ebizearnings.com - a SMB’s SEO/SEM web.point

It was late Novemebr 2005 when i had one of many dialogues with this client. We at CAD TEK are performing some swift SEO services in an early development stage. Patience is not always considered as a central factor by clients, but this is standard human nature.

Client: -I don’t seem to be attracting more unique visitors… xxxx seems stable after three months. Shouldn’t this figure be rising steadily?

Georg: -Yes, and no. It’s a slow rise. Factors are multiple, and I’ll point some of them to you below. One of the most important factors is Google. Still this is not an equation with a single unknown parameter. But let’s talk first about Google.

As you know, content is king. It comes before links. That’s the reason why we’re bringing fresh content on your sites on a daily basis. We’re placing content in various forms: RSS feeds from third parties, manual posting articles, news, your new blog… Some of this is others’ stuff, so in a way second quality content on your site.

The first quality content is your blog (original content). It will do very good to ping a blog a day. If you’re looking in the stats at ‘Pages-URL Top10′ there you’ll find the modules [that’s the holder for news/articles and listings] at #1 followed at #2 by the blog’s RSS feeder, that’s our outgoing syndication. The feeds we are giving to the blogosphere, and these —I think— are the prime objective of ours. How’s that working: people searching [items] on Google, the market is so competitive that their

chances to land on your site are slim, given the massive amount of [niche] sites on the web, older than yours and ‘fatter’.

In order for your site to ‘beat’ competition in Google, it takes sustained content refreshing, best with original content, complemented by a thorough link building policy (see below a special paragraph about links). Three months is like three hours in Google terms. And with Jagger 2 and similar algorithm upgrades at Google, the dance is growing more and more complex.

No reason to despair! We can get your site up with patience and perseverance, avoiding ‘black hat’ techniques, like automated scripts that try to fool the Google algorithm. But the blog syndication can bring better results and faster. The difference is that RSS (RSS=Real Simple Syndication) generated by the blog automatically spreads your original content — feeding with it neural centers of the blogosphere. These points are hub-sites that ‘copy’ your content (titles and first lines of each blog) like mirroring ‘leads’ to your site. These multiply in avalanche. And when the googlebots search on these mirrors, they find your content on them, and —most important— they find links pointing to your site.

Here’s the catch: LINKS! Your site will become #1 on Google if all [niche] web sites will have a link pointing to your site on them. It is of great importance that more and more third party sites contain links pointing to your site.

A detail: this link: http://yoursite.com is one

and this: http://www.yoursite.com is something else for the googlebots. Strange but real. Robots are not humans, so it’s good for us to be consistent with incoming links.

Also if the googlebot will find a reciprocal link from your site pointing to a third party site that contains a link pointing back to yours, then the algorithm will devaluate the respective link, nullifying if finding reciprocal linking pages. As sites have many distinct pages, and Google pays attention to pages in the first place. That’s why I think it’s important for your site to gather a maximal number of incoming non-reciprocal links from third party sites.

This can be easier achieved thru your blog. For instance:

• If you wanna go with exampleoffer.com then you have to pay some $20/month to have a page on their site, linking to yours. You’ll have one incoming non-reciprocal link, and this one link costing you some $20 a month. Quite hefty!
• But if you blog daily, writing original content and taking care to insert keywords (see feedback on most searched words in the stats) then you ‘risk’ acquiring few hundreds of external incoming non-reciprocal links for $0.

It’s only the morning/or evening/ hour spent to write that blog. And the analysis not stopping here: we can indefinitely chat about blogs, syndication, Google, rankings, optimizing, etc. It’s like a river, and never forget that [your niche] is one of the most competitive markets.

