Alaska’s Best SEO

Link building is the cornerstone of a good organic SEO campaign. Having good quality links (links that have good descriptive keywords in the link) should be your number one goal in getting ranking, right behind good content.

So how do you build links? Easy. You find sites that relate to yours (industry related, bloggers, customers, friends, and so forth) and ask them to link back to your site.

How man of these have you seen (if not…you should definitely consider working your SEO) the following e-mails? The example has had all the senders information removed:

Dear Webmaster,I need PR 2+ links for my site.

My Linking Details;

URL: [THEIR DOMAIN]
Title: Burglar Alarms
Description: Burglar alarms for do it yourselfers. Top brands and best prices for burglar alarms!

Linkback Site: [TOTALLY DIFFERENT DOMAIN] PR 3

And Let me know when our link is live. At this time I am accepting links from all themes. (except adult, casino, gambling)

Looking forward to hear from you soon.

Thanks and Regards,
[THEIR DOMAIN]

Contacting a webmaster is easy, however you don’t want to convey a bad mesaage or worse look like a spammer, possibly loosing not only the link…but also having some blogger write a post about how you dared to spam them (many bloggers can be pretty mean on their blogs!).

So here are some simple tricks to getting a site to link to you:

• Keep your e-mail to 25 words or less. You don’t need to “butter up” the person you’re trying to contact.
• Provide your real contact information (name, e-mail, title, organization).
• Have your contact e-mail address show from the domain you’re asking the link from (as in don’t use email@hotmail.com as the return for yourgreatsite.com).
• Personalize the e-mail. People respond to an honest reason to link than “Hi, I found your site and think you should link to us….”
• Reciprocal link. This is critical! Don’t e-mail with the following “Once you link to us, we’ll link to you” or as above not even saying you linked or are willing to link back to them!
• SPELL & GRAMMAR CHECK! Seriously…if you received an e-mail that was fought with misspellings and grammatical errors, you have to also wonder how the site looks as well.

I have read many books, posts, and heard podcasts that recommend using a form letter (with some sites/forums offering “templates”). We don’t recommend that if at all possible as many of the more “savvy” webmasters out there will instantly identity it as such (especially if their site is a regular recipient of requests) and probably ignore them - or worse yet, a “black hat” (questionable) SEO group uses the same template and you’re filtered out for being similar.

Just use the golden rule in asking for a link or updating a link…treat them the way you want to be treated.

An sincere e-mail asking to link because in reviewing their site you saw that they are a related interest (cite specifics of the site - that goes a LONG way in showing you really looked at the site) and you’ve already linked to them will go a lot farther than the above example.

For most, the idea of maintaining a website is nerve wracking. I mean, how do you find the time to sit down and make a new web page?

Many people, when asked, still believe that you need special software such as FrontPage (or now called MicroSoft Expression), to make web pages. This limiting philosophy is what tends to keep a site either static or some crazed monstrosity built by a co-worker with limited or no experience.

Enter the “Blog” (short for web log), which allows you to simply type in content to a structured framework, thus eliminating the need for special tools on the individual PC. Blogs simplify the web-publishing process to such a degree that anyone can do it, regardless of experience and because it requires no web design tools it allows for fresh updated content from any PC anywhere! Imagine being on a hotel computer in Paris updating your website immediately instead of having to wait to use the one back home or meeting with your web designer. Also a blog allows multiple people to add content.

Note: There is also a tool called a Content Management System (CMS), which is decidedly different from a blog. Many CMS tools now have either a built in blog or a blog add-on.

So why a blog and why does it enhance SEO?

Simply, it’s a very easy way to add content to your website. The more good relevant content, the better you will be with search engines by upping your keyword density. In fact, thanks to the enhancements in blogging technology, a single individual could easily manage a large web presence. In fact, early adopters of blogs found them to be a useful tool for online communication and a godsend in the ongoing quest for search engine ranking / visibility.

Blogs are a great way to communicate with your target audience and if you’re in sales a very good way to connect with potential customers. In the Real Estate industry, the blog is now becoming a major component of their web presence as it personalizes the Realtor (”Get to know John Smith - click her to read his blog”).

A blog also does not have to be lengthy, each “post” or “article” can be small - snippets of your expertise in your industry or passion for your product. You also do not need to have multiple daily articles, especially if the content is good and relevant. A regular weekly article will be fine. We have one client who starts her week blogging about a topic relating to her latest art project(s). She now sees it as a great way to get her back into focus for her business and based upon the stats on her site, her many fans love to read it! With blogging, you can find yourself in a position where you create consumer interest…thereby allowing you to acquire new business.

Simple, easy to add content, and manageable (editable). Also blogging tools can be attached to existing websites - so most sites shouldn’t require any “major” revisions.

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Pay-per-Click (PPC) are the fee based ads you see at the top and sides of the major search engines. There are two kinds of links in search engines. Links are either unpaid (the organic ones on the left side that the engine index and rank) and the paid links on the top and right side. There are several major PPC services: Google AdWords, MSN adCenter, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), Ask.com, and dozens or smaller PPC services.

Using you PPC account you write small (typically two line) text ads. Then, using a list of keywords you choose (most services have tools to help you select keywords if you have not done so beforehand) you set “bids” - the amount you’re willing to pay - for your selected keywords. The better you bid, the higher your ad will appear in the search engines. However, only when someone clicks on the ad, do you pay the bid price - thus the term “pay per click.”

By definition the nature of PPC is a competitive one making it complex. In a bidding environment, the highest bidder usually wins. However you must be cognizant that keyword values are always changing, as new advertisers enter the marketplace. A PPC campaign must be monitored and updated (on an hourly, daily basis, and at minimum weekly basis) unlike organic SEO methods.

