It is that time of the year again. You can feel it in the air and see it everywhere you go. The lights are on the neighbors’ houses and the stores are getting more and more crowded as we get closer to the 25th. For children, Christmas is a magical time where they dream every night about that special thing they hope Santa will bring them when he visits on Christmas Eve.

You may also feel some of that Christmas magic hoping for a miracle of your own. Perhaps you are a business owner who has launched a new website this year and that one thing you want for Christmas is to see it rank on page one in Google for some targeted search terms. Here is some advice to help you see that Christmas miracle come true.

Create an XML Sitemap and Submit it to Google Webmaster Tools

Google has given webmasters a great way to tell Google about their website. In Google Webmaster Tools there is a place where you can submit a sitemap in XML format. The sitemap will tell the Google crawlers about the pages on your site and help them to index everything much better. I have seen brand new sites get indexed within a week of submitting an XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. Just be sure to update the XML sitemap whenever you add or remove pages from your site.

Submit to Social Bookmarking Sites

There are several social bookmarking sites on the web that can give your site a quick link and help others discover your website. Create accounts on sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Reddit then submit your website to them. Include a social bookmarking widget on content or product pages of your site so visitors can quickly and easily bookmark the pages of your website on their social bookmarking profiles.

Submit to High Quality Paid and Free Web Directories

Submit your website to DMOZ and a few high quality paid directories like Yahoo, Business.com and Best of the Web. Since these directories have been around for a long time and have established a good reputation, they will give your site some good credible links. When you submit to DMOZ try to find the most relevant category that has an editor. Getting a submission approved in DMOZ can take a long time but the waiting time can be shortened if you submit to a relevant category that has an editor.

Optimize Content Using the Most Relevant Search Terms

Make sure the pages of your site are optimized for the most relevant search terms to the content of each page. Don’t get distracted by high volume search terms that might be partially relevant to the site content. It is the content that will help Google to determine what keywords to rank your site for, so consider the long tail search terms when optimizing the content. The long tail terms are often the ones that are most relevant and will have better conversion rates when the site ranks for them. Include the keywords in the HTML elements like the title, Meta description, heading tags and the content body.

Allow Google to Index the Site

Often people might block Google from indexing their website without knowing they did. Check your robots.txt file and make sure you didn’t disallow the entire site. Check the pages of your site and if you are using noindex Meta tags, make sure they are only on the pages you don’t want to show up in the search results.

Getting more organic search traffic to a website might be the one thing that many business owners are wishing for this year. If you are one of those business owners then this advice will help that wish come true in 2010.

As I write this, I’m fuming about pet peeves. It’s been one of those weeks where it seems fate, the universe, or whatever, is barraging me daily with its pet-peeve arsenal.

And the pet-peeve thing reached its peak this morning when I got my oil changed. They told me it’d take a half hour. Two hours later, I drove away from the garage and was an hour and a half late to work. Needless to say, I won’t go back there for an oil change again. Waiting hours longer than expected is a major pet peeve.

Many websites similarly drive away customers with annoying Internet pet peeves. It’s the kind of thing that kills site traffic and conversion. Many businesses don’t even know their website doesn’t connect with their demographic, much less the human race.

So, in no particular order, here are a few Internet and website pet peeves that will cost you visitors, readers, customers, and, most importantly, money:

