Optimizing your Video Content

We know that video content has far better prominence in search engine listings, and a couple of good quality videos (with innovative content), if promoted well, can generate traffic and affect your websites ranking for your keywords.

The main reason for this is the wide popularity of video sites like YouTube, Meta Café and the likes, and search engines showing preference to video content rather than textual content. And yet, there are some important points to consider before you can go ahead and optimize your videos for search engines and promote them.

Since universal search started favoring video content, many SEO experts started using videos as a strategy to get quicker rankings for keywords (some even with strong competition) that otherwise would have taken months to achieve, not to mention the hard work involved in optimizing the site, and building links. Now this is not an alternative to building your regular content and links, but rather an additional boost to the existing seo efforts.

A simple method SEO’s use is to publish the video on their client’s websites and then upload it to sites like YouTube. When a search engine would find the same Meta tags in YouTube, as that of a video hosted on the client’s site, it would pass on some link juice immediately, impressing the client to no end to see his video ranked top for his keyword.

But keep in mind, video content is treated like any other content as far as search engines go, and things like having your keyword in the Meta tags, Title and the Synopsis is equally important. Since the search engines cannot understand the content of the person speaking in the video, they look into the title, the Meta tags, and synopsis of your video to take clues as to what the video is about. One good idea is to create a text transcript of the conversation of the video on that page as well.

The title of the video needs to be given a lot of prominence! Other than ensuring that your keyword/ keyword phrase is included in the title, you have to create a title that is captivating enough so that users come watch it (and recommend it).

Now that you have your videos optimized, the next big question is “where to host your videos”? Well that would depend on what do you want to achieve. If you are looking at increasing the traffic to your website, then it’s better to host the video on your website first before submitting to the big video sites. But if your objective is to spread brand awareness and want to create a viral, then you can safely host it on sites like YouTube.

Once the optimized video is live, then the next step is to build some links to your video content. You must think the video content you have created is very useful to the users, so why not announce this across social bookmarking sites, and even sites like Twitter. The more users like your video, the more traffic will reach your website.

One word of caution; you could find yourself in a situation where you are battling with your own content. What this means is that if you host a video on your site, and then submit the same video on sites like YouTube with the same title, and Meta tags, you could find yourself competing with YouTube for your keyword. Since YouTube has much more credibility than your site, it could happen that your content gets lost somewhere in search listings. To avoid this you can upload the video with the title and Meta tags around your primary keyword on your site, and then tweak the title and Meta tags of the video around another secondary keyword you want to target before you submit to sites like YouTube.

A lot of automatic video submission software’s are becoming popular, and sites like Tube Mughal can submit your video to hundreds of video sites instantaneously. This can be very useful in some campaigns where a viral effect is what your desire. The main problem with automatic submissions is that you cannot control the title, and Meta tags of your submissions, and if you are looking at using video as a tool to boost and increase search rankings, then a more careful strategy needs to be adopted.

Well I hope you have enjoyed this post on optimizing your video content.

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Recession will force innovation in SEO industry by Shashank Sathe

It is a well known fact that the entire IT industry including the web / portal business is heavily affected by recession. However, we can take inspiration from industry leaders like Hulu and Veoh which are making a profit inspite of such turbulent times.

A closer look at these sites reveals that their content is truly the king. It ensures that their customer come out satisfied in terms of content, quality and freshness. They use cutting edge technology to provide a rich multimedia experience. And of course they weave all this around well designed and intelligent SEO / SEM activities.

Recession will introduce and many good practices in SEO / SEM business domain and force businesses to aggressively adapt them. Online businesses already realize that occasional SEO / SEM activities do not give immediate or long lasting results. Businesses today are look within themselves in order to develop SEO expertise or are form strategic partnerships with good SEO / SEM firms or consultants. This helps them design and implement prolonged SEO / SEM activities which can be measured.

To reduce cost organizations today are readily accepting “Do it yourself” SEO toolkits. This trend is making professional software companies look for ways to build more intelligent and efficient automated SEO / SEM solutions.

Web portals are already integrating SEO friendly logic in their system architecture itself. The moment the content goes online, SEO related information is automatically generated. The SEO specific information gets auto updated every time the content of the page changes. This totally removes the need of SEO / SEM expert and automatically monitors and measures the results in real time.