Client: I’m really hoping to generate leads. I’m not sure how to interpret all of the stats. Is there more that we need to do? Lots of questions…

Georg: Yep, I’ll be most happy to hear from you about leads generated out of the web, because it’s our common work here and when fruits are coming everyone’s happy. What we’re growing on your site is rather an oak than some grass, hehe, and it takes more time and efforts to bring it to fruition. You’re right, questions are lots, same as answers, we can talk on and on. The basic idea we’re having to follow is that there’s always something ‘more’ to do with optimizing a web site. Several ways in doing this chore:

1. Most people run into paying scam-like promises of prime time Google (tomorrow) money back guarantee blah blah… Well, it’s a logical non-sense: how can everybody be number one on Google? Who’s going to be number two? Where’s number 100,000? — and so on. Plus the innocents find themselves in the middle of a minefield because the scams apply black hat techniques, sort of scripts that generate (or better said: rip off) keyword rich content from other sites in order to fool the bots in believing ‘what a Yahoo-like site this is.’ Google (the company) lives from providing realistic ads and search results. Their main enemy is that plethora of scam-like scripts trying to bring in Top10 sites with no value, thus threatening the public credibility of Google search results. For that matter Google guys are changing very often their algorithms (the last major swing occurred last month — I was writing this late November) and when the googlebot ‘catches’ such a black hat technique then it automatically penalizes the respective site. Ending up with owning a site banned by Google is enough determent to stay away of such ‘clever’ techniques.

2. So we’re convinced (again) that Top10 Google glory is not a cowboy game, not going to happen overnight, not a trick. It’s rather like dusting the home, or like mowing the lawn. And eventually your exemplary home will ping the attention of others. The web-home needs two major elements to shine:

• first is the content (added every day if possible),
• second element is incoming external links (best if non reciprocal),
• the magic tool of having both by working only one is the blog, with it’s RSS/syndication feature.

Then we can look at the blog and notice the frequency of the posts. Until now, it’s not a daily frequency. Let’s say we’re going to have to post daily blogs for couple of months. Can’t tell if two months or four months, or six, and no one can define such an interval. Your site/blog will be much more visited then.

3. Now another tip: go see in the stats at ‘visits duration.’ A sad result: 84.4% of visits lasted less than 30 seconds. Well, what an interested human can notice in that interval? Now let’s think about it: we can have tons of incoming links, millions of articles posted, be Google #1 for [niche name] across the nation, have a blog a day. But if people find no interest in reading our content, then all the efforts are for nothing. It’s like with good or bad movies: both costing lots of money and time and sweat, but people are interested and paying only for the good movies. Which are the good movies? The ones they ENJOY! That tell ‘em something. That is: we’re having to tell something more on your site! Something more than others [in your niche] do. We having to make a difference. There are ideas coming to mind, some warped, some maybe not, don’t know.

Warped: opening a community forum where buyers and sellers can talk to each other, exchange pictures, share tips, whatever; say we offering this forum for free to everyone interested. The catch: offering sort of community-builder forum (with no direct hint to the business) makes you a special figure [throughout your niche]. It makes you ‘different’ — and this can be a powerful human magnet motivator.

Other more common idea[s]: thinking of polls, updating them weekly, bringing the blogging to a daily frequency, making sure in every blog there are meaningful keywords, and couple of outgoing links, (always think that in order to take you must give, it’s a quid pro quo) — so far as outgoing links not landing on pages that link back to your site there’s no nullifying problem.

Client: About exampleoffer.com: was there something different about this website from all the other ones that you feel could be more beneficial to my business?

Georg: Nothing, just that proverbial incoming non-reciprocal link. A new site linking to yours. Looks like it’s geared more towards investors rather than individuals looking to purchase high end [items].

Client: Also, can I see the stats for my newothersite.com? Maybe there’s more that we can do between the two of those websites.

Georg: See the zip with your newothersite.com stats. In absolute numbers your newothersite.com is quite pathetic. Yet in relative numbers, it also shows a rise since we’re tweaking in. BTW, that warped idea with the community forum can fit nicely on your newothersite.com.

Let me know on your thoughts, thanks, G.
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End of November dialogue, liked it? if you wanna write me some on SEO dancing on Google tunes, click here then.

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