OK…Is this something I need to do?

The truthful answer is…it depends…but we say YES! There are lots of reasons to here are a few quick ones:

• If your site is fresh out of the starting gate, PPC is a great way to get it on the radar quickly (manual submissions are taking upwards to six months as of this writing) with search engines.
• If you are in a highly competitive market (i.e. Used Auto Sales near a military base), it’s a great way to get a leg up on the competition.
• You want to steer visitors to a specific place on your website (that new product/service/promotion or just a landing page).
• You want to have more conversions (that’s visits to sales/sales calls or whatever your site is designed to do for you/your business).
• You only pay for the click through.

That last item is a really good point to stress. How much do you pay for your phone listing or yellow page ad? Imagine that the phone company provided you real time reports on 1) who is reading your ad, 2) who is calling from the regular listing vs. the yellow page ad, and lastly 3) you only pay the phone company ONLY WHEN a potential customer used the yellow pages to call you)! With a PPC campaign you can budget by bid/time so you can stretch the money for the web campaign. You can also increase or DECREASE your budget amount (so a ski resort can up the ads when the snow flies and then lower them during the summer) with a few clicks. The yellow page people can only give generalizations and averages…and just try to change your yellow page subscription rate or ad on the fly! A PPC campaign provides REAL value to your marketing dollar.

Also w/PPC you become a “customer” of the search engine…so they provide tons of useful information to help you get the best performance out of your ad. After all…it’s in their best interest to help you get lots of people clicking your ad!

So is PPC really right for you? Our rule of thumb is - if you are a non niche business (and who isn’t thanks to the internet) and would like to get more visits to you site, then yes.

Have you ever wondered how search engine friendly your site is? I think that most people consider it, but assume that the spiders look at sites like we do…which is very incorrect.

Search Engine Spiders (or Web Crawlers) literally “read” your website. They do not see pictures, flash, etc.

If you have access to a UNIX/Linux shell, then you can use Lynx (a text only browser), which does not support JavaScripts, and will display only text and regular “a href” tags. It’s a great way to see how a spider sees your site.

The vast majority, however, will need a tool to do this such as a spider simulator. There are several out there, many free and each different in how they simulate the spider - this is mainly to the fact that there are so many different spiders with their own engine methods. Here are some we recommend, each with it’s own benefits:

• SEO Tools - Search Engine Spider Simulator Tool: Best of the lot, breakes each section into viewable chunks to allow for real analysis
• Submit Express Meta Tag Analyzer: Besides simulating bots it also provides meta tag analysis
• Webmaster Toolkit Search Engine Spider Simulator: Simply strips out the HTML tags from the page you specify

So what does it mean in real terms?  If your site work without graphics or JavaScript, then you have a search engine friendly site and can expect good rankings.

If after simulating that this is not the case, it may be a good idea to head back to the drawing board and rethink your website.

Here is a simple SEO Checklist you can use to get started in enhancing your site’s visibility.

Basic SEO Checklist:

• Determine what specific key words you want to target with search engines. You can use a tool such as Wordtracker to see what search words are popular, and optimize your site for them. Make sure the key words you choose are relevant.
• Clean up your URLs. Don’t use capital letters, spaces, or special characters. Separate each word with a “-” dash.
• Redirect the non-www version of your site (many hosts allow for you to browse to http:// and http://www). When you enter mygreatdomain.com into the browser, it should redirect you to www.mygreatdomain.com using a SEO friendly 301 redirection.
• Make sure you don’t link to “index.htm” or “index.php”. Instead, link to “/”. If you know of or find specific links from other sites, ask them to do the same.
• Good relevant content. SEO will be much harder if you don’t have plenty of content, so spend more time writing!
• Add both an HTML sitemap (containing a link to every page on your site) as well as an XML sitemap. Use this tool for your site (free if your site is less than 500 pages).
• Remove frames from your site.
• Ensure the title and meta (description and keywords) are different on every page of the site.
• Remove any flash or image based navigation. If using CSS styled text for navigation is not possible, then add a text based footer navigation on every page.
• Optimize your images. Ensure all have alt tags and are placed near text that is relevant to the image.

There are lots more things one can do beyond the basics, but with these simple items…you’ll be headed in teh right direction.

It seems that every other web site we visit has some sort of hit counter on the main page, supposedly telling us how many people have been there before us.

So we’re going to explain why you don’t need one, and what you should be doing instead for SEO.

Most web sites will normally implement a hit counter on their site for one or both of two reasons — to give them a rough estimate of the number of visitors, and/or to give visitors the impression that their site is popular and thus worthy of a good look.

Let’s consider the first reason. There is nothing wrong with wanting to know how many people have visited your web site, in fact it’s something that you really do need to know for SEO. However…putting a visible hit counter on your home page is not the answer, especially not one of those free services.

For one thing, the free services require you to promote their site as part of their free service. For another, they are normally slow and increase the time it takes for your pages to load.

Most importantly, a hit counter doesn’t provide you with all of the information you need for true SEO.

Just look at any of the top web sites out there and we promise that you will not find a visible hit counter on any of them!

That alone should tell you that the common hit counter is worthless. If a visible counter was worthwhile, don’t you think CNN or Yahoo would have one?

You just can’t win with a visible hit counter. If your site does not get many visitors, all it’s going to do is make sure that the visitors you do get know that they are not visiting a popular site. If anything, this will most likely discourage visitors from exploring your web site in detail. (more…)