New exciting fields are emerging in SEO / SEM domain. They help the business identify and understand its customer, products and services in a better way. They also help the business gain a better insight as to what is the best way to convert the customer visit to sale. The emerging fields includes keyword researching, conversion rate optimization, handling of international and multi-language issues from SEO / SEM perspective, link building social media and identifying emerging traffic sources.

Innovation in SEO / SEM will not only help organizations and business tide over recession but also help them develop sustained growth for years to come.

About the Author:

Shashank Sathe is the VP - IT and CTO of Rajshri and is currently dveloping DAM, Ad Server, Mobile + Web + IPTV + PVR, STB compiant web, API's to interact seamlessly with all the top video delivery domain leaders. He is known as "Mister Solutions" as he firmly believes in the motto "If you can think it - I can make it". He also holds patents on face finding, recognition, matching algorithms.

Shashank has 15+ years of experience in core information technology management. He has been a pioneer in the development and deployment of internet and e-banking applications in India. He possesses extensive specialized knowledge of core e-banking, finance, e-trading, ERP, E-CRM, CAD, CAM and cross platform technology architecture planning and deployment.

In addition he has hosted corporate workshops and discussion forums on a number of cutting edge technology issues. Shashank holds multiple masters degrees in computer applications, information systems, management, statistics and operations research and business management from IIM - Ahmedabad, Wellingkars, Narsee Monjee Institue of Management Studies and NCC - UK. He also holds a degree in Para-Psychology and Human Psychology.

He is currently pursuing Ph.D. in Advanced Holographic Storage technologies from LSFB and is a visiting Technology lecturer at a few of India's renowned education institutes.

Other Related Articles:

1. Deepak Chauhan, CIO

>> SEO is your best friend in recession by Deepak Chauhan
>> Paradox of SEO / SEM in India

2. Shashank Sathe, VP IT & CFO
>> How to become a SEO expert

3. Vijay Dalwani, Director (Operations)
>> SEO/SEM is more Marketing less Technology

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SEO is your best friend in recession by Deepak Chauhan

The mere mention of the words SEO / SEM makes people think about technology and the complex processes involved in implementing it. However, this is a misconception. Technology is only the last mile and plays only 10 percent role in the actual SEO / SEM activities.

By using SEO / SEM on your website, you are acting as a guide or a friend to your customer. You are actually helping the customer find their desired information, product or service. You are doing this by understanding the customer’s search pattern as well as onsite behavior. In the next step, you are educating the customer and informing them that you have what they want, how they want and that too at a reasonable rate.

SEM activities results in direct response by the customer to your business or website. There is immediate traffic. But care must be taken to ensure that you are able to satisfy the user expectation that is built by your SEO / SEM activity. Acquiring a customer or even a visitor to your website is costly. Reacquiring a disillusioned customer is even more costly because they not only do not come back easily, but may even have negative influence on many more prospective customers.

SEO is a long term strategy and is mainly used for building the brand and increasing user / customer confidence in the product or service.

SEO activities can include everything from identifying and using the right keywords to building up social networking, blogs as well as other community based activities. It is a subtle way of creating positive brand image and having an entire niche community on your side doing your PR and marketing at no cost.

Whether you hire third party SEO /SEM experts or develop inhouse expertise, the most important thing is to be true to your business and to your customer. Provide all the necessary features and information needed by the customer for a pleasant web experience. Structure the website for better usability. Identify your target audience properly. Define the right keywords which will help the user / customer find necessary information on your website. Carry out SEO activities on a long-term basis and regularly monitor its progress.

Genuine websites are invariably rewarded even by search engines because they too are fighting for relevancy and they too do not want to list something irrelevant and antagonize their users.

About the Author:


Deepak Chauhan is the CIO of DMCL, an Essel Group of Company which focuses on Internet and Mobile Entertainment solutions. He has more than 14 years experience in Internet domain, especially related to Entertainment. eCommerce and Online Brand consulting.

He has worked with B4U Television before joining Essel Group. He is better known for motivating his peers and his team and taking them to productive heights. Deepak is instrumental in the successful implementation of DMCL's flagship entertainment portal http://www.mypopkorn.com/ and prestigious http://www.veria.com/.

