In the last post we discussed, a little bit, about Social Media Marketing.

In this post, I want to further explain what Social Media Marketing can do for your Websites.

I first started learning about Social Media Marketing about a year ago, although I was very aware of Social Media sites and what they could do for a site in regards to Traffic. I have owned a couple of Social Networking Communities over the years and I’ve learned quite a bit about Social Media sites during the course of that time, as I used a few to promote my own communities. No, I did not spam – I actually followed their rules, as much as I could

I even watched the traffic flow from my own Social Networking sites into another site I owned from just a few links.

There are a lot of great Social Media sites out there that can bring you a ton of traffic if used correctly. Although I’m still learning about some of them – most of them are pretty straight forward.

Obviously, the best site would be YouTube.com… the reason being – this site brings in so much traffic, it’s almost impossible NOT to get a nice little chunk for yourselves.

To be quite honest, I’ve never even used YouTube.com for my own benefits – but I’ve helped a few others get started with the site and it helped them tremendously. I do plan to use the site in the next month as I’m planning to create a couple of Video Tutorials to, hopefully, bring in some extra Traffic to this site.

I mostly use Digg.com, Reddit.com, StumbleUpon, Facebook, MySpace, Technorati and various other sites (PlugIM, MarkTD, etc), but there’s a ton of Social Media sites out there…

…AND that can also be quite a task having to sign up for all of these sites and have the ability to bookmark, submit, etc. all of these sites in one shot.

A lot of people use OnlyWire.com to take care of the bookmarking (and submitting, etc), as it gives you the ability to store all of your Usernames and Passwords and even submit links all within the site… ONE TIP, THOUGH: REMEMBER THE PASSWORD IT GIVES YOU. I messed up and now I cannot figure out my password and they, for some ODD reason, do not have a Password Retrieval system in place. Why? I have no clue but it’s very annoying… and you won’t be able to contact them either. That’s why I use Web2Submitter (free with a membership to Social Power Linking) to keep track of the most important sites. I also tend to keep track of each username and password by placing them into a file I keep offline. Why I didn’t do this for OnlyWire? I do not know… !

I just mentioned Social Power Linking – and I want to tell you that the BuzzGroup is also a very useful system they have to help you create a Buzz with your link submissions. Some may say it’s cheating – I say it’s the same thing everyone else is doing!

Social Media Marketing is the “new wave” of getting traffic to your site and it can be one of the cheapest ways of getting a Flood of traffic very quickly, if used correctly.

So how do you get started with Social Media Marketing (SMM)?

First off – make sure the title of the page, as well as the description, is enticing to the potential reader. Something catchy that will grab their immediate attention and make them want to click the link. This is called “Link bait” and it has worked for many, MANY website owners, Bloggers and even Affiliates.

Second off – make sure your content is worthwhile. This is one of the biggest problems with so many sites, landing pages and even Blogs that I see on a daily basis. If you’re not giving the readers what they want – you’re going to have a major bounce rate problem (the user leaves from the original page viewed). Take, for example, sites such as Shoemoney.com … Jeremy gives his readers a TON of information and keeps them coming back. Once the reader has seen his site once, they’re more than likely to come back again…

Third — DO NOT SPAM your own links. Make sure you play by the rules and be realistic. For example, if you use StumbleUpon – make sure you stumble other sites that you believe are useful and/or valuable.

Try to give feedback to other Digg users and users of other sites. They will appreciate people who have taken their time to visit their sites and will usually return the favor, if you’ve followed the above.

Make SMM a daily habit. Take time out of your day, each and every day, to make sure you’re getting your site out there and you’re getting some traffic coming in.

Next — start signing up for Social Media Sites!

I found the following list from Prelovac.com, this is a very thorough list and thanks to Prelovac.com – it will save you a ton of time!

