Dec 8, 2009

SEO: The Most Important Thing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a set of techniques that one needs to apply to one's website to make it search engine friendly. There is also a set of techniques one needs to do to increase the site's popularity (i.e. back links). All this is done in relation to a particular set of keywords. In other words, you can't SEO-optimize a site in general. You would always SEO-optimize it for specific keywords, for example: "SEO Ottawa", "Ottawa SEO", "Search Engine Optimization Ottawa", and similar related keyword phrases.

It is commonly said that SEO cannot be done well by doing just one thing. For example, you can optimize your META data and copy all you want, but if you have few back links pointing at your site, your SEO will always be poor.

And yet, if you were to do just one thing for best SEO, what would it be? I'd say, clearly, build back links. Quality back links, that is.

How many back links do you need to have a noticeable effect on your SEO?

There is no scientifically proven answer to this question, but in my experience, a site with 3900 back links usually gets PR7 (page rank) on Google, which grants it to be displayed in SERPs (search engine results pages) as one of the very first links for very competitive keywords. But in that, there is always a good number of high quality links, i.e. the ones coming from .edu or .gov domains or large media outlets or other "important" destinations. So the number of back links matters significatnly less than quality of those links, but it does matter. Here is more information on this topic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-link-command-busting-the-myths

Note that PR7 is a very - very - high rank. For comparison, Yahoo has PR of 8. So, for an average business, PR5 usually guarantees a very good SEO positioning on Google. Anything over that is simply fantastic, if you can get it. In my experience, back links are the most influential factor in Google's ranking decisions.

I did notice, however, that in certain instances sites that have PR0 (zero) still get displayed very high on SERPs, and, in fact, Googlers themselves were open about the fact that the page rank (PR) does not always play the main role (whatever that means!). Since noone really knows exactly how Google makes ranking decisions (it is, indeed, a very well kept secret), we can only form opinions based on our observations. And in this case, my observations are in agreement with the mainstream SEO community: link building is the most important thing for your SEO. And quality links, i.e. the ones coming from reputable outlets, are best.

So get started at it!

And if you need advice on how to build quality back links quickly and cost-effectively, do not hesitate to contact me via my main SEO Ottawa site.

Apr 22, 2009

Quick SEO Audit: How to Check Your Main SEO Metrics

To do a quick SEO audit on a site, you need to check the following metrics:

- PageRank (PR) given by Google
- number of pages indexed by major search engines (this metric is called "search engine saturation"): Google, Yahoo, and MSN
- number of back links indexed by major search engines (this metric is called "link popularity").

How to check SEO metrics on Google and Yahoo:

To check indexed pages and links on Google and Yahoo, you can use these sites:

- website.grader.com
- marketleap.com

You can also check directly with Google and Yahoo. Enter the following information into the search bar on these search engines (no spaces):

site:www.yourdomainname.com
link:www.yourdomainname.com

Note that Google never shows the right number of links it had indexed for your site (always considerably fewer). Yahoo, on the other hand, shows all back links it finds.

How to check backlinks on MSN - April 2009

For MSN, the word is that they no longer show backlinks data. But I tried one thing for my client, and I think it worked. I entered this information into the MSN search bar: who links to www.myclientsite.com. I checked the results on every page manually, and they seem to be all valid, i.e. MSN showed me approximatley the same number of links pointing to my client's site from other websites as did Google. One small glitch was that it included two internal links in the results, but this is common for all backlinks checker tools; they are never precise.

If you need help with SEO or SEO training, contact me at http://www.annatulchinsky.com

Apr 17, 2009

Free Design Tools: Excellent Open-source Code, Image, Photo Editing Tools

Aptana
Wonderful code editor. Includes remote editing via ftp. Aptana Studio is a complete web development environment that combines powerful authoring tools with a collection of online hosting and collaboration services that help you and your team do more.

Gimp
Excellent photo editor and general bitmap tool. GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. (more...)

Inkscape
An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

If you need help with SEO, AdWords PPC campaigns, or related issues, contact me via my official website at http://www.annatulchinsky.com

Apr 4, 2009

Free Keyword Research

You've probably heard about Wordtracker by now. It is one of the industry's oldest keyword research and analysis tools. I've used them for years and have always been satisfied with the findings. They used to charge $8 per day, which was a perfect option for small business owners who only have one website to look after, and one day was more than sufficient for a simple keyword research. A couple of years ago, however, Wordtracker changed their pricing policy and the $8 option got discontinued. It now costs around $50 for one month to use their tool, which, in times when people cancel their gym memberhsip and discontinue newspaper subscriptions, is a substantial amount. But don't despair, there is a FREE alternative - available for now!