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Return of the Seo Expert

(Kinjal and me at the Sunset Jacuzzi Room in Koh Samui, Thailand)

For those who have been wondering to where have I disappeared…

I am in Thailand touring Koh Samui, Phuket, Krabi, Pattaya and Bankgkok on my Honeymoon with lovely bride Kinjal and will be returning to Mumbai on 27 th December 2008.

So if you have been missing my posts, here are my Top 5 recap:

1. The Soul of the SEO Specilaist
2. A SEO Expert thats right for you!
3. Is your competition beating you with SEO?
4. The Link Building Matrix (Reloaded)
5. Why Search Engines love Blogs? And so should you!

Here are the Top 5 as selected by the readers:

1. Mumbai SEO Expert Series - Keywords Part 1
2. SEO Guide to Article Writing
3. Link Me Up Scotty!
4. Are you leveraging your content?
5. Why Blogging for Business is here to Stay!

Cheers and see you all soon!

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Is Content the King?

From a SEO’s perceptive I would like to start by saying that content is not the King. Its original and compelling content that’s worthy of an in-bound link that’s King. For those who are not getting the difference, one has just to look at all the badly written, unreadable, rehashed and duplicate content that’s available online.

In the quest to create lots of content and related keywords to rank, online marketers somewhere forgot that content writing is an art to excite, educate, entertain and enable the readers, and not a marketing function.

Even search engines say that eventually search rankings will be mostly about the quality of the original content on your websites and blogs.

We all know that having well written content on your website or blog is a must if you are to attract and induce the user to read further, to try out a new service, or buy a product. If the users do not find the content engaging they will not return to your website or blog. So why is there so much bad content being created online?

Some companies and individuals assume that they will create multiple pages of similar, rehashed or quickly written content to get top ranking for multiple keywords and then somehow convert that traffic into business by giving marketing links, banners, affiliates etc.

In short their objective is to deceive the search engines and the users into believing that they have valuable content for those keywords and get the clicks.

Creating content solely for the purposes of making multiple entry pages for keyword ranking may seemingly serve its purpose in the short run (much to my irritation), but search engines are getting better at understanding content and its perceived value, so those pages offering no value other that for the purpose of linking and advertising will be debarred.

Eventually we will live in a world where instead of finding ways of fooling users and search engines, companies and individuals will be focus on creating real value and content for their users, where each click will lead to informative, well written and resourceful content, but till that day comes (ever hopeful) we will have to make do with some of the crappy pages of content online.

Is well written content the same as optimized content or seo content?

No, SEO content or optimized content is written and focused around a specific keyword that you want to rank. You follow all the rules you would normally follow while writing interesting and engaging content for your users, and in addition you also ensure that your keyword (maintaining ideal keyword weight) is evenly spaced across the content, nicely blending into your writing.

One word of advice, before hiring the services of a writer who claims to have an understanding of SEO, or the services of a SEO content services company, evaluate whether the people who you will be working with are original content creators or online marketers.

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Keyword Placement Strategy

For those who have not read Success with Keywords Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5, I suggest you do so now. It will assist you in creating a list of winning keywords for your website focused around your business, products/services, target audiences, and competition.

For those who have read and implemented the strategies mentioned in the Seo Expert Keyword Series would have created a list of winning keywords by now.

All your hard work has paid off and your list of winning keywords is finally ready. This post covers all the possible places (on-page optimization) where you will need to place the keywords on the page you want to optimize.

There are many conflicting views on this one but logically I have always felt that you should focus ONE KEYWORD PER PAGE only.

Imagine a highly focused page where the keyword is strategically placed in a well written and captivating title , in the beginning of the description tag, in the keyword tag, and other meta tags like H1, H2, link text, and in the body content keyword weight, every 100 words place keyword appropriately into the content) of that page.

Now is that not better than confusing the search engines with a page that contains six to seven keywords with some keywords placed in the Meta tags and body content. No there are sites with multiple keywords on the homepage that are ranked high, but keep in mind off-page factors like link building that influence rankings as well.

As a SEO expert, I have learnt that there are always exceptions to the rule (eventually the search engines will become better at removing pages that are not up to mark or using spam), but we are not discussing exceptions cases here but rather those who are serious about their online business.

It’s a healthy combination of on-page and off-page factors that will eventually determine your search rankings so it’s best to maintain best practices with long term view.

Let’s get started to find relevant places to place your keyword to boost your rankings.

