What do I mean by “better quality of visitor”? Referrals have always been the golden nuggett in sales.  Isn’t that what social networking is all about at its core? I find something I like on the web and I share it with others who like the same thing. Simple but very effective. Through social networking referrals I know the visitors want exactly what I have to offer, whether it is a product or service. Someone has told that visitor about my website and has recommended they visit it.

I am starting to believe that social networking will surpass SEO as the primary means of getting a website in front of the right viewers.  By having social networking as my primary means of traffic generation I am freed from having to worry whether or not I have offended the powers to be that control the search engines; I am free not to worry about correct keyword to text ratios or page layout. I am still concerned with inbound links but beyond that all the other apsect of SEO can go out the window.  As long as I have a good service or product and good quality content tha solves a persons problem, then I should focus on developing relationships with my visitors and their contacts.

True I may not get as many visitors but the visitors I get are more apt to use my service or purchase my product based on the fact that someone referred them.  What do you think? Has social networking overtaken SEO?

By building a blog under a different domain name you do a couple of things. First you establish a second identity in the same industry. This second identity can be developed to the point where you are considered and expert on your particular field of interest.  As your build your blog you can use it to display the latest news and achievements from your company as well as your industry niche. When these news articles are written you have the opportunity to use anchor links in your text to link back to your original site.  Of course it takes time to build credibility so those links will be effective but with good quality original content you can achieve that status in a few months. Quality is definitely the key to this process.  In addition to anchor text links throughout your articles and news you have the opportunity to use a keyword based link from your blog roll back to the original site.  Place a banner ad on your main site displaying a visual link to your blog and set up a Twitter account with an auto updater plugin so your blog entries will post automatically in Twitter.

Before long your secondary web presence (blog) will be driving traffic to your site and you have the opportunity to actually rank more than one site for the same company high in the search engines.

What is your experience with using blogs and websites together.

Here is my example:  Main site at www.bbq-festivals.com and blog at www.bbqhub.com

The next time you have a special discount, why not use Twitter to advertise your savings and see what happens. I would be curious to see the results.

Lesson learned:  Be prepared for a change in your search return positions when you make major changes to the layout of your site or blog……..

What has your experience been?

That was not to be with the new theme. After Google crawled the site it fell to number 47 and you know what that means; traffic took a definite hit!  So I have switched back to this WP theme called “Seashore”. It is a simple format and may not look as good as others, but it presents the information in a simple and clear way to the reader and it would appear is “spider” friendly. 

If you opt to expirement with different layouts and themes on your WP blog, be willing to see fairly substantial flucuations in your rankings.  Now I must wait until the next Google crawl to see if this blog comes back up to the second page.  Then it will be time to work on moving it to the first page for the search “learn SEO’.

What have your experiences been when changing layouts? Have you seen a drop in rankings and what did you do to get back up to where you were?

Most MLM companies use the power of 2 to build downlines of representatives. You probably already know this, but for those that don’t the power of 2 is when you refer 2 and they refer two more and they refer two more, etc…. Soon you have the following numbers – 1(you) then your 2, then they refer two each and you have 4 and they refer two each and you have 8 and on to 16. 32, 64, 128, 256, etc………  You can see how your visitor count could jump very fast.

How do you tap into this referral power? Simple, just ask your friends to view your site and then send it to their friends and so on. Of course your friends probably have more than two people to tell so the numbers could grow very quickly. Then of course you have your friends on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Don’t neglect those individuals.  In order for this to work however, you need good or should I say excellent content on your site. Your site will need to provide something they want. In this day and age your best bet is providing a website where you can show them how to save money such as a “best deals” type of site.

Don’t be shy in asking. My experience in sales has shown that most sales are not closed simply because the sales person is afraid to ask for the money.  The worst someone can say is no, then you move on. If they say yes then thank them and show them how your site can make their life easier on a daily basis.

In summary:

• Build a quality website with great content that will make your friends life easier.
• Tell your friends about your site and encourage them to visit.
• Ask your friends to tell their friends about it.
• Place a “share this site” link on your site.
• Use your social network contents in the same way ( A WORD OF WARNING – DON’T SPAM THEM TO DEATH )
• Reward your friends periodically by sending them to a landing page that will show them how to save money on what they like ( example: your friend is an outdoors person – make a landing page with affiliate sales links for Bass Pro Shops or Gander Mountain – they will love you for helping them save money and you will get an additional commission)

Share your experiences with offline networking to increas visitors to your site.