• Popups. These make me want to howl and then close my entire browser. It’s amazing to me how many annoying popups still exist. If you want people to stay on your page, please get rid of these.
• Intruding, drop downs, advertisements or graphics. I’m OK with ads – as long as they don’t cover the text, float across the page, or do something else extremely annoying. They often make me think my computer is coming down with a nasty virus.
• “Give us your email, social security card and bank account number to read this.” I hate it when companies hold content for ransom. Companies try to promote their stuff then try to make you give them all your contact information to get it, often in the form of registration log on pages. *However, in some instances I think it’s OK, such as Webinars, etc. For the most part, free content available to anyone is the way to go. If you want to capture emails, have a newsletter sign up box, but don’t twist people’s arms.
• Overly promotional social media updates and press releases. These make me gag a little, especially when I was an editor at a newspaper. With social media and PR, you are providing information and connecting with people. It’s for conversation and news. It’s not for exaggerated fluff.
• Ambiguous home pages. You have just a few seconds before a visitor leaves your site or clicks through it. If your site doesn’t have a clear direction, say, “hasta luego” to your potential customer.
• Confusing Navigation. If it’s confusing, I’m going somewhere else.
• Bad copywriting. Typos, cheesiness, too serious, too long, unclear, un-engaging, exaggerations, etc., will kill your website. A site is often all about the headlines, copy and call to actions. If the writing is bad, you’ll have no chance with a customer.
• “Install extra software to continue.” I hate this one. I fear getting a virus, and I don’t have the time to download new software.
• Slow-loading pages. Not only is this a pet peeve, it’s also going to be big for the future of SEO.
• Dead links. They are dead ends that force me to go somewhere else.
• Bad colors, graphics. Some websites make me want to scratch my eyeballs out. Many designs can be distracting, and the wrong background color can make it difficult to read the text.
• Flash and sparkly stuff. Flash can be pretty cool, but not usually in a conversion sense. Sometimes designers and CEOs like flash, because, it’s cool. But, it can often be flashy without any substance, and as a result, waste the viewers’ time. Some sparkly design stuff will make your site look like a used car sales floor. That is never a good idea.
• Ineffective site tools. Why do people launch websites that don’t work? Why, why why?
• MUSIC! Music on the homepage makes me do a mad scramble for the “X” button like it’s my full-time job to close out browsers. Music, and videos for that matter, that play without my approval, is a bad, bad thing.

Internet marketing is all about two things: (1) getting more traffic and (2) converting that traffic into sales. That involves good SEO services, and a website designed around simplicity, easy flow, clear direction and good content. Everything on the page should propel the user experience. If it doesn’t, it will make my pet peeve list.

Any pet peeves I missed? Please, rant with me below.

The title of this video post might get me in trouble because it might be a little bit misleading; but by purchasing “established” INDUSTRY RELATED websites and setting up a permanent 301 redirect to your main domain, you can quickly build authority and link equity. Enjoy the video!

For those of you who would rather read than watch the video, here is the recap.

This video is about a question that a few of us at SEO.com have received lately. The question is about purchasing websites and 301 redirecting those websites into your main domain to increase search engine rankings and increase link equity for your overall domain.

I’ve mapped out a website about snowboards. Your money site is where you are selling snowboards which is the home page of your domain. You then have your category or sub pages where you go into detail with each brand of snowboards like Burton Snowboards, K2 Snowboards, and Sims Snowboards.

I want to discuss the concept of purchasing brand new domains for the purpose of 301 redirecting those to your site to increase search engine rankings. For instance, I want to purchase a site about Burton Snowboards (www.burton-snowboard-reviews-by-greg.com), a site about snowboard tune ups (www.the-best-snowboard-tune-up-tips-from-greg.com), a site about snowboard boots, and a site about snowboard bindings. Each of these are all brand new sites that your purchased through a domain registrar like GoDaddy.

The question is, If I buy these domains and I permanent 301 redirect them to my main site, will that help boost my rankings? The answer is no. It’s not going to help you whatsoever with your search engine rankings.

This strategy can help you when the sites have been on the internet for awhile, have age, content and back links coming into to them from other external websites. This builds up the reputation and link equity of each of the sites. At that point, this becomes a valuable strategy. For instance, you have site A, or the site about Burton Snowboards that has 800 links coming into it. If you are buying this site solely for the purpose of building links to your money site, you would take that site and 301 redirect it to the home page of your website, thus passing through the 800 back links to your website. (If you didn’t notice in the video, yes, I said client links and looked away because there was a loud noise coming from the SEO floor.) This will help you because you are building up your link equity and the overall reputation of your website.

If you want to purchase the domains and keep the community that is already functioning, continue to work on the site and funnel the established link equity to your website with strategically placed anchor text links pointing to your main website.