1. Use the keyword in the domain name if possible. Now that may not be possible for many who have existing domains that don’t contain the keyword. You can also set up sub-domains with the keywords. Eg. my website www.seo-optimization-experts.com does not contain the keyword Mumbai (which is location), so if I wanted to boost my ranking for the keyword seo expert mumbai, I could set up a sub domain like http://mumbai.seo-optimization-experts.com

2. Use keyword in the page name. Eg if your page is About us, rather than having a page seo-optimization-experts.com/aboutus.html, name the page http://www.seo-optimization-experts.com/seo-company-in-india.html (where seo company in India is the keyword for that page). Use hyphens (-) rather than underscores (_) while naming your pages.

3. Make sure your keyword phrase appears in the beginning of the title and description tag. There are times where placing the keyword somewhere in the middle of the description tag is better, or even placing keyword twice, so don’t hesitate and try some combinations. Make sure the title and description reads well and is captivating enough.

4. Use keywords in Meta tags like keyword, H1, H2 (heading tags) etc.

5. Use keyword in the Link text (internal and external links that describe the link to your website).

6. Use keywords in the body content. The first 25 words of your content should be keyword rich and then use the keyword phrase across the remaining content maintaining ideal keyword weight (I generally use the keyword once every 100 words).

7. Check to see where your competition is placing those keywords, in which Meta tags, at what position etc.

The key to success with rankings is to FOCUS and FINE TUNE your pages so that the content of the page revolves around the keyword.

Note: Be careful not to overstuff your page with keywords as the search engines will label pages that have keyword stuffing as spam. Be moderate!

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Google 2001 Index Offers Search Insights to the Future

In honor of Google’s 10th birthday, they have brought back their oldest available index. Let’s take a look back at Google in January 2001 on http://www.google.com/search2001.html.

This index offers great insights into the world of search, its growth and possibly a look into the future of search, and your online business.

Here are some interesting personal observations:

Figure 1
Google 2001 index
Keyword - seo expert mumbai



Figure 2
Google 2008 Index
Keyword - seo expert mumbai



1. The number of results

The first thing that came to my immediate notice was the number of results displayed. While searching for seo expert mumbai (which is a regional search) the number of results displayed is a mere 47 results that took 0.10 sec. (See Figure 1)

Now compare that with search results for the same keyword in the Google 2008 index displayed 121000 results that took 0.10 seconds. (See Figure 2).

What this means: There is a vast difference of 120953 results, but the time taken to display the results was still 0.10 seconds. That’s good! Google success philosophy to keep things simple and fast is demonstrated in the example above.

The rise in the number of results is also a positive sign. It means more websites are optimizing their pages with region in mind, and that Google has gotten much better at what they do.

2. Relevancy of Search results

The next thing that’s more significant than the results is the quality of search results.

If you look at the results for the search seo expert mumbai in Google 2001 index, it shows up a guestbook entry in the position #1. I visited the site and there was no mention of seo expert on the page. On opening the source code I found this:

--
TITLE CodeGuru

META Name="description" Content="Codeguru is where developers can come to share ideas, articles, questions, answers, tips, tricks, comments, downloads, and so much more related to programming in areas including C++, Visual C++, C#, Visual Basic, ASP, ASP.NET, Java, and more.

META Name="keywords" Content="Visual C++, MFC, string programming,ATL programming, WTL programming,activeX programming,COM+,shell programming,Listbox,.NET, C#, ASP, ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX,VC++, VB.NET, VB, Visual Basic Code, Programming, Developers, Architects, Studio CSharp, Microsoft, Coding, download, downloads, community source code, software development, Windows developers"
--

If you notice, the keyword does not appear in the title, description or the keyword tags that have become so important in the 2008 algorithm. In the remaining search results in the 2001 index shows a job listing which has nothing to do with seo, a table of content and then results that have nothing to do with the keyword seo expert mumbai.

In the 2001 Google results the following points are noted:

1. Lots of irrelevant search results

2. Badly written titles and descriptions

3. No regional search

4. The keyword is not present in page name, title, description meta tags or in the body content

5. Lack of SEO companies in Mumbai

In the 2008 Google results the following points are noted:

1. Prominence is given to local searches (geography has become very important)

2. The titles and descriptions contain the keyword being searched

3. The body content has the keywords

4. Relevant Blogs, Videos, Social Networking and Bookmarking sites are fast gaining top positions

5. The quality of sites listed are much better

6. The search is much tighter and the results lead to sites with relevant content most of the time

7. The number of SEO companies in Mumbai has increased drastically

3. Additional Search Tools

In the 2001 Google index, you can view the older version of the site in the internet archives. The date of the last index was not mentioned so the user did not know when was the last time the site was indexed was.

