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Search Engine Optimization with JameSEO

Sly — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:33:31 +0000

As an internet marketer who does a lot of work with websites and marketing, I know how much work I need to put in to SEO if I want to constantly get search traffic. SEO is a big part of managing a website because everyone knows the power of search engines. If you never ever promoted your site or bought ads on other sites, you can at least get traffic from search engines right?

With all the SEO blogs out there, it’s just hard to keep up. But fortunately for me, James Harrison from JameSEO asked me to review his blog. It was then that I discovered another undiscovered blog that has a lot of hidden treasures.

Who Is James?

My name is James Harrison. I’m an internet marketer working full-time for MEA Digital in downtown San Diego. I work as an Online Media Specialist in the Pay Per Click department and love every minute of it.

I truly enjoy working on the internet, especially in the field of search engine marketing.

During the day, I manage pay-per-click campaigns on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Business.com and other 2nd-tier PPC interfaces.

But, during the night I’m a SEO working on personal websites and studying new search engine optimization strategies.

As you can see, James is the real deal. He works for an interactive agency as web SEO. This guy knows his stuff.

According to James about page, his blog has two simple purposes: 1) it’s the place where he records all his SEO marketing notes, and 2) he wants to rank #1 for the search term “James Harrison” (his name). The first purpose is understandable, but the second? JameSEO.com as #1 for the term “James Harrison”? Last time I checked, he’s only 7 spots behind from news stories of the NFL player James Harrison! With over 1,000,000 search results and claiming the #7 spot, he truly is doing something right.

The Design

So now let’s talk about the blog and its design.

To be honest with you, I don’t really like the design. I think that it’s one of the things that would repel readers away, or keep them from coming back. My simple advice to James is this: try out different themes and see how they go. You might have picked this one because of its simplicity, but there are other good ones out there that are really nice looking. Just get rid of this one.

The sidebar, meanwhile, has too much stuff going on especially the section with all the little buttons. I’m sure that you might need them because they’re required to be put on the blog somewhere, but try to keep the only ones that are necessary. The SiteMeter button, for example, can be placed in the footer while the Yahoo “Links to This Site” can be completely removed. There’s too much stuff going on and you need to fix them.

SEO Tips and Tricks

Now let’s get to the treasures within the blog. What I like about the articles that James writes is that he actually walks you through each and every one of them. He also adds in images that complements what he talks about.

Anyway, below are 5 great articles from JameSEO that I’ve read. You NEED to read them because I promise you, almost all of them will be new to you.

Other than the great articles that James writes, he also composed a lists of tools and resources for SEO, so make sure to check them out.

The Sly Guy Recommendation

James clearly is an expert on the topic of SEO. If you own a static website or a blog, then you must check out JameSEO and subscribe. As JameSEO grows, it will just keep on getting better with more and more SEO tips and tricks. James will eventually get a new and better design (preferably a premium theme) that will compliment with the great content that he writes. So go ahead, visit JameSEO!

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5 Search Engine Optimization Tips for Wordpress Blogs

Sly — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:55:57 +0000

This guest post is from Salwa, a 22 year-old digital artist, designer and blogger from the U.K. If you enjoy this post, be sure to check her out at BlogRiffic.com and subscribe to her RSS Here.

Search engine optimization is a big part of managing a website, whether it’s a blog or not. It’s a surefire way of getting organic traffic through search engines like Google. Even without any type of promotion done by the webmaster, sites can always expect traffic coming from search engines.

There are several ways to optimize your Wordpress blog for search engines. Here are five that should be at the top of everyone’s list.

The title of your post contains the most important words of your post. It is used to describe the topic of the post and helps readers to decide whether they want to read it. It should contain keywords that you think readers will type into their web browsers. Make sure the title is a live link. If Wordpress hasn’t already done this automatically, you should be able to conduct a search on the web for the necessary code to do this. You should also make sure the page title tag is optimized. This will allow you to use a more descriptive, keyword-rich title for your blog’s main page and will use the title of your post as your page title to make your keywords prevail.
Use link bait. This is the latest hot topic in SEO and is becoming the preferred way for natural link building. Link baiting is used to attract backlinks to your blog by getting people talking about it. This is the art of writing content that gets natural links. You should post your link bait on all of the major social network sites. Also, make sure you include a “link to me” textbox, which is a Wordpress plug-in that provides a coded box automatically. Link to and reference other bloggers with similar blogs to get attentions from them. If you have a good blog, they may link to it in return.
Always check your Wordpress blog on a mobile phone since so many users today are on the go and tend to check in periodically via mobile phone web when they have a quick opportunity. Don’t have a ton of ads on your blog. This isn’t the place to be selling shamelessly. Having a lot of ads and graphics will only slow your site down and irritate visitors.
Most of the link power will be coming straight to the home page of your blog and then goes out to the rest of the links. Make sure you have a good link structure. They should link to your most important articles and pages from the home page. Simply make a category with your best articles and then make a list of them on the index.php file. You can install a plug-in called “related posts” and have those articles link to other relevant articles.
Make sure you pay attention to your design. Keeping it simple is always best. Use larger text with large, clear headings. There should be nothing that takes your attention away from the text. Make sure your content is the first thing your visitor sees, they should not have to scroll to find your content. If you can make your blog look more like a website than a blog, the larger social networking sites will like it better.