Num	Website	Alexa	Category	1.	youtube.com	4	Videos	2.	flickr.com	34	Images
3.	digg.com	135	General
4.	metacafe.com	151	Videos
5.	stumbleupon.com	294	Cool Content
6.	del.icio.us	378	General
7.	technorati.com	383	Blogging
8.	twitter.com	645	General
9.	mybloglog.com	753	Blogging
10.	scribd.com	1,015	Articles
11.	slashdot.org	1,041	Tech
12.	reddit.com	1,046	General
13.	blogcatalog.com	1,506	Internet / Blogs
14.	propeller.com	1,647	News
15.	fark.com	2,528	Entertainment
16.	mister-wong.de	2,643	General
17.	sphinn.com	2,855	Internet Marketing
18.	startaid.com	3,137	Internet
19.	tutorialized.com	3,538	Tutorials
20.	i-am-bored.com	4,646	Entertainment
21.	care2.com	5,165	Social Action
22.	kaboodle.com	5,353	Shopping
23.	blinklist.com	5,431	Internet
24.	indianpad.com	5,562	General
25.	furl.net	5,662	General
26.	newsvine.com	5,854	News
27.	clipmarks.com	6,899	News
28.	killerstartups.com	7,366	Internet
29.	dzone.com	7,439	Web Design & Development
30.	leenks.com	7,580	Entertainment
31.	activerain.com	8,434	Real Estate
32.	good-tutorials.com	8,516	Web Design
33.	linuxquestions.org	8,553	Linux
34.	mixx.com	8,775	General
35.	swik.net	8,875	Open Source news
36.	balatarin.com	8,885	Persian Digg Site
37.	ma.gnolia.com	10,679	Internet
38.	bumpzee.com	10,813	Internet / Blogs
39.	pixel2life.com	11,647	Web Design & Development
40.	nowpublic.com	12,032	News
41.	simpy.com	12,036	General
42.	shoutwire.com	12,472	General
43.	blinkbits.com	12,726	Internet
44.	ulinkx.com	13,149	Videos
45.	Mister-Wong.com	13,368	General
46.	9rules.com	13,636	Internet
47.	gather.com	14,468	Articles
48.	megite.com	14,603	General
49.	zaadz.com	15,570	General
50.	stylehive.com	15,864	Fashion
51.	netvouz.com	16,743	Internet
52.	diigo.com	16,896	Internet
53.	photoshoproadmap.com	16,989	Graphics and Web Design
54.	spurl.net	17,520	Internet
55.	thoof.com	18,944	Internet
56.	bloggingzoom.com	20,146	Internet / Blogs
57.	backflip.com	20,918	General
58.	corank.com	21,030	News
59.	autospies.com	21,612	Cars
60.	blogmarks.net	22,755	Internet
61.	dealigg.com	22,978	Deals
62.	ballhype.com	23,288	Sports
63.	links.hubspot.com	25,443	Internet
64.	uvouch.com	27,242	Videos
65.	bibsonomy.org	28,351	Publications
66.	lipstick.com	28,574	Celebrities
67.	plugim.com	28,731	Internet Marketing
68.	rojo.com	29,134	General
69.	faves.com	29,768	Internet
70.	citeulike.org	31,742	Academic
71.	searchles.com	32,236	World
72.	sk-rt.com	32,239	Lifestyle
73.	wists.com	34,559	Shopping
74.	designfloat.com	34,765	Web Design & Development
75.	listible.com	35,029	Lists
76.	connotea.org	36,040	General
77.	freeiq.com	36,042	Articles
78.	rawsugar.com	36,672	Web 2.0
79.	tailrank.com	36,918	News
80.	cgtutorials.com	37,172	Graphics and 3D
81.	linkagogo.com	37,337	Internet
82.	clipclip.org	37,340	Internet
83.	smallbusinessbrief.com	38,112	Internet Marketing and Business
84.	teenwag.com	38,179	Teens
85.	work.com	41,426	Business & Work
86.	spotback.com	42,896	Internet
87.	plime.com	43,192	News Culture
88.	rnel.net	43,732	Graphics and Web Design
89.	folkd.com	44,083	General
90.	spotplex.com	46,888	Automatic Digg like
91.	kinja.com	48,212	General
92.	buddymarks.com	48,638	General
93.	simplespark.com	50,382	Web Applications
94.	pslover.com	51,063	Graphics nad Design
95.	connectedy.com	53,704	General
96.	buzzflash.com	56,011	News
97.	wirefan.com	60,955	Internet
98.	hugg.com	61,145	Environment
99.	linkroll.com	61,835	General
100.	showhype.com	62,586	Web Design

As you can see, the list is huge and it will take quite some time to sign up for each and every one… so try to sign up for the most important (in your opinion) sites that will help you gain some more Traffic in the near future.

Social Media Marketing is just another way to increase traffic to your website(s). In the next post, we’ll be discussing Pay Per Click Advertising and going over the basics – then we’ll dig deeper into more Advanced stuff.