In the 2008 Google index one can check for cache pages (about 6 days ago) as well as similar pages.

This was just one example I used for my experiment.

You can go ahead and go crazy, try using your keywords in both the 2001 and 2008 indexes and see the differences in the search results and quality of sites that got top listing.

And maybe… just maybe it will show you an insight into the future.

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Leverage by Commenting on Relevant Blogs (Part 2)

You have an opinion, like participating in discussions, and debating seems a way of life for you then you can use the power of leveraging by commenting on various relevant blogs.

These powerful words will get your website or blog noticed in a crowded blogosphere, get you noticed as an active participant (nobody likes a dull boy), add to your credibility as an expert in your domain, and get you additional links that will point back to your domain.

For those who have not read Part 1 of this series please do so NOW! This blog post is a continuation to the Leverage by Commenting series.

We have already covered in Part 1:

1. Choose relevant blogs
2. Choose relevant bloggers
3. Choose prominent blogs

For those of you who have read Part 1, let’s continue our journey to find out which blogs to track, which ones to leave comments on, and which ones will form part of your overall SEO strategy.
4. Check for Comments

Another thing you could check is the number of comments which are being left on the blog. Are the comments useful and informative, or are the comments useless like “great work”, “thanks for the info” or worse “check my link so and so for more info”.

Useless comments that don’t add any value to the article or blog post but just for the purpose of creating a link won’t work. Most bloggers are intelligent enough to figure out link building ploys like this and will delete your link and comments.

Bloggers like it when their readers leave comments that are meaningful, praise their hard work, and even when they leave a negative comment but with justification. If you are pointing out a correction make sure you give credible reasons and references to your comment.

Good bloggers don’t mind being wrong, or being corrected, in fact they may appreciate being corrected and will carry a correction blog highlighting the mistake they made and the person who pointed it out.

An important note here! Check to see if the blogger is replying back to all the comments in a positive and fair way. Stay away from highly opinionated bloggers who think they know it all will probably not let you leave you valuable inputs anyways.

Does the blogger leave external links in the comments field? If so that’s good. Follow those links to see how the commenter has added value to the topic. Understanding the mind of the blogger is important and so are the rules he sets. After all he is the master of his blog.

5. Ask other bloggers

The good ol’ word of mouth works best. Check to see how many other prominent bloggers have linked to the blog. You can do this by checking the blog’s authority on Technorati.

Blog authority tells you how many other blogs have linked to the blog you are researching. So if you see a blog authority of 5, that’s means, 5 other blogs have linked to this blog. It would be a good thing if at this time you check to see why the other bloggers have linked to this blog.

Check to see if the blogger is promoting his blog. Read Get your Blog Noticed Part 1 and Part 2 to know more about ways in which blogs are promoted.

6. Make Friends (Most Important)

The profile page will also list the bloggers other interests and passions so check if there is some synergy there with your interests. Having similar interests is the best way to grow a friendship. Please don’t fake your interests for the sole reason of pursuing your SEO objectives, it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

Does the blogger have a good sense of humor? Everyone likes someone who can add dash of humor and fun to their writing while being informative. Even though it may not be an important point to consider, personally I like anyone who can bring a smile to my face.

Make friends and grow your network. A blogger offers you his community of readers built after much hard work. Treat the blogger and his community of readers with respect, and they will give you a vault of information, ideas, assistance and traffic. Join in and have fun with your new online friends.

7. Make a Commitment

Once you have chosen the blogs you plan to read, track and to leave comments on, the next step for you is to be regular and committed. Read all the blog posts from your chosen blogs and leave comments when you have something valuable and positive to say.

An easy way to catch up on your favorite blogs is to subscribe to their RSS feeds. You can set up an iGoogle account to scan through your blogs for new stories, or use other feed services like FeedBurner.

I repeat don’t leave useless comments like “good work”, or “thank you for the post”. The blogger is working with certain objectives in mind and loves to blog; he does not need your thanks to continue.

