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Search Engine Optimization Is Dead! By Angie Kibiloski Yes, you read that right! Top search engine marketing specialist Randy Zlobec says search engine optimization (SEO) is officially dead and you can no longer generate top positions with SEO alone. You need to incorporate an entire search engine marketing (SEO) campaign, which includes the following: 1. Link Building 2. Article Writing & Distribution 3. Press Release Writing & Distribution 4. Pay Per Click Advertising 5. Social Networking 6. Blogging Trying to accomplish high search engine ranking using SEO alone is a losing proposition, at best, and Web site suicide in most instances. So, what’s a webmaster to do? The term “webmaster” means staying on top of what drives successful, targeted traffic to your Web site. It means staying up later than the average guy, reading, discovering and learning the cutting edge of what it takes to make your site successful. In the beginning, you could throw up any kind of page and get people to visit. Quality Web pages were few and far between. Then, came the keyword, the meta tag, the phrase, the optimization software considered downright primitive in today’s world that would tell you your page was a cut above the pack. These days are long gone. In order to get around the dead horse of SEO standalone, you need to be ready to add links, and quality back links. You need to be able to do more than string three words together. Today’s readers are savvy. They want real information. You can't deliver slapped together, non-researched splats of content and expect to maintain traffic and credibility. Today it is all about quality content, unique and different, that delivers a message that is both interesting and informative. To the basic Web site optimization, you need to add things like blogging, dynamic updating, and social networking that can be press release driven with a landing page that commands attention. Use the checklist below to smarten up your pages, make them more than SEO optimized, and turn them into traffic magnets. Let’s Talk Keywords If you remember nothing else remember to put your keyword or keyword phrase in the <title>PUT YOUR KEYWORD HERE</title>. Many folks overlook this and just like that the Web spider glides on by, uninformed. If you are adding things like social bookmarking and blogging to your site and you forget this, you might as well be holding up a sign in a sandstorm. Keywords in the URL do help. If you are just redirecting a keyword URL to your Web site, be sure to use a 301 Redirect, which is the most efficient and search engine friendly method for Web page redirection. Anybody who tells you differently is not up on the latest trends. The search engines do take note of your keyword as part of your URL. Most people are using PHP or ASP these days on either an Apache or Windows server. Here’s the 301 redirect codes that will get your pages moving if you aren’t using someone like GoDaddy.com to register your domains, and utilizing their convenient 301 redirect features. =========== PHP Redirect <? Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” ); Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” ); ?> ======== ASP Redirect <%@ Language=VBScript %> <% Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”; Response.AddHeader(”Location”,”http://www.new-url.com/”); %> =========== Okay, that’s enough code for redirecting. Keywords in your anchor text from another Web site, called an inbound link, is like getting a vote from another site. Be sure to have your keyword or keyword phrase as part of that vote. Keywords in your <H2> tags. Yes, it is your headline. It’s important. It’s rated by search engines and if your keyword is part of it, it’s rated higher. But be sure that it’s also part of your body text or you will probably upset the Web spiders. Never upset the spiders or you’ll be on page 11 million for your keyword. Keywords in the <alt> tags. Alt tags are what your page displays when the pictures can’t be found or someone browses your page with pictures turned off. Web spiders also read the <alt> tags. So, if you have your keyword in the <alt> tags you will get more credit for your page. Article Writing and Distribution There are a number of article directories where you can distribute your articles with your resource box promoting you Web site. You will want to write relevant, short quality articles that build curiosity for your Web site. You do not want to write articles longer than 500-600 words for article directories. Articles as Bait On your Web site, you will want to have longer, informative articles on a specific subject related to your Web site’s topic. Called linkbait, these articles are designed to inform and educate your readership on relative topics. This is not what articles for article directories are all about. They are curiosity builders. You write 300-400 words on a topic to demonstrate your knowledge on that topic. You include a resource or author’s box back to your Web site where you can present a long, in-depth version of your material. One important thing to remember when writing articles for directories; each must be different and unique from each other and each one must be different than the one on your Web site. If you duplicate them for the various article directories and they all have inbound links to the same content on your main Web site, you will kill your page rank and credibility. If you can remember that article directories get you quickly indexed and offer a curiosity booster that acts as a portal to your main Web site, then you’ll write accordingly. Most article directories require at least 400 words on a topic, which is not that easy to produce, but you want to save your main features for your own Web site and not the article directory. Through these directories, you’ll receive a ton of backlinks as other Web sites use your content on their Web site. However, none of it will match what’s on your own Web site, so it won’t be considered duplicate content, just inbound links. Press Releases Are An Overlooked, Great Process If you can write news copy, you can write a decent press release, which will get your Web site a ton of exposure. You will want to put out a press release for your Web site for the following reasons: - To announce your new Web site and what it’s all about - To announce new products and services that you added to your Web site - Reviews of various themed parts of your Web site - Other expansion and additions of note. Using press releases in this fashion will always guarantee a steady stream of visitors in that a well-written press release will usually be picked up by other sites and rewritten and added to their new repository, which increases the number of incoming links you’ll receive. Pay Per Click Advertising Using pay-per-click advertising is another way to get almost instant traffic to your Web site. Utilizing PPC giants like Google and Yahoo, you can pay for visitors to your Web site. You list small, contextually based advertising which is published across their network of Web sites and interested people click on your advertising and arrive at your site. This is one of the quickest ways to get traffic to arrive, but it can be costly to get started. Pay-Per-Click lets you advertise to the whole of the online community. There are also text link advertising, classified advertising and pay-per-post advertising, where you can get other bloggers to blog for money about your product or services available on your Web site. It is a variation of PPC in that bloggers will write and review your site or service for a small fee and list you for a set period of time on their Web site. It adds content to their site and gives you more than just a link back to your site. Social Networking and Social News sites Web 2.0 and social networking is another whole article in itself, but it is the second fastest way to get traffic rolling into your site. To get the ball rolling and to give you some ideas on where to start, let’s look at the basics of social news networking. We want to separate this from social bookmarking which is for personal use. Social news networking is for when you want to advertise your business, home business or professional site. It’s about providing news to the world about who and what you are, the benefits you offer and why they should stop by. Some of the better news sites where you can post your short articles include: Netscape, Newsvine, StumbleUpon, Digg and OnlyWire to name a few. These sites are news-hungry just waiting for information about your Web site. Whatever your site is about will be quickly and effectively disseminated by posting on these Web sites. Considered the second generation in online marketing, social networking is all about building communities of like-minded individuals who are looking for certain things. Your Web site is taken into a group and, depending upon your service or product, people arrive at your Web site because of the tags and text you provide to the online community. There are as many social news and networking sites as there are interests. =================== If you wish to learn more about getting your Web site listed in the top 10 positions in the major search engines as quickly as possible, you might consider purchasing Randy Zlobec's book, Sem Gorilla. Further information is available at about this book at http://www.semgorilla.com. You can also click on Search Engine Marketing Specialist to find more information about Randy Zlobec. |
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