I hope you enjoyed this post! Hopefully it will be useful to a few of you!

Posted by Clint Lenard | 1 Comment »

I see a lot of Affiliate Marketing Newbies who get stuck with paying a lot of money for hosting accounts for their Domains. This is a mistake, in my opinion, as there are much better ways to accomplish this feat and save a lot of money in the long run.

Rather than pay $5-$20 for a hosting account for 1-3 domains, you should focus on getting a Reseller account in which you can host as many domains as you wish, for MUCH cheaper in the long run. One of the Hosting companies I use is HostGator.com…and it’s better than the other companies I’ve used/use.

But there’s other companies that exist that you can good service from as well. HostRocket.com offers a reseller hosting package for a decent price, and they are great with uptime guarantees!

1an1.com is horrible… I advise you to stay away from this company, PERIOD.

You can find a lot of Reseller companies on Ebay, but I do not suggest to go this route. I’ve dealt with almost every company listed on ebay and rarely do any of them have good service.

With a Reseller account – you will receive WHM (WebHostManager) or PLESK that allows you to quickly and easily setup your hosting account for your domain (each one). If you use GoDaddy for your Domains, you will be able to have your Website up and running within 30 minutes. I usually only have to wait for 10 minutes, whereas companies such as 1and1 will take up to 10 hours, minimum.

Hosting matters… hosting can make or break your Business of your site is down and you’re spending time promoting the site. Uptime is what you need to worry about, and downtime is what you should NOT have to worry about!

I hope this Tip helps you get started with your Affiliate Marketing career!

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

I just received an email explaining that Stopmernet SMARTS is back on sale with a $600 Discount, again. I was just talking to someone about it the other day and apparently they were having an issue with one of the sites that they discussed in one of their Videos (scribd.com) but, apparently, that’s not an issue that will continue to hold their program back.

You can see the video below that discusses SMARTS, it’s very cool looking and, as I’ve stated, Social Marketing/Social Media Marketing is a great way to create a lot of extra traffic!

The price IS quite high for the program – but, if you’re serious, this program can pay for itself over and over.

Stompernet SMARTS Sales page:
SMARTS Sales Letter – Monday 1/21 reopen

Here’s the link to the PDF Download:
Crowther PDF Download Page

ClickFu Video (cool video!):
Going Natural 2.0 – Video # 3 – Click Fu

Double Traffic Video (an awesome trick to get more listings!):
Going Natural 2.0 – Video # 1 – Double Traffic

Download the Scrutinizer tool (cool tool):
Link to Scrutinizer update

Going Natural 2.0 Video:
Going Natural 2.0

Like I said — this program is pretty expensive for most folks. You can find a cheaper version at Social Power Linking – but, obviously, you’re not getting as much information (a small fraction compared to SMARTS) and you’re not going to get Support, the way you will at SMARTS.

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

This is a follow up to Getting Started With Affiliate Marketing – Part 3

In the last part, we discussed Search Engine Optimization and how it can create higher Search Engine rankings, thus giving you more traffic… but what happens once you get that traffic?

That leaves us to Landing Pages and Conversions.

Landing pages, simply put, are website pages that a user lands on… this could be Search Engine traffic, PPC traffic, Forum signature traffic, Direct Traffic, etc. A user will land on these pages looking for a certain piece of content, product or maybe even some type of special offer.

Some Affiliates use Squidoo lenses or Hubpages for their landing pages, which they “pre-sell” the user and then send them to the Merchants Website. Pre-selling can be tricky for some people… there are plenty of Affiliates who simply do not understand Copywriting or have a tough time writing, period. In these cases, it’s probably best to create a Comparison page that actually compares 2+ products (all similar, of course), giving 1 product a “5 star” rating, along with a link… although it’s best to link ALL products in the comparison, just in case. And, obviously, it’s a good idea to become an Affiliate for each product.

Pre-selling is simply trying to sell the Visitor before he/she even arrives at the actual Sales page on the Merchants Website. I’ve actually tested several different methods of Landing pages and found that Review sites work the best for most of the products I choose… but not all. I have had some success with Comparison websites for a few products, where Review sites didn’t work as well.

Test, test, test… and once you’re done – test some more!

What are “conversions”? A conversion is simply converting traffic into sales… this means that you take a visitor and use your pre-sales page/landing page to make that visitor “bite” and move onto the next link (going to the merchants website) and purchase the product/service that you’re an Affiliate of.