Google and other search engines place an extremely high value on one links to your site that occur naturally or as it is often called, organic linking.  When someone visits a site that has great content and provides solutions to thier needs then they are likely to pass that website link on to others and there is a good chance they will place a link to your site on their site. And that my friends is the best thing that can happen to your site.

Some of you may be saying, “can’t I just buy some one way links”?  Well, I suppose you can but the Google computers are a lot smarter than a lot of people given them credit for.  The all searching eye of Google and the other search engines will eventually start seeing hubs develop that seem to send out links in all different directions; more links than would appear “naturally” from a website that has an owner that sincerly thinks your site is important enough to link to.  Once that happens and those sites start to pop up on the search engine radar it won’t be long until all the sites involved are penalized.

So how do you get a site that is worthy of an inbound link from another site? Great content is the answer. Not rehashed content but content that as I said earlier is the type your customers can use.  When you are writing content for your site ask yourself if this would help me if I was looking for information on your product or service. Does your content stand out above the rest? Can your content stand on it’s own and attract visitors who find you via word of mouth ( or link referral) or is do you have to manipulate social networks to get people to notice you.

Make your content worthy of referrals. Yes it may take a while, but once your “reputation” as a provider of quality content is established you will never have to worry about working the system to get visitors.  Great content does not have to be created daily. I would rather see one great article that has relevant and useful information than 10 article as week that tell me the same thing everyone else is saying.  Quality over quantity.

I am going to take my own words at heart. Since this blog is about “understanding the methodolgy of SEO” then I intend to created the very best quality content I can to share with my current and future readers and if I provide them with that then I should see a natural result of new inbound links and repeat visitors.

What is your opinion on quality content and the SEO game?

Search engine optimization, if done correctly, is also a process that takes time. If you are expecting your website to instantly pop in on page one of Google I am afraid you are going to be in for a rude awakening. I will admit there are times when a new website ranks well but that is usually for some obscure keyword or phrase that has no competition.  But for the most part a website entering into a highly competative arena is going to take time to rise up the search rankings.

My first attempt at smoking a brisket was a disaster. It cooked way to fast over heat that was about double what it should have been. Grease from the brisket started a fire in the smoker and it went down hill from there. I tried to salvage what I had but when I finally thought it was all done it was barely fit to eat. The outside was almost black from the crust that had formed when the fire erupted. The middle was barely cooked and most of the juices had been sucked out.

The same thing will happen if you try to rush your SEO campaign. I can guarantee you that if you use shadey techniques to get that top spot you will have a fire eventually and Mr Matt Cutts will come put your fire out in a serious way by banning your site. Shadey SEO techniques include hidden keywords, buying text links, link schemes, keyword stuffing, etc…..   If you conduct your SEO campaign correctly you will have a great site that is well done and ranks well on Google and the other search engines as well.  Like smoking a slab of ribs or a brisket, SEO has to be planned and prepped and then given time to grow naturally. Here are some of my tips for a great search engine optimization campaign.

• Plan your site with search engine optimization in mind.  That means designers and SEO people need to put their ego’s aside and work together to create a site layout and navigation that is people friendly and spider friendly.
• Go organic – don’t by links from large companies that promise you a hundred inbound links for x amount of dollars. You never know where those links are coming from and odds are those companies are on the radar of the search engines and it doesn’t take much to follow that link trail to you.
• Great content – If you want naturally occurring one one way in bound links (read organic) then you have to have something worth linking to. Write great content that people will want to read and use. Make your site a resource that people will come back to over and over again.
• Don’t rush things – SEO takes time and you must be patient. Quality always grows over time.  Sure you can go out and do a thousand link exchanges in a month but that kind of activity raises a red flag with the search engines and is more than likely to get your site banned or at the very least buried deep in the search rankings
• Don’t be too flashy with bells and whistles on your site – Your website needs to look good and make a good first impression. But if you have too much going on and it causes your site load slowly people are not going to wait around. It is kind of like biting into a rib that has been cooked too fast…… it is tough and chewy and not very good…… usually winds up with the dog munching on it.

Of course there are many other things that go into a good SEO campaign but at the core is a slow process that isn’t too hot that produces good long term results.

There are of course the technical issues such as page titles, descriptions, keyword selection, navigation and such and I will touch on those in future postings.  What is your SEO technique like? Low and Slow or Hot and Fast??

Now it seems that Google is okay with keywords in the domain name.  I was looking at the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide put out by Google and on page 8 under “Good Practices For URL Structure” it says to use words that are relevant to your website’s content.  I interpret that to mean it is OK to have a keyword based website address.

I wouldn’t go overboard with more than 3 words in a domain name, less if possible. Make it easy to remember and easy for the search engines to match up to the content of your site.