Use Wordtracker's free tool which they call a "keyword suggestion tool" http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/.

I compared the results between their paid and free keyword tools and decided that in a lot of cases I can get by without using the paid tool (even though I have a subsription to use it). Here is a few tips on how to do a basic keyword research sufficient for most small businesses:

  1. Type in the most generic word in the Wordtracker free keyword suggestion tool. For example, if you are searching for "searching engine optimization techniques" or "seo techniques", key in "search engine optmization" or "seo". You will receive a list of words related to this query with a correspomding number of searches. The number as such does not mean much, but you can use it in relative terms. Type "health" or "weather" (or some other keyword that is bound to be highly popular) and note the number attached to the first 2-3 keywords returned by the tool. Then type a couple of keywords related to your topic again and note the difference in numbers. This will tell you how popular your topic is on the Internet and how much interest you can potentially expect. This will be your benchmark, so to speak.
  2. Then key in a few generic keywords in relation to your subbject matter and scroll through the results, paying attention to singular versus plural, adjective before or after, and similar occurences. Note the smallest number in each case.
  3. Then go on Google and key in the same keywords, recording the number of returned search results pages (SERP) in each case. This will tell you how bad your competition is for each keyword.
  4. Go back to Wordtracker's free keyword tool, perform 5-7 very generic keyword searches, covering as many important aspects of your business as you can. For each generic query, from the list of keywords that Wordtracker would generate, record those that would relate to your topic as closely as possible and record the corresponding number.
  5. Then go back to Google and key in the same keywords, recording the number of SERP pages. Copy all this info, including all keywords returned by Wordtracker, in an Excel file.
  6. Look at the Wordtracker numbers (they represent the degree of popularity of your topic among users) and look at the Google numbers (they represent the amount of competition you have). To create a comparison benchmark, type some generic keywords that are bound to be highly popular with users, then type those you expect to be somewhat popular, and then those not popular at all. Note the numbers in all cases, note them on both Google and Wordtracker. This will give you a good approximation of how to interpret all other numbers (note that are over 23,000,000,000 web pages indexed by Google in total, that is 23 billion!).
  7. Depending on how competitive your area of business is (travel, for example, is much more competitive, than nursing), scroll through the list of keywords returned by Wordtracker and note the corresponding level of competition (Google's SERPs). If your area is highly competitive, select the keywords that are not as popular with users, i.e. not among the first ones on the Wordtracker list, but which would have as fewer competitive SERP pages returned by Googe. You should get 5-15 keyword phrases in total. This will be your sweet spot for both SEO and SEM!
  8. Start Google AdWords campaign and pay for those of your keywords that are most competitive, while trying to optimize your site organically for those keywords that are least competitive. Or, if you have no SEO budget or time, focus on AdWords exclusively.
  9. Run your 'sweet spot" keywords on AdWords for a 2-4 weeks.
  10. Once you had a chance to test and tweak and optimize your AdWords PPC campaign to correct and exclude your own mistakes, pause those keywords that have been consistently performing poorly (i.e. got no impressions and no clicks) and onvest all your budget in the best performing keywords. Make sure to track all results via Google Analytics (set goals and funnels).

If you need help with SEO, AdWords PPC campaigns, or related issues, contact me via my official website at http://www.annatulchinsky.com

Additional Keyword Research Tools:

Keyword Discovery (free trial with limited capabilities)
WordTracker (free trial with limited capabilities)
Keyword Spy (free trial with limited capabilities)
Spyfu (free trial available)
Yahoo Site Explorer (free)
Yahoo Keyword Suggest Tool (free)
Google Keyword Tool (free)
Google Suggest (free)
Google Sponsored Links (free)
Google Trends (free)
Alexa (free)
Website Grader (free)
Yahoo Site Explorer (free)
Search.Yahoo.Com (free, similar to Google Suggest)
Google Site Analyzer (free)
Who Links 2 Me (free)
ExactFactor (free)
SEO Tools (free)