So when you hear a Merchant talk about a 1:50 conversion ratio — this means that 1 in 50 people that land on the merchants sales page make a purchase. Obviously, this is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how much it costs to convert the traffic

Let’s take, for example, a Clothing company… let’s say that they have a 1:50 conversion ratio and the average sale is $100.00 … if it costs $2.00 per visitor (for you) to make a sale, you’re breaking even (50 times 2 = 100). This is a useless scenario for any successful Affiliate. But, on the other hand, if it only costs $.50 to make a sale – this could end up being a great situation for you! This means that it only costs $25.00 to make a $100.00 sale! Not bad…

Always do the math before throwing your money into the wind. I’m terrible with math but I make sure I do not get started in a program before I know the costs of bringing that traffic to the merchants page.

Direct linking … you’ll hear about “direct linking” quite a bit in the PPC world. Direct linking is using your Affiliate link, provided by the merchant, in your PPC ads, rather than taking them to YOUR Landing page. What you’re doing is letting the Merchant make the sale for you… bypassing having to create a landing page.

So, what’s the downfall of using a Direct linking campaign? Well… that depends. Is the Merchants Sales page good? How do you know? You could and should test this to be sure, before dumping all of your money into the campaign. You should also be using your own landing page (review, comparison or a simple pre-sell or squeeze page) so you can test the differences.

In some cases – it might be cheaper to create your own landing page for your PPC campaign as relevancy plays a MAJOR role in your PPC costs… (we’ll get into this later… hopefully with a guest post with one of the best PPC marketers I know!)

Squeeze pages are simple pages used to get the user to sign up for your email list before taking the next step. This is great if you have some free, relevant content that they might be interested in. You’ve probably seen a lot of Squeeze pages in the Internet Marketing niches where you would land on a page (very simple) with a Headline, maybe some bullet points and an Opt-in form underneath. These pages work great for some markets, but not all… I would NOT suggest using a squeeze page for just any Market… you’ll most likely be wasting a lot of time and money.

As I said before – you need to make sure that you test everything you do. I remember the late, Corey Rudl… he was constantly telling his students that same line: “test, test, test… then test some more”. This is very true. You could see a major increase in sales with just a few small tweaks.

Google Website Optimizer is great for testing your landing pages. Give it a shot and read up on how to use it properly. (this tool is free!)

Another great (and free) tool that you should be using is Google Analytics. ROI Revolution has some great training programs on this – but even their Free Email Training Course can teach you A LOT about how to use Google Analytics.

I highly recommend using Google Analytics to see where your Traffic is coming from, see what Keywords they use, bounce rates, page views, etc… there’s  A LOT of useful information that you can see from Google Analytics and, once again, it’s free.

aweber is what I use for my email marketing… it’s very cheap for what you get and it’s extremely useful. aweber is definitely the most used service in the Internet Marketing community because of its high delivery rates, great support and cheap pricing.

When I refer to email marketing — this means I use this service to collect my optin emails… from simple opt-in forms AND Squeeze pages.

One thing I suggest you do is to learn Copywriting. Dan Kennedy has some great books on this subject – and there’s one called “The Ultimate Sales Letter”, which is available on Amazon.com for fairly cheap. Learning Copywriting can help you become a more successful Affiliate… believe it or not — it will, I promise.

We’ll continue with Landing Pages in the next post. I hope this helped you gain a little more knowledge, if not – please comment to let me know!

Posted by Clint Lenard | 5 Comments »

Aughhh. I wonder what this will mean to PHP, Python, Ruby On Rails and other developers? I’ve been using MySQL for about… 3 years now… maybe 4? But I wonder if this will affect other Developers who have used MySQL, strictly, for all of their projects?

Hopefully nothing more than commercial licensing (rather than bite the hands that fed them)…?

Hmmmm… I know this has nothing to do with Affiliate/Internet Marketing, but in a way – it does… hope it doesn’t affect many people!

Sun announced an agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world’s fastest growing open source databases. This acquisition accelerates Sun’s position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market and reaffirms Sun’s position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

To everyone wondering where the next post for “Getting Started With Affiliate Marketing” is… well, I’ve been trying to focus on a few things – but I’ll have a new post up tomorrow, for sure.

I apologize for the delay!

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

This is the follow up to Getting Started With Affiliate Marketing – Part 2

In the last part, we discussed SEO Basics, but we didn’t go further than On site SEO. In this part, we’ll be diving a bit further into SEO and discussing off site SEO.

