aaron dalrymple dot com

Disclaimer: I know that this is a completely over-simplified version of search engine optimization and an SEO expert is really what most sites need to kick their search engine marketing into high gear… But, I wanted to boil it down to just a few things that any site owner can do to help out their rankings with just a little effort. Depending on a number of factors, these changes may make significant increses in your ability to drive search engine traffic, or it may be much more subtle. But with the time that you’ll invest, it’s surely worth a shot…

1. Make sure the engines can see your content. The simplest way to do this is to use your web browser to view > source. Do you see your content in the code? More than 2 or 3 times in the last few months I’ve had people ask me to take a look at their site and I’ve found that the entire site was nothing more than images or was completely constructed in frames. If you view the source of your site and don’t see your page copy, neither can the search engines. Also, make sure you’re using keyword phrases that users are actually searching for in your page copy. To help figure out what those keywords are, visit: freekeywords.wordtracker.com.
2. Rewrite your title tags. The title tags on your site serve two purposes. One is to help the engines know what your pages are about, the other is to encourage users to click on your listing in the search engine results. Write a unique title tag for each page of your site that includes one or two of those keywords from step one. In fact, use that keyword first in your title and stick your company name at the end (unless you’re specifically targeting your company/brand name). Keep titles to around 70 characters. Send that list to your web developer or update them yourself, but make sure each page has a title that is unique to its content and assures users that your site is what they are looking for when they see it in their results.
3. Get more incoming links. Link building is a discipline in and of its own. Very simply put, you need quality incoming links to your site in order to obtain top rankings. To start ask friends to link to your site, next ask strangers to link to your site. Don’t spam strangers (or friends!), ask them nicely to trade or add a link to your site because you have complementary businesses or content. Join the chamber of commerce to get a link from their member directory. Put out your press releases through PRWeb or send them to bloggers and publishers of newsletters in your industry. There are hundreds of ways to build links, if you commit a few hours to it every week you will soon be reaping the rewards.

There you have it. Just a few simple steps that anyone can do to help their search engine rankings. Again, you won’t replace a search engine marketing expert with these, but they may help you get to the place where you can afford to hire one…

Tagged as: SEO, Link Building, PR, Optimization Tips, SEO Tips, Search Engine Optimization, PRWeb, WordTracker, title tags, keyword discovery

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Great post here from Marketing Pilgrim, and a good lively conversation in the comments. What I would add to the discussion is that many clients WANT exactly what Greg is cautioning against in his post. Most of his points are great, but, unfortunately, a lot of people who call me (I don’t cold call) are looking for a quick meta tag and link building type campaign because the IT folks don’t want to hear your suggestions, the marketing folks don’t want your ideas and the product people don’t want your advice. I agree that SEO programs should be fully integrated, but convincing customers of that is sometimes difficult. They view it as a condiment instead of an integral part of the website sandwich…

The tips here are valid, but I don’t think they should necessarily be presented as find out if your SEO guy is unscrupulous… They should be presented as suggestions to help businesses understand why they need an integrated SEO program with a respectable budget attached to it - and, perhaps, why it is better to do it in-house…
Read on:

8 Tips for Avoiding an SEO Fraudster

Tagged as: Travel Marketing, Search Engines, Marketing, SEM, SEO, Online Marketing, Link Building, PR, SEO Consultants, Greg Howlett, marketing Pilgrim

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Gets you some free SEO tools from Jim Boykin and We Build Pages here:

New Free SEO Tools from WBP - Sweet! - Jim Boykin’s Internet Marketing Blog

Great link bait, Jim.

Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, Yahoo, SEO, Online Marketing, Link Building, SEO Tools, SEO Tools

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Clients sometimes look at me funny when I tell them that their new site will probably not have any rankings in Google for a least a year. It sucks, but it’s true. Part of being a professional like myself is that you want to tell clients and potential clients that your expertise will overcome any obstacles encountered. But, just like in most professions, there are some things that are out of the control of even the top people in the field.

And Jim Boykin is one of the the top folks in the SEO field. Jim says:

I know that I won’t touch a site that’s less than 2 1/2 years old (a webuildpages policy for almost a year now). Yea, there is no sandbox really, only levels of filters. The newer the site, the more filters it has to flow through.

