.

Good luck, and if you need help, contact me via http://www.annatulchinsky.com. Your first 30 minutes are free.

SEO Tips for White Papers and Case Studies

If you are responsible for lead generation campaigns at a B2B company, white papers and case studies would always be your best SEO tools.

Assuming that you have already done your keyword analysis, here are some of the things you need to do in order to achieve good SEO results with your white papers and case studies:

1. Try to get your site to contain as many static pages as possible (indexable URLs)
2. Arrange all files in as many directories as you can, do not place them all in the root.
3. Name your directories and your files using your most desired keywords (separate words with underscores)
4. Include your keywords in all Page Titles
5. Include your company name in all Page Titles
6. Do not worry about META tags if you don't know how to add them, your Page Title is your most important tag
7. Include your keywords in H1s, H2, and H3s. Make sure you use these tags!
8. Create a style format where each title of a PDF document is accompanied by a short abstract, as opposed to being a simple link, and use keywords
9. Add both an 'abstract' and a 'summary' component to your white paper template, this will allow you to use your keywords multiple times without annoying your readers
10. Add a 'table of contents' component to your white paper template, this is a great way to repeat your keywords again
11. Add a 'company name' component in the footer of your white paper template and provide your website URL
12. Interlink your site's internal pages as often as you can (e.g. use margins and place "Related Info" boxes with links to other pages on your site)
13. Your links should have your keyword embedded within, do not use “click here”
14. Try to ensure that each page (i.e. each URL) has approximately 500 words on it with your most important keywords repeated 10-12 times per page
15. Make sure all your press releases contain your most important keywords and are published in full on your website
16. Give out your white papers to your partners and customers and try to get them to post it on their websites
17. Add an RSS component to your website and place each white paper there
18. Register your RSS feed in as many RSS directories as possible
19. Convince your management to allow you to distribute your RSS content via PRweb.com or PR.com. Do this in addition to using your company's official PR firm.
20. Use PayPerPost and similar services to earn back links on the cheap (bloggers will publish comments about your company and a link to your website on their blogs; make sure to request permanent links)


Good luck and call me if you need help with your SEO and Internet Marketing projects, remember your first 30 minutes is free of charge: http://www.annatulchinsky.com

http://sites.google.com/site/trainingsitenow/seootttawaannatulchinsky

A Google Prototype for a Precision Image Search

SAN FRANCISCO — Google researchers say they have a software technology intended to do for digital images on the Web what the company’s original PageRank software did for searches of Web pages.

On Thursday at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing, two Google scientists presented a paper describing what the researchers call VisualRank, an algorithm for blending image-recognition software methods with techniques for weighting and ranking images that look most similar.

Although image search has become popular on commercial search engines, results are usually generated today by using cues from the text that is associated with each image.

Despite decades of effort, image analysis remains a largely unsolved problem in computer science, the researchers said. For example, while progress has been made in automatic face detection in images, finding other objects such as mountains or tea pots, which are instantly recognizable to humans, has lagged.

“We wanted to incorporate all of the stuff that is happening in computer vision and put it in a Web framework,” said Shumeet Baluja, a senior staff researcher at Google, who made the presentation with Yushi Jing, another Google researcher. The company’s expertise in creating vast graphs that weigh “nodes,” or Web pages, based on their “authority” can be applied to images that are the most representative of a particular query, he said.

The research paper, “PageRank for Product Image Search,” is focused on a subset of the images that the giant search engine has cataloged because of the tremendous computing costs required to analyze and compare digital images. To do this for all of the images indexed by the search engine would be impractical, the researchers said. Google does not disclose how many images it has cataloged, but it asserts that its Google Image Search is the “most comprehensive image search on the Web.”

The company said that in its research it had concentrated on the 2000 most popular product queries on Google’s product search, words such as iPod, Xbox and Zune. It then sorted the top 10 images both from its ranking system and the standard Google Image Search results. With a team of 150 Google employees, it created a scoring system for image “relevance.” The researchers said the retrieval returned 83 percent less irrelevant images.

Google is not the first into the visual product search category. Riya, a Silicon Valley start-up, introduced Like.com in 2006. The service, which refers users to shopping sites, makes it possible for a Web shopper to select a particular visual attribute, such as a certain style of brown shoes or a style of buckle, and then be presented with similar products available from competing Web merchants.

Rather than relying on a text query, the service focuses on the ability to match shapes or objects that might be hard to describe in writing, said Munjal Shah, the chief executive of Riya.

“I think what they’re trying to accomplish is largely impossible,” he said. “Our belief is, there is not large-scale solutions.”