Off site SEO involves Linking back to your website… this is where a lot of your traffic will come from, if not most. You will hear the term “linking strategies” as you learn more about Search Engine Optimization, but we’ll try to get into it a little bit in this post.

Linking to your website is called “backlinking” or backlinks… these links should use Keywords used on the page you’re linking to – so that the Spiders/Crawlers will view your link and your page with some importance to that keyword. Make sense?

A while back I submitted an Article to EzineArticles.com about Inbound links that might help understand linking strategies. (all links open in new tabs/windows)
How to Get the Best Inbound Link Traffic
SEO Link Engine
Inbound Links

Those article should give you a quick start on Linking. They’re pretty straight forward.

Links back to your website need to be relevant… this means that if you own a Blog about Internet Marketing, you should NOT be looking for links coming from a website about Real Estate. This kind of linking strategy is no good. Google loves relevancy in everything… Websites, Links, PPC Ads, Landing pages, everything… there’s no reason to try to get a ton of links for $30 from someone on Digital Point just because it sounds good.

Quantity cannot beat Quality when it comes to links…keep that in mind. It’s better to have 1,000 links coming from Relevant websites than it is to have 100,000 coming from “where ever”.

Replying to blogs similar to yours (please do not reply just to get a link, blog owners do not appreciate it and shady acts are shady acts) with quality replies can definitely be beneficial if the blogs don’t have “NoFollow” tags. Lately there seems to be a lot of “NoFollow” blogs popping up everywhere… I’m not sure why anyone would do this to their own site (what goes around comes around… nothing = nothing), but they’re becoming a trend lately.

You can read more on NoFollow here.

You can also ask Website owners if they will link to you (Reciprocal), but don’t expect anything just because you asked. Remember that Websites are like Real Estate! They really are. To ask someone to stick a sign on their grass is asking for a lot – and normally you either won’t get a reply back or you’ll get a no…

Backlinks can also improve your Google PageRank, but we won’t get into that here… You can read about Google PR here.

So to recap – There’s 2 parts of Search Engine Optimization… On site SEO and Off site SEO.

On site SEO is optimizing your website and it’s pages for keywords that you want to compete within the Search Engine results with.

Off site SEO is using Backlinks, using keywords as the Anchor text, to get traffic (including Spiders/Crawlers) to your website.

Just remember that SEO is based on Relevance. I highly recommend that you learn more about Search Engine Optimization, especially LSI, as it is one of the most important aspects of being an Affiliate Marketer. There are no secrets to SEO, unless you dive into the murky waters of BlackHat SEO, which is not useful as an Affiliate looking to build a solid business…

While we’re on the subject of Backlinks, let’s get into Social Media…

As you have probably noticed over the past few years – Web 2.0 is alive and well and it’s not going anywhere (although there were so many who doubted Web 2.0!), except forward…

Social Media sites keep popping up and Advanced Marketers are taking advantage of these popular sites as soon as they see something shiny

Bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon can bring a TON of traffic to your website in a very, VERY quick manner… make sure your server/host can handle large traffic spikes when you begin to dig deeper.

I have been learning a lot more about Social Media over the past few weeks through Jack Humphrey’s Social Power Linking program, and I’m very happy with the results as of late. But there’s a lot more to learn.

StomperNet has just released a very expensive, yet very professional Program that teaches you a lot about these Social Media sites and how to obtain traffic… but it IS expensive. Is it worth it? I do not know at this point… I haven’t gotten a chance to check it out, nor will I anytime soon at the current price. Probably unfortunate, but I just can’t afford it at this point in time!

Squidoo, Hubpages, Propeller and other Web 2.0 Content sites get great Search Engine rankings – even with brand new pages. It’s amazing how quickly these sites not only get indexed – but how HIGH they rank for even very competitive results.

Learn as much as you can about these new Web 2.0 sites and sign up to each one… just in case.

Obviously – if you are looking for a lot of traffic to your website, writing and submitting articles will get you A TON of traffic if you use the right keywords…

As an Affiliate – you will see GREAT rankings by reviewing new products. Write articles (be careful with EzineArticles [EA] as they are VERY picky with articles!), create lenses at Squidoo, create a new hub at Hubpages and submit Pages to Digg, Propeller and Stumble pages as well.