The WordPress platform, along with much of the other blogging software available today, is search engine friendly right out of the box. It does a very good job of handling many of the technical areas of optimization for you so if you aren’t a technical genius you can still have a great blog. Simply provide informative, keyword-rich content that people will want to read and link to, and you are pretty much set to go. Blogging is not hard; it just takes some time and effort. Just take care not to get your blog up and running and then think that it will simply take care of itself. Take the time to optimize it as much as you can or your blog will eventually disappear in the search engines.

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Link Building Wiki: Link Building Tools and Resources

Sly — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 22:52:19 +0000

Do you know how to build links to the sites that you own? Link building is something that is a very important part of internet marketing, especially for site owners like us who want to get more exposure for their site. It helps with SEO, getting traffic, and increasing the readership of your site. Check out LinkBuildingWiki.com and you’ll find all the great resources on link building.

What Is Link Building Wiki?

Link Building Wiki is a, well, wiki full of resources about link building from the people who brought you TextLinkBrokers. The whole site is divided into different sections like how you would see in any wiki from Wikipedia. From compilations of blog and forum posts to sites and tools all about link building, this wiki helps users like us to find what we want.

Looking at the Tools section of the site, for example, a user will be able to see the top tools used for different kinds of uses like backlink analyzers or link popularity checkers. There’s even a list of Firefox extensions for use with SEO.

As a user scrolls through the rest of the site, they will see that at there is a compilation of great guides and books (which all link to Amazon) about link building. I checked out a the descriptions of a few books and they truly are great reads. If you’re one of those people who love reading, especially about this topic of link building, the books they recommend are a must to check out.

Conclusion

All in all, LinkBuildingWiki is a great site to check out. If you own a site or even just a blogger, you’ll find great resources at the site. Other than helping you learn more on how to build links, it is the #1 resource on learning how to build higher rankings in terms of SEO. Also, check out their link building services that they offer to help you rank high for the most competitive keywords. Their link building experts will be happy to assist you over phone or email, so make sure to check it out.

Reading this from an RSS feed or through an email subscription? Make sure you visit this post and leave a comment. Top commenters are awarded with cool prizes!

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How to Sell Text Links Without Getting Penalized By Google

Sly — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:24:37 +0000

For the past few days and weeks, a little rumor has been going around in the blogosphere that Google would penalize sites that are selling text links. Well, it has now been proved to be true. For example, sites like Copyblogger had its PageRank from 6 go down to 4. Problogger (even though it stopped selling links months ago) went from a 6 to 4 as well. Meanwhile, if you take a look at PageRank toolbar to see the PageRank of Slyvisions, you will see that it is currently a 2 (it was a projected 5). I say currently because I hope that’s about to change. How? Well, read on to find out how to sell text links without getting penalized by Google. It takes two easy steps to let Google give you a chance to get your PR back up.

1. If you still plan to sell text links, you can add the “no-follow” relative attribute to the links. This tells Google that the link should not be indexed and credited in terms of ranking in search results. Take a look at the example below.

2. This next step is one I actually got from ProBlogger. You will need to go to Google’s Webmaster Tools and make sure you have your site registered there. If it already is, go ahead and click the “Request Reconsideration” link on the right side of the Webmast Tools Dashboard. You will then have to report and ask for a reconsideration to why you think Google should not penalize you for your text links. You can explain that the paid-links on your site has been added the “no-follow” attribute and that your PR should be reconsider. After submitting it, it may take a few weeks for the re-evaulation process.

Remember, these tips are for direct sales for text-links. If you are a user of text link networks like Text-Link-Ads, you might just have to remove your site from their database since they give you a PHP code for the link. This is just to make sure that Google clearly sees that you are serious about getting your PR back.

Like every blogger would say, you can’t live by Google if you want your site successful. That’s why it might even be a better idea to just stop selling text-links. If you’re focused on making money online, you’ll need to start learning another way to do so. A blog is a blog. Monetizing it should be optional and should just be a sideline to what you do with your blog. Instead of selling text links for example, work hard with your blog and get other types of sponsors. Usually, you can make even more money through other alternatives.