Where the sub pages come into play is if site D, or the site about snowboard bindings, has sub pages about Burton Snowboards, K2 Snowboards, and Sims Snowboards and the sub pages have deep links coming into them, you will not want to take those sub pages and 301 redirect them to your home page; instead, 301 redirect them to the related sub pages on your main site. This will pass the appropriate anchor text and link authority to the right pages on your website and help those pages to rank for their keywords.

In conclusion, do not buy brand new websites in hopes to 301 redirect them to your website to achieve higher rankings. If you are going to pursue this strategy, you will want to purchase already established websites that have trust, authority and links coming into them and then 301 redirect.

Not only are we amazing SEOs, we are also singers, songwriters and performers. Enjoy our Broadway production below.

Christmas comes just once a year, but terrible websites can be found all-year long! When it comes to SEO-friendly web design, here are a few practices that will have you asking Santa Claus for a new webmaster this Christmas. Feel free to sing along! (I would be amazed to see someone actually put this to music).

Credit goes to Jeff Call for the fantastic animation.

The 12 Days of Christmas: Website Disaster Style

On the first day of Christmas, my web guy gave to me:

A Website That Isn’t Ranking

The first, and biggest indication that your website isn’t SEO-friendly is a lack of rankings for the keywords that would drive traffic to your site.

2 Spammy Tags

Stuffing your page title tags with keywords may sound logical, but it’s considered misleading by search engines. It’s better to make sure the title contains your top 2-3 keywords and build page content around those words.

3 Dead Links

The quickest way to force someone away from your site is to send them to a page that doesn’t exist. Frequently run an internal link checker to make sure all of your links are valid. Create a custom 404 page so that visitors who do end up on an invalid URL have a quick and easy correction path back to your site.

4 Pop-up Ads

Hosting pop-up ads on your site may be profitable from an advertising standpoint, but they will infuriate your site visitors. There are more effective, less intrusive ways to advertise on your site.

5 Golden Rings

In addition to stuffing title tags with keywords, any similar practice in the body of your page content will also likely get picked up by search engines and will discount your rankings. Oh, and meta keywords are worthless.

6 Pages Flashing

Avoid flash animation on your site if you can. Written content that you would otherwise put in a flash animation should be turned into crawlable HTML text for maximum SEO benefit.

7 Keywords Hiding

Making links the same color as your page background or hiding them behind images is a serious black hat SEO practice that will only get you penalized. If your visitor can’t see the text, you’re better to leave it off the page.

8 Farms A-Linking

Don’t get sucked into massive networks of promised links. While tempting, these link farms are often associated with black hat practices and spammy link building tactics that will penalize your site.

9 Pages Cloaking

Trying to deliver different content to a search engine spider than your visitors is just stupid. Cloaking is considered grounds for delisting by most search engines.

10 Links A-Buying

While some paid directories offer value, most take your money without providing substantial value. Search engines like Google are on the lookout for purchasers of paid links, which are often tied to networks of link farms and other bad SEO practices.

11 Blogs A-Spamming

Blog spamming is one of the least effective ways to build links. Most blog comments use no-follow links anyway, so do yourself a favor and build higher quality backlinks.

12 Sites A-Scraping

Taking content belonging to someone else and putting it on your own website will get your site devalued in the rankings, even if it does provide free content. If you have to use content already found elsewhere on the web, like quotes or technical specifications, make sure you have plenty of unique content to surround it.

The End

I am a blogging expert. There probably isn’t a soul around that knows more about blogging. How did I become so advanced? By starting a “Mommy Blog” a month ago. I figure after posting eleven entries, I probably know all there is to know.