In the next few days I will try to provide a great list of Web 2.0/Affiliate resources that will help you in your Affiliate Marketing Efforts!

Hope this Article helps! Be on the lookout for Part 4… it’s going to get A LOT better! =)

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

Wealthy Affiliate University has released another free ebook for ideas and research and all of that good stuff.

It’s a good book and it’s 100% free, no strings attached!

Click here to download the ebook

By the way, Wealthy Affiliate 3.0 was launched recently and there’s been some major changes (good) so far and it looks like they’re going to continue adding new features throughout the next few weeks. Like I said – this is definitely the best learning resource for anyone looking to get started in Affiliate Marketing, OR simply become more successful in Affiliate Marketing.

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

This post is a follow up to Part 1, where we discussed an Intro into Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing consists of many different variables. Article Marketing/Bum Marketing is a great way for newbie Affiliate Marketers to get their start. You can use a wide variety of methods to gain High Rankings in the Search Engines, including using other Web 2.0 sites such as Squidoo and Hubpages. But first, you should understand basic Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important factors of becoming a successful Affiliate, in my opinion. Of course, for those who simply rely on PPC, this isn’t always the case… but as a Newbie, let’s stick with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) first.

SEO needs to start in the planning stages of any new website. This means that before you even start building a website, SEO needs to be considered. From the start, you should focus on Keywords that users might use to find your Website or Products. But, let’s get something straight here…

There’s a lot of great SEO tools out there, but some people seem to get caught up with relying on these tools, too heavily, even before they use their biggest, most powerful tool… their brain.

I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but it’s something that NEEDS to be taken seriously… you need to design your website on paper and then make notes on what needs to be done, prior to getting started with the actual creation of it all.

SEO Structure is important. Some believe that using nested tables in your HTML code is not as effective as using XHTML and pure CSS design, using Div tags. I have not designed a website using tables for… I guess it’s been approximately 3 years now? For me, it has become natural to use table-less design structure in my websites.

But I won’t get into too much HTML jargon…

Let’s go over some basics of Search Engine Optimization, shall we?

Search Engine Optimization Basics:

All Search Engines use what’s called a “Spider” or “Crawler” that indexes your page into their own Database. Actually, here’s what Dan Thies says in his book on Sitepoint.com: The search engine marketing Kit (an excellent product):

Major Tasks Handled by Search Engines

There are five major tasks that each crawling search engine must handle, and significant
computing resources are dedicated to each. These tasks are:
Finding Web pages and downloading their contents.

The bulk of this task is handled by two components: the crawler and the scheduler.
The crawler’s job is to interact with Web servers to download Web pages and/or
other content. The scheduler determines which URLs will be crawled, in what order,
and by which crawler. Large crawling search engines are likely to have multiple types
of crawlers and schedulers, each assigned to different tasks.

Storing the contents of Web documents and extracting the textual content.

The primary components at this stage are the database/repository and parser
modules. The database/repository receives the content of each URL from the
crawlers, then stores it.

The parser modules analyze the stored documents to extract information about the text content and hyperlinks within. Depending on the search engine, there may be multiple parser modules to handle different types of files, including HTML, PDF, Flash, Microsoft Word, and so on.

Analyzing and indexing the content of documents.

This is handled by the document indexer. The text content is analyzed by the indexer
and stored in a set of databases called indexes. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer
to these indexes as simply “the index.” Included in the indexing process is the preliminary
analysis of hyperlinks within the documents, feeding URLs back into the
scheduler and building a separate index of links. The main focus of this phase is the
on-page content of Web documents.

Link analysis, to uncover the relationships between Web pages.

This is the work of the link analyzer component. All of the major crawling search
engines analyze the linking relationships between documents to help them determine
the most relevant results for a given search query. Each search engine handles this
differently, but they all have the same basic goals in mind. There may be more than
one type of link analyzer in use, depending on the search engine.

Query processing and the ranking of Web pages to deliver search results.

The query processor and ranking/retrieval module are responsible for this important
task. The query processor must determine what type of search the user is conducting,
including any specialized operations that the user has invoked. The ranking/
retrieval module determines the ranking order of the matching documents, retrieves
information about those documents, and returns the results for presentation
to the user.

Now, obviously, I don’t expect you to fully understand everything he’s saying, but I figured I would let one of the most highly respected SE Experts do the talking, rather than me… so I don’t sound too stupid and all!