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Video: Matt Cutts Answers a Few SEO Myths

Sly — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 22:23:11 +0000

Some of the latest videos and SEO tips I posted, Qualities of a Good Website and Whitehat SEO Tips for Bloggers, had useful lessons from the Google engineer, Matt Cutts. In this video, he answers a few questions about SEO (search engine optimization) and some myths. Topics include things about using sites on the same server, launching sites with millions of pages, and updates on Google Images.

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Video: Qualities Of a Good Website

Sly — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 23:02:11 +0000

Here’s another video from Matt Cutts with some more tips and tricks for site development. In this video, he talks about sitemaps, guidelines for SE’s (search engines), and other helpful tips.

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Video: Whitehat SEO Tips For Bloggers

Sly — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:23:08 +0000

Here’s a video that will surely teach you secrets of the trade when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. Presented by Matt Cutts, he shows us SEO tips that will help our websites with search engine rankings. The video is around an hour long, so if you have the time to spare make sure to watch the whole video if you want to learn some helpful tips and tricks.

Part 1

Part 2

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How to Make a Custom 404 Error Page

Sly — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 04:08:21 +0000

Making a custom 404 error page for a website is very easy to do and can take less than 3 minutes to make. For those who don’t know what a 404 page is, it’s just a simple page letting the user know that the page they are trying to visit is unavailable. It’s very important for a blog to have a 404 page so that just in case your readers visit a page that doesn’t exit, they’ll be able to go to where they’re suppose with an automated page. Here’s a simple way to get started.

First, make your 404 page. It is a working HTML page that can be made even without any styles. You can even make i with Notepad (PC) or Textedit (Mac). Take a look at this simple one I’ve made for this site. It’s just a simple file, but it shows the user that the page is not available. Name this file “missing.html”. A very good thing to do is to add a link to the main page as you can see here.

There is one more thing to do to complete the whole process. Usually all that’s left to do is upload the “missing.html” file to your server’s root directory. To test if it works, go in your web browser and type a page that doesn’t exist in your website (ex. www.SlyVisions.com/asdfjakhsfklah). If it works, you’ll see the 404 page you’ve just made. If not, here’s the last thing you have to do. First, make sure you have access to your server’s “.htaccess” file. Open this up and input the following text code. Just replace the website with the location of your 404 page.

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yoursite.com/custom_page.html

Save the “.htaccess” file and you’re all set. Next time someone tries to visit a non-existing page on your website, they’ll be given taken to that 404 page you have just made. Remember, you can always style the error page to however you like. You can even make it have the same style template as your regular site. Take a look below at the 404 page for ProBlogger for example. It’s really all up to you. That’s why it’s custom right?

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SEO Tip: Use Dashes To Separate Words In a URL

Sly — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 01:48:29 +0000

Here’s a quick SEO tip that will make a huge difference when it comes to Google or other search engines crawling your site. I have already told you about implementing keywords in a URL, but there is more to it than just plugging in the words. As you have probably read from the title already, use dashes to separate words in your URLs. This is a must when you’re making search engine-optimized articles and web pages.

According to Matt Cutts, a popular software engineer for Google and SEO expert, using dashes is the best way to separate words in a URL. Using underscores would be the next (but not the best) alternative, while not using anything to separate words would be the worst choice. I have no clue how all of this works, but I do know that it’s a way for search engines to recognize words from another. Just because it’s not alive doesn’t mean it can’t read right?

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Webmaster Tips from Google

Sly — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:22:50 +0000

When you start a blog or a site, you’ve only come across the first step of your goal. You can’t get readers or your potential product customers without having them discover your site. Promoting your site is more than just giving people the link or joining a social network in which there is more work to promote your site. That’s why it’s best to make sure that your webiste or your blog is search engine-optimized AND is easily crawlable for the bots. So what’s the best place to get webmaster tips? Well, from Google itself!

Most people don’t even know about Google’s Webmaster Guidelines in which they teach you everything you ever need to know about getting your site indexed. All you ever need to know about site indexing, increasing search engine traffic, and other quality guidelines is available there. Here are just some of the tips from Google that you need to keep in mind:

Keep the amount of links on a given page under 100.
Make sure to use the robots.txt file to control which pages you want indexed.
Avoid “hidden” texts or links
Avoid links on web spammers, or “bad neighborhoods”. Just because you have many links doesn’t mean it’s going to help increase your PageRank.

These are just a few of the guidelines that Google gives to webmasters. Make sure to go over them at Google Webmaster Guidelines.

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