The fact is that getting around Google’s age filters (or sandbox or whatever you want to call it) is nearly unavoidable. So, as much as I would like to say that I’m such an incredible optimizer of all things search that I can easily skate around those silly Google age filters… sorry.

Read all of Jim’s post and click through to the “additional resources” posts for some great information on Google’s domain age factor.

Google Ranking Filters: Trust and Age Factors. - Jim Boykin’s Internet Marketing Blog

Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, SEO, Online Marketing, Link Building, Sandbox, Jim Boykin, Age Filter, Google Sandbox

1 Comment »

I get a lot of questions from clients about redirects.

• How do I move my site to a new domain and keep my search engine rankings in tact?
• I’m going to take down some old pages/sites, will this affect my rankings?
• I’m redesigning my website and my directory and/or page names are changing, will the engines just point to the new pages?
• How can I tell the engines to send all my traffic to my home page?

There are answers to these questions, but first I usually say something like, “Are you sure you want to do that?” The reason I ask is that often times the pages or sites that the company wants to get rid of are older pages that have great link reputation and are well “aged” in the engines – they get crawled a lot, have a high Page Rank, etc. Plus, more content is usually better; can the pages be repurposed?

After assessing the need for getting rid of pages or moving domains or changing the page/directory structure (which are all valid and necessary in a lot of cases), using a 301 redirect is usually the answer. A 301 redirect won’t get you in trouble with the search engines as some redirects, like a meta-tag refresh, can. It tells the engine that a page has permanently moved and asks if it would please start indexing the new page in its place. It’s the safest way to change page names, domains, directories, etc. when changing these elements of your website. If you’re deleting an old mini-site or set of pages, you should consider redirecting each page you’re deleting to a similar page on your new or main site.

The next question is, naturally, “how do I do that?”

Here are some good sources that I’ve com across recently on redirects, 301s and how to implement them:

Steve Hargrove - How to redirect a web page, the smart way - added 6/20 

Wikipedia - URL redirection

TamingTheBeast.net - Giving search engine spiders direction

SEOBook - .htaccess, 301 Redirects & SEO: Guest Post by NotSleepy

Bruce Clay, Inc. – Sorting out Redirects

Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, Yahoo, SEO, Online Marketing, MSN, Ask, Link Building, Optimization Tips, SEO Tools, 301 Redirect, URL Redirect, Redirect, Bruce Clay

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Jim Westergren has put together a fantastic link building guide in what is an example of a fantastic link building technique: great content! It really is a good guide on something that still mystifies a lot of web masters and even SEOs, how to acquire high quality links that don’t risk your positions in Google and the other engines.  It’s a great guide for beginners as well as folks who have been doing it for a long time and need a refresher or some new ideas.
Here’s your link, Jim:

Link Building Guide

Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, SEO, Online Marketing, Link Building, Optimization Tips, SEO Tools, Jim Westergren, link building guide

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I meant to say link building, BUILDING, not schemes - oh no, not you. Anyhow, here is a great article on Google’s last update (nicknamed “Jagger”) and how it may affect your inbound and outbound links. Google is trying to make sure your link building is relevant and more “natural.” There are so many people out there selling link building “programs” right now that it was only a matter of time before Google tried to get control of the spam situation.

The article from Search Engine Journal is about a month old, but I just ran across it today and it’s still worth a read:

Google’’s Jagger Update Completing Cycles

Tagged as: Google, SEO, Link Building

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Let’s face it, the more link building gains popularity, the more difficult it becomes to sift through the garbage and come up with quality incoming links. If you have a budget for your link building efforts, it can be it easier. But, don’t spend all that money on obscure directory listings, short-term text links, and sites that may not be around next year. Not that these types of links can’t help you (just make sure the sites are relevant to your own content), but there are ways to buy links once and make them last forever… or almost forever.

Look for industry, niche or lifestyle-oriented e-zines (online newsletters) that you can buy links in, many times at a low flat rate. Pay special attention to how the company archives its newsletters. Many times a one time link buy in a newsletter that is then archived on the company’s website will get you a long-term (finely aged) inbound link from a relevant source. And, who knows, it may also drive some qualified traffic to your site too!

If you would like to know more about link building, why it’s important and more tips - read This Post.