Website owners love these Spiders/Crawlers. They are what eventually bring us traffic. Without Traffic, we are nobodies. The fact is – unless you have Millions of Dollars to spend on Pay Per Click Advertising, you NEED to learn Search Engine Optimization to a certain degree…which I believe is the basics, at a minimum.

There’s two components of Search Engine Optimization — On site SEO and Off site SEO.

Let’s start with On site optimization…

This is optimizing the actual website to get the best results possible. Your website is focused around Keywords (what users are typing into the Search Engines to find you) that are related to your site, company or product.

Take for example, a company named “Blue Widgets, Inc.” that is based out of Los Angeles, California. Their product is actually called “Blue Widget” and is gaining a lot of popularity as of late.

Now Blue Widgets, Inc. decides that they need to upgrade their website as it’s not very practical and they’re hoping for more traffic as well.

So Blue Widgets needs to figure out what people will be searching for so that they can find their product and website. They need to understand that the average searcher will not type in their industry lingo to find their product, so they need to ask around and find out what people DO search for when they want to find information on the “Blue Widget”.

In the end, they decide that their most popular keywords are (including a possible misspelling):
Blue Widget
Blue Widgets
Blu Widget
Information on Blue Widgets
Where to buy Blue Widgets
How much is the blue widget

So they now need to focus on the structure of their Website and realize that their pages need to include these words.

So Blue Widgets, Inc.’s home page need the following:

Title tag needs to include the main keyword
Include Meta Tags (just in case)
Use H1 Tags with their Keywords for the page
use Keywords in their links and Navigation, if possible
Focus on Keyword Density within their pages

* Keep in mind that Crawlers/Spiders read Websites from the top left – downwards.

Blue Widgets need to keep these “rules” in mind when creating their website.

What Blue Widgets also needs to keep in mind, is that their domain “BlueWidgets.com” (sorry if this is a real website, I did not check!), might not automatically come up #1 in the Search Engine just because their main keyword is in the URL. Take SEO.com, for example! (do a search for SEO on google)

But, having keywords in your domain IS helpful, in most cases. I tend to use keywords on page names, too… such as “http://www.bluewidgets.com/information-on-blue-widgets.html”, but it doesn’t always mean that the page automatically gets listed high in the results. Although, I am listed #1 for some semi-high competition keywords for several review sites I own.

When you do a search on Google, you will more than likely notice different results… you might notice “sponsored results” at the very top and to the right, while Organic Results will be placed on the left, un-highlighted.

The Sponsored Listings are what we will be discussing in a separate tutorial. These listings are what you would call “Pay Per Click Advertising”.

Here’s where you would see the Sponsored Listings (PPC listings):

And here is what we are discussing: Organic Listings, created by Search Engine Optimization:

Notice how the Search Engines Bold the Keywords that were typed into the Search box? (“Search Engine Optimization“)

This is actually the Title of the webpage. Google sees it as being relevant to the search, so this is why you are seeing as being bold.

If you look at the top of this website (ClintLenard.com) you will see the Title tag appearing at the top of your browser. The Title tag of your Website is VERY important for Search Engine rankings, as it’s the first Keyword that Google Spiders will see (remember, Crawlers/Spiders read from the top left – on down).

This is one of the most, if not THE most, important parts of On page SEO.

But you will also notice that the Description of the page, taken by google, also has the Keyword bolded (The description is underneath the title of the page on the Google [organic] Results).

The Description is usually taken from the Meta Tag “Description”, but Google can also take a ‘clipping’ from the website and list IT as the Description, too.

The Keyword Meta Tag is, in my opinion (and most others), is almost useless these days due to what is called ‘keyword stuffing’, used by Black Hat SEO’s in the past (Black Hat is bad, White Hat is good… kind of like Spy vs. Spy, member? You memberrrr..). I sometimes use them, but not because I really want to in most cases. It’s just an old habit, I guess.

Since we’re on the subject… be sure to go by the Search Engine’s rules. Trying to fool these Search Engines is a useless task that WILL get you banned. Sure, a #1 position on Google for a high volume term might be worth while to a spammer with a throw away domain, but we’re talking about building a legitimate Business here. Right? I hope so! Play by their rules or don’t play at all… K? Good.

On with the show…

Let’s take a look at Bruce Clay’s Website where he ranks very high for the term “Search Engine Optimization“:

Notice the term “Search Engine Optimization” is in the Title tag and you can see that I underlined it within the content, sprinkled about very nicely…

Nothing spammy about it, yet it has the keyword several times in the Document.