OK, maybe not. But as a new blogger, I have learned a few things. If you are thinking of starting a blog, you may find the following helpful:

• Seriously consider the purpose of your blog. Map out your site before you begin. Is your blog personal, informational, ecommerce, or other? How do you plan on using the blog? Who is your target market? Make sure you have a clear goal in place before you begin.
• Now that you have determined the purpose of your blog, it is time to think of a domain. This process took the longest for me. If you get hung up, solicit suggestions from friends, family, coworkers, and especially your target market. I highly recommend using at least one of your keywords in your domain, if possible. This will assist you in achieving higher rankings for said keyword.
• If you are really serious about blogging, pay the money to host your own domain. For instance, instead of using www.seo.blogspot.com, use www.seo.com.
• Serious blogging takes a lot of creativity. I recommend keeping a pad of paper and a pencil handy. Throughout the day, I jot down little notes for upcoming blogs. That way, when I begin writing, I have something to write about.
• Write to your target market. What do they want to read? Have you asked them? Make sure you are writing in a voice that is familiar and interesting to them.
• Have someone proof-read your blog. You don’t want to go live with a post and then later be embarrassed by typos or grammatical errors.
• Use Google Analytics. It is awesome- seriously addicting. Every time I post a blog, I get excited to see how it was received. Using analytics will help you understand your readers.
• Use social media to promote your blog. I receive a lot of traffic from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. However, if every time you update your Twitter status it reads, “visit my blog…” people will become disinterested.

Do you have other useful blogging tips? If so, I would love to read them!

The best Internet marketing strategies of 2009 revolved around establishing credibility and targeted exposure. The search engine optimization company says similar tactics will work in 2010.

SALT LAKE CITY — In response to an eMarketer.com study stating that businesses will spend up to 75 percent more on Internet marketing this holiday season, SEO.com – a full-service Internet marketing company in Salt Lake City – announces the top 10 most effective Internet marketing strategies of 2009.

“Businesses want to make sure every penny goes to something that produces results,” said Dave Bascom, chief executive of SEO.com. “For that reason, more and more money is being allocated to Internet marketing because it’s measurable and has proven to increase ROI.”

There are a wide variety of Internet marketing methods, the most effective being the ones that establish credibility, trust and directly target a demographic.

“Credibility is the most important,” said Ash Buckles, SEO.com’s director of search engine optimization. “When people are watching their money closely, they will only buy from companies and Web sites that they trust.”

Credibility, Buckles said, depends on how well a site is architected, how many other sites and networks link back to your site, how much social media and buzz surrounds a domain, how often a site goes down, how unique a site’s content is and how fast a site loads.

The Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies of 2009:

1. Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Web sites in the top of the search results are viewed as the leaders of their industry, and more than 80 percent of Web users click on the first listings. Good SEO services will consistently deliver a huge return on investment.

2. Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn – Social media marketing engages customers on a personal level, and can rapidly create buzz around a product, brand or business. In 2008, Pubcon search conference spent $75,000 to marketing their conference. In 2009, Pubcon saved that money and used strictly social media advertising with great success.

3. Keyword Research – Everything revolves around discovering what words and phrases your customers are searching for online.

4. Video Marketing – This is becoming more important both on-site and off-site. Videos help convert Web site visitors into sales. In the universal search results, people tend to click on links with videos more than those without – even if the video link is ranked lower.

5. Online Public Relations – This builds credibility online, in the mainstream media and for potential customers. Online public relations can help create a lot of buzz about your site through bloggers and industry sites, and can boost organic SEO.

6. Link Building – A key element in search engine optimization. Search engines like “popular sites.” From the search engine’s point of view, a credible and popular site will have a lot of links pointing to it.

7. Blogging – Blogs provide additional site content (which search engines love), graphics and other viral content to disseminate information and tie in with social media. Blogs can build your credibility by establishing your site as the hub for industry information.

8. Conversion Web Design – A good Web design will keep visitors on your site and sell them products or services. In the end, it all comes down to a site that makes money.

9. Paid Search Marketing – Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an extremely targeted strategy with measurable, immediate results. This enables a more efficient spending of marketing dollars.

10. Email Marketing – Nurture relationships and retain existing customers. It’s much easier to keep old customers than to get new ones. Send good offers and valuable information that’s customized to their needs.

“To have success on the Internet, you need a combination of all these strategies to drive traffic to your site, establish credibility of your brand and convert traffic into sales,” Bascom said.