Mr. Shah said there had been a number of technology demonstrations by Google Labs researchers, such as a project in 2005 that used machine learning techniques to recognize the gender of a person in an image. However, the company has been slow to deploy its research, he said.

If you need Internet Marketing or SEO advice, contact me at http://www.annatulchinsky.com

Yahoo Goes to Bed with Google

Another shot has been fired in the bitter battle between Microsoft and Yahoo.

The Internet company plans to announce Wednesday afternoon that it will begin a test advertising partnership with Google, people briefed on the plan told DealBook. In the experiment, expected to last for two weeks and applying only to users in the United States, Yahoo will display Google-provided ads alongside its own search results, these people said.

The move is the latest salvo in the two-month battle for control of Yahoo, as the ailing Internet pioneer seeks to thwart Microsoft’s bid – or at least force the software giant to raise its $42 billion price.

Depending on the results of the experiment, Yahoo hopes that it may be able to use it as proof that it can generate additional revenue that would justify a higher bid.

In recent months, Yahoo has discussed possible partnerships or combinations with Google, Time Warner’s AOL and the News Corporation in attempts to fend off Microsoft. Some of those conversations are continuing, people familiar with the matter previously told The New York Times.

Google has long generated far more revenue for every search than competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft. Last year, Yahoo unveiled a new search advertising system, called Panama, which was intended to close the gap with Google. While the system has helped bolster Yahoo’s search revenues, it is not as effective as Google’s.

Some investors have urged Yahoo to outsource its search and search advertising system to Google for years, as it could help Yahoo increase revenues and cut costs. Yahoo executives, however, have resisted the move, saying that search was an essential piece of the company’s business.

After Microsoft made its offer, Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, called his Yahoo counterpart, Jerry Yang, to offer his help in fending off the Microsoft bid. A search or search advertising partnership has been an important part of their discussion, according to people familiar with the situation. Mr. Yang and Yahoo president Susan Decker visited Google in the past two weeks, said a person briefed on their visit.

While the test is intended to show how much Yahoo could earn from such a partnership, legal experts have warned that a broader search or search advertising pact with Google could pose antitrust issues, as it would expand Google’s already dominant position in those businesses.

Does this mean that Google may actually buy Yahoo in the future?

Google's Selling SEM and SEO via Performics Angers SEO Community

Companies that provide services for improving Web sites' search-engine rankings and running effective search-engine ad campaigns have a new competitor: Google.

Bundled in the DoubleClick acquisition came Performics, which provides search-engine marketing (SEM) and search-engine optimization (SEO) services.

This has created concern for SEM and SEO service providers, which now face Google, a key partner, also as a rival.

"It puts us in the awkward position of competing with Google's own [SEM/SEO] agency for client accounts," said Lance Loveday, CEO of Closed Loop Marketing, an SEO and SEM firm.

Over the past seven years, as Google's popularity with advertisers and end-users has boomed, so has the SEM and SEO business. Marketers began spending significant amounts to advertise on search engines, primarily Google, and they realized that they needed help from SEM firms to design, fine-tune, and track the effectiveness of those campaigns. At the same time, those marketers recognized that they also had to make sure that their companies' Web sites ranked well on search engines when users entered keywords relevant to their businesses, which is what SEO service providers specialize in.

Before the DoubleClick acquisition, SEM and SEO firms saw themselves as providers of complementary services to Google, but now that Performics is part of Google, things have changed.

For starters, there is a concern that Performics will get special access to inside information about Google's search-engine algorithms, allowing Performics to provide SEO services that are more effective that its competitors'.

Then there is the worry that Google will push its in-house Performics SEM services at highly discounted prices, or maybe even free, in direct competition with SEM service providers.

Due to these and other clash points, SEM and SEO providers say their relationship with Google will inevitably get strained. This will likely be bad for Google, considering that SEM providers have a lot of influence over how their clients allocate their search advertising budget.

But there are other reasons why holding on to Performics could be bad for Google, and they have to do with perceived potential conflicts of interest that could spook Google advertising clients.

For example, Performics is supposed to help its clients get the highest ROI from their paid search campaigns by recommending they spend what's necessary -- and not more -- in order to get their desired results. But Google's business is to sell as much advertising as possible, said Scott Buresh, CEO and owner of SEO/SEM firm Medium Blue.

Closed Loop's Loveday also foresees Performics clients worrying whether Performics will now have an incentive to increase their spending on Google advertising for the benefit of its parent company. "Now, the reality is that Google has the dominant [search advertising] platform and in most cases Google probably should get most of a client's search campaign budget, but there's definitely an appearance of a conflict of interest," Loveday said.

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