Keyword Density is definitely important. You want to use your keywords in the content but you do NOT want it to look as if it’s written for the Search Engines. When writing, always write for HUMANS! But definitely include your keywords in the content…

Notice that the term “Search Engine Optimization” is also included above the actual Content? While this is actually considered a Bread Crumb (to know where the user is), it can also be considered the Content Title to a Crawler/Spider.

Your navigation (menu) can also play a key role in your SEO efforts if it doesn’t seem to spammy… but we won’t dig into that at this point.

Let’s take SEO to a different level here…

Let’s say that you were writing an Article to submit to EzineArticles.com and you were trying to rank high for the term through the article itself.

We’ll say that we’re an Affiliate for Blue Widgets, Inc. and we want to write an Honest Review of the product “Blue Widget”. Our Article Title needs to say what we want the user to type into the Search Engine… so the Title will say “Blue Widget Review”.

I’m going to keep this simple, so we will put this into the search engine: “blue widget review” (exactly like that, with the quotes around it). This is called an exact phrase. This means that we’re looking for that EXACT keyword on Google’s result pages.

As you can see, there’s actually 6 results… which would give us an easy task at hand if we wanted to come up #1 for that listing! But, since we’re playing pretend… let’s pretend that there were 6,000 results. NOW we have 6,000 pages that we need to consider as competition.

Thankfully, EzineArticles.com gets high ranking in Google… Google loves this site. So our term “blue widget review” should be an easy #1 target.

So the title of our Article that we will submit will be: Blue Widget Review

Now we want to include this term approximately 5% of the time in our Content… of course, we don’t need to hit this exact number. We just need to be sure to include it a few times in the article. So let’s place it as the title (as we’ve said), within the first line, within the middle of the article and towards the end of the article. Easy enough, right?

Yep, it’s that easy. Just don’t sound spammy when you’re writing the article or you’ll kill your chances for higher rankings in the end!

Be sure to bold your keywords at the right times… not too many times or, once again, it will look like you’re writing for the Spiders, which is not a good thing.

On your website, be sure to create a Sitemap so that the Search Engine Spiders and even your visitors can find all of your web pages.

Regular content is something that Search Engines love. Keeping your Website fresh with Articles, Blog posts, or even new static pages, will keep the Spiders hungry for more.

This is pretty much the basics of Onsite SEO. We haven’t touched Off-site SEO, yet, because I’ve run out of time. I will update this post with more information once I get the chance!

Well, I cannot lie… my hands are actually cramping up from all of this typing so I need to cut this short… on that note, I will be adding a second part to this module. I hope I didn’t go too off topic, I hope this made sense and I hope I didn’t make too many errors (I may have, my eyes are killing me and it’s getting late!).

Hope this helps explain some of the basics!

Posted by Clint Lenard | 1 Comment »

OK, I found Logo Samurai on John Cow’s blog when I heard about a contest… I wanted to win REALLY badly, but just couldn’t wait when I seen their work. I knew I needed a new logo since mine was really ugly and boring… I’m not a great Photoshop artist when it comes down to it, although I can do enough to make a nice looking Web 2.0 landing page, website, etc.

So I decided to order. After all, their prices are TOO cheap, if you ask me.

I went through the order process and tried my best to describe what I wanted. The problem is – I didn’t have an up to date picture. The only picture I could find was me with a beanie on. But, since I have a bald head, I was a little worried that they couldn’t get it right…

Even after I placed my order – I was getting worried again… so, being the anxious person I am, I decided to write to them to give more information regarding what I wanted, including an image of my glasses that I always wear (Black Fly’s, by the way! Flys.com).

Then, I told Susan (the person who contacted me after I placed the order…which was a cool follow up!) that I would try to get her an up to date picture of myself… ughhhh my weekend had become too hectic… I couldn’t find the time to get a picture and I’m NOT a camera friendly guy… I HATE PICTURES!

So Susan contacts me today with my Logo after about 48 hours and attaches the Logo images to the email.

Wow…

I was blown away. Everybody who knows me laughs at the logo because it REALLY DOES look like me!

I love the logo. Now I need to get something else from them to freshen up my Blog some more!

I definitely recommend that you at least check out their site!

Click here to visit Logo Samurai!

Thanks Susan!

Posted by Clint Lenard | 6 Comments »