About SEO.com
SEO.com is an SEO firm that makes its clients money by driving traffic to their websites through aggressive search engine optimization, paid search marketing, social media marketing and blogging. SEO.com then turns those visitors into sales through conversion-focused Web design and development and copywriting. Clients range from small startups to Fortune 100 companies. Follow SEO.com on Twitter for the latest SEO industry news.

see more Epic Fails

As I’ve said in a previous post, SEO can be broken down into a couple of main categories: Content, Architecture, and Links. I think most people understand the importance of building content and getting links, but there are a lot of larger and poorly built sites that struggle with some fundamental problems their URL structure. This can lead to a lot of problems, including many duplicate content issues.

Here are three of the most common URL problems that I have seen on different websites. If your site has one or more of these problems, take a look at these solutions and get them fixed as soon as possible.

Problem #1: Non-www and www Versions of Site URLs

If your site has a non-www and www version of all your URLs, you’re going to be splitting link value for the same content between two URLs. Rather than capturing 100% of the link value on the page you want to rank in the search results, you could be doing a 50/50, 60/40, or some other kind of split between the two URLs.

The Fix

There are a couple of things you need to do to fix this:

1. Decide which URL style you want to use, www or non-www.
2. Set up a 301 redirect so that any links to your non-preferred URL style will go to the right style. This way you don’t waste link value by splitting it between two URLs.
3. Set your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools so your search result listings are consistent with your style preference.
4. Make sure whenever you build links to your site that you use the preferred URL style.

Problem #2: Duplicate Home Page URLs

This is a close cousin to Problem #1, but is especially bad because it’s your home page.

It is possible to have a lot of different URLs that all go to your home page content, especially if you haven’t fixed your www and non-www duplication, which can result in a lot of unnecessary duplication. For example:

• http://www.mysite.com
• http://mysite.com
• http://www.mysite.com/index.html
• http://mysite.com/index.html

These URLs will all lead to the same content. If you have links going to all four of them you will see a four-way split in link value. There are a lot of sites out there that have fixed their non-www and www problems, but I can still find multiple versions of their home page.

I’ve even come across sites with different extensions (.php, .html, .htm, etc.) that bring up the same page as well. This leads to even more duplication and potentially wasted link value.

The Fix

The fix here is very similar to the first one. Here are a few tips:

1. Set your main home page URL to be http://www.mysite.com. 301 redirect everything else to this URL since it is the most basic (If your preferred URL style is non-www, then do http://mysite.com)
2. If you have to set up different versions for tracking purposes or some other reason, set a canonical tag to show the search engines which version you want showing up in the search results.
3. Make sure when you build links to your home page that you link to the correct version.

Problem #3: Dynamic URLs

This is a fun one that a lot of not-so-SEO-friendly shopping cart programs run into. Once you start including all sorts of variables and parameters in your URLs, the opportunities for duplicate content and wasted link value are endless.

Allow me to illustrate. All of the following URLs could lead to the same content:

• http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc
• http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc&dest=goog
• http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc&dest=goog&camp=111
• http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc&dest=goog&camp=111&id=423

Now what if I start rearranging the parameters? Well, they’ll still show the same content. So, as you might imagine, this can create a lot of wasted link value.

There are other causes for the dynamic URL problem. A lot of companies use these parameter-based URLs for statistical purposes. We just want to make sure that you don’t shoot yourself in the foot from an SEO perspective.

This problem also happens with sites that give their affiliates a unique ID to use in their links. You could have 100 affiliates linking to the same page, but all of the URLs will be different because each affiliate has their own unique ID.

The Fix

1. If possible, make sure that your site is using SEO-friendly base URLs. It’s better to have a base URL that will lead to the content rather than a URL that relies on a parameter. For example: http://www.mysite.com/unique-product.html is much better than http://www.mysite.com/category.php?prod=123 where some generic category page is really the base URL.
2. Set a canonical tag that tells the search engines to use the base version of the URL. That way you can still use parameter URLs like http://www.mysite.com/unique-product.html?param1=123&param2=423 to get your data, but the search engines will consider the basic version as the official one.
3. An even better way to handle this is to capture the data on the server side and then redirect the visitor to the correct URL after you have captured your data. A lot of affiliate networks like ShareASale and CJ do it this way, and you can to. The visit basically goes like this: Visitor clicks on links with parameters -> Visitor goes to site, server records parameter data and 301 redirects them to the right landing page – >Visitor barely notices the switch because it happens fast.This way you can get all the data you need, make sure all of the link value goes to the right page, and your visitor still sees what they were after.