Tagged as: Marketing, SEO, Online Marketing, Link Building

3 Comments »

A lot is being said about link building. It’s the most recent search engine pie-in-the-sky solution for all your search engine woes… Like meta-tags were just a few short years ago — you couldn’t walk through cyberspace for even a moment without being hit up by folks that would write optimized meta tags that would rocket you to the top of Alta Vista, Yahoo, Excite and Looksmart… Google who?

Google is nearly single-handedly responsible for this most recent phenomenon, and for the record, it probably is here to stay, unlike meta tags whose use is for the most part optional in today’s landscape. Google decided that who links to you and what that link “says” about you is nearly as important as what your page says itself. It’s usually called Link Reputation. Just like your personal reputation, it may know you better than you know yourself.

At the most basic level, incoming links should include your top keywords in the linking text and point to similarly relevant pages on your site. Hundreds, even thousands, of incoming links may make the difference in top Google rankings for the most competitive keywords. There is evidence that links that are traded (reciprocal links) aren’t valued as highly by the engines as “natural” one-way links. The best links are usually links that others included on their site just because your content is so darn good. The most valuable forms of link building include article/content production, press releases, producing an RSS feed, and content content content.

At the recent WebmasterWorld Search Conference in New Orleans, link building was the topic of many discussions. And usually it all came back to building great content. The conference was a little weak, however, on ways to build content - but we’ll save that for another day. Marketers in the travel space usually have some content at their disposal and, if not, there is enough to say about your products and destinations to fill pages and pages.

Here are some tips, though, that I did pick up at the conference on the art of link building.

• Don’t rely on reciprocal linking. As mentioned above, reciprocal links may be de-valued by the engines. You can use them, but don’t let them outweigh your efforts on building one-way links.
• Run about 70% of your incoming links to your homepage and the other 30% to your interior pages.
• When researching a potential linking partner, check their inbound links for relevancy and quantity, view their source code to make sure they’re not redirecting through a counter or ad server or including a “NoFollow” tag, and look for a robots.txt file that may be keeping the engines from indexing or following links on the page.
• Leverage your own network first. Do you have other sites, associates or friends that you can trade links with?
• Don’t be afraid to buy links. This shouldn’t be your entire strategy, but it does have its place. For instance, buying link in the Yahoo! Directory should be first on your list.
• Obtain directory links. A lot of directories out there are sub-par, but some can not only drive link reputation but TRAFFIC! You should shoot for at least 25-50 links from quality directories.
• Start a blog. If your content is fresh and good, folks will want to link to it from their own blogs with their own comments.
• Don’t focus on Google Page Rank. You know, the little green bar on your Google toolbar. Ignore it. Or better yet, make it go away in the toolbar settings. It’s not updated regularly and there seems to be no evidence that it will help you with anything, except maybe your ego.
• 90% of your incoming links should be from different IP C Blocks. In other words, if you manage 100 sites and they are all hosted with the same company and you interlink them all, it probably won’t help much.
• The text around your incoming link may be considered as well. Make sure your link is in context.
• Use different variations of your keywords in your links. If you suddenly have hundreds of incoming links that all say the exact same thing, Google may assume that it’s not “natural.” So, mix it up. In fact, throw in some banner ads to really make it look natural.
• Include a “link to us” link on your site. Then give users instructions on how to add a link to your site from their own site. You may be surprised on how many of your visitors will take you up on it.
• Internal links are important too. Meaning, the links from one page to the next within your own site. Use keyword rich anchor text and consider using breadcrumb navigation.
• Pay attention to the neighborhood your links are coming from. If you’re selling travel, make sure a good portion of your links are from other travel related sites, and make sure they’re not “spammy” sites or link farms
• You may want to consider outsourcing link building if you have the budget. It’s really not easy (or fun!). There are companies and consultants who do nothing but link building. Contact me if you would like any names.
• Build great content and others will want to link to you without even being asked. “If you build it they will come.”

Tagged as: Search Engines, SEO, Link Building

1 Comment »

Here is a great white paper I ran across on link building from Text Link Ads. Very insightful and detailed - and worth a read for anyone working on a link building campaign:

Link Buying Guide from Text Link Ads

Tagged as: SEO, Link Building

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