What Problems Does Your Site Have?

URL problems can come in combinations. For example, you could have a non-www and www problem along with dynamic URLs, compounding the problem.

Look over your site and see if you have any of these problems. If you do, decide what fixes you can make. Once you have these structural problems fixed you’ll find that your link building efforts will be much more valuable.

One of the things I have tried time and time again to impress on sales and business development people who have worked for me over the years is this:

Professional communication = credibility!

The other day I had a call come in from an unknown number so I let it go to voice mail. When I got around to the voice mail, I heard the following message:

(In the fastest, mumbled Midwestern accent you can imagine) “Chris (mumbled as his hand moves over the mouth piece of the phone) calling in regards to your inquiry (more mumbled) you can call (mumbled)…Oh, I’m here until five central.”

Will I be calling this person back? No.

Everything you do says a lot about you and the organization you represent. The emails you send, the voice mails you leave, the way you act in face-to-face meetings, the way you communicate over the phone, the knowledge you possess, the way you carry yourself, and even your personal hygiene say a lot about you and the company you work for. Here’s the rest of the formula:

Professional communication = credibility = success!

A critical part of an SEO campaign is the keyword research. It is during this phase that a website owner will determine what keywords are most popular and most relevant to their business. They will generate some form of keyword list and it may or may not include URL mapping of the most relevant keywords. When doing the keyword research, there are two pitfalls that can have an adverse effect on the entire SEO campaign.

Getting Distracted by the Search Volume

When performing keyword research it can be very easy to get caught up in the search volume numbers of all the potential keywords a site could rank for. Focusing on just the high volume search terms can often cause a person to miss the mark on their SEO strategy. While it would be great to have a top ranking for a search term that gets a million or more searches in a month, the reality is that those types of terms tend to be less targeted and much more competitive. As a result, you end up with a very expensive SEO campaign and nothing to show for the money invested. Even if rankings are achieved some months down the road the traffic will not be well targeted and the bounce rate will be very high.

The better option is to choose keyword phrases that are more specifically targeted and include the higher-volume keyword phase inside them. For example: If I was optimizing SEO.com for the search term of “search engine optimization” I would consider targeting terms like “search engine optimization company” or “professional search engine optimization services” since both of those longtail terms contain the search term of “search engine optimization” inside them. By following this strategy a website owner can quickly reach the top rankings that drive more targeted traffic and produce a smaller bounce rate. Since the longer keyword phrases also contain the broader phrase inside them, those higher volume keyword phrases will not get ignored. Several months into the campaign you may even see the website showing up in the top 30 or top 20 for the higher volume phrases. At this point you can take the increased revenue from the longtail search terms and invest it in securing some of those larger-volume search terms. Now, because of your work with the longtail keywords, it will be much easier to move them the rest of the way up the rankings.

Getting Distracted by the Amount of Relevant Keywords

Another mistake that can hinder the progress of an SEO campaign is targeting a large amount of keywords. Depending on the size of the website there could be thousands of keyword phrases that are all relevant to site content. It is a good idea to record all of the relevant terms in some type of chart to keep track of them and make sure the site has optimized pages for each one. However, if the focus of the SEO campaign is spread out across hundreds or thousands of keywords it is going to slow down the time it takes to achieve the top rankings.

A good idea is to generate a smaller group of keywords out of the larger list and to focus on them. Make sure the keywords are clearly mapped to the best pages of the website and set goals for ranking on those keywords. After top rankings are achieved, the list can then be expanded to include additional keywords.

Be sure to keep the original keywords from the smaller list even after it is expanded. It is important to continue monitoring the rankings of your original terms so they don’t slip and lose some of their search engine rankings.

Both small and large budget SEO campaigns can benefit from focusing on a smaller list of highly targeted keywords that still include some of the larger-volume search terms inside them. In the end, the website will be able to achieve top rankings and produce an ROI much quicker.