Also don’t leave useless comments purely for the purpose of link building. Having hundreds of useless comments on various blog sites won’t add real value to your SEO link campaign and you will piss of bloggers and their readers in no time (Bloggers will delete your comments eventually making it waste of your time at the end of the day).

The key to leveraging on comments is to make each one count. Add further value to what’s being written, or to the discussion, that should be your mantra.

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Leverage by Commenting on Relevant Blogs (Part 1)

You have an opinion, like participating in discussions, and debating seems a way of life for you then you can use the power of leveraging by commenting on various relevant blogs.

These powerful words will get your website or blog noticed in a crowded blogosphere, get you noticed as an active participant (nobody likes a dull boy), add to your credibility as an expert in your domain, and get you additional links that will point back to your domain.

But be wary, leveraging by leaving comments is hard work, time consuming and frustrating at times. So homework is your best option (this is coming from someone who hates the word homework).

Let’s have a look at the numbers:

Statistics on Blogging - comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)

• Total internet audience 188.9 million
• Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US alone
• Facebook: 41.0 million

With these big numbers, it’s very important to know which blogs to select and track, which ones to leave comments on, and which ones will form part of your SEO strategy.

1. Choose relevant blogs

You can start by choosing relevant blogs. Don’t leave comments on a blog where you don’t know anything about the subject, and have no interest in the topics being posted. Instead choose blogs that are relevant to your knowledge, experience and where you can offer a meaningful link back in case any other readers want to know more about you, or your work.

Ask yourself honest questions. Will the readers of this blog be interested in what I have to say (and no, everyone does not think you are an expert)? Will my comments add value to the topics being discussed?

Choosing relevant blogs and intelligently commenting on the topic being discussed will add to your credibility as someone who is passionate and interested in that domain.

2. Choose relevant bloggers

Who are relevant bloggers? You can start by checking the date when the blogger started the blog. You can do this by checking the bloggers profile page. Blogging is hard work and only the committed can survive, so if the person been blogging for more than a year he is serious.

Check for the frequency of the posts. Has the blogger been consistent in his posts? The best bloggers are committed to writing a blog atleast 4 to 5 times a week. Readers look forward to knowing that if they go to the blog today they will get some new information. Bloggers that stick to their deadline commitments are often those who have a good reader base.

Also take time and read the posts. Is the blogger passionate about the topics he speaks about? Is the blogger knowledgeable in his domain? Does the blogger write well? The best way to find that out is to read 5 to 10 recent posts and dig in to read 5 to 10 older posts. In this way you will have some idea on how the blogger writes and the growth in writing style and knowledge over time.

3. Choose prominent blogs

How does one decide whether a blog is prominent or not? You can check the page rank of the blog on Google toolbar, or check their ranking on blog search engines like Technorati. Sites like Technorati also give the blog rank and authority as well, so since you are going to spend your valuable time commenting on blogs, ensure its ranked well.

It’s ok to be picky here, you won’t have the time to read, track and make interesting comments on 50 blogs and more. Pick 5 to 10 blogs that interest you, and are ranked well.

To make this article more reader friendly I am breaking up this post into two parts. In Part 2 we will be exploring others points to consider like checking comments, asking other bloggers, and making new friends.

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Obsessive Ranking Disorder (My Wakeup Call)

I got a rather unusual wakeup call this morning.

It started like any normal day; I checked the rankings for my keywords eager to see how they were faring after getting some prominent bloggers to review my blog. Like a little boy in anticipation of opening his presents on Christmas morning, I typed in the keyword seo expert mumbai I have been targeting for the past few weeks.

Before I reveal the search results and my ranking, allow me to share a small story.

A while ago when I was doing my advanced SEO expert course with Search Engine Workshops , my instructor and guide Robin Nobles told me that many SEO’s over obsess about their rankings. At that time her comment seemed strange to me. How could someone obsess over rankings?

We are taught that search rankings don’t magically change by themselves. You have to be consistent in creating quality content and building quality links. With each strategy you apply, you have to wait and see the results to find out what’s working and what’s not. Of course unlike before, the search engine spiders are more frequent in their updates and the search engines reflect changes much quicker.

I used to tease friends whose highs and lows fluctuated with the rise and fall in the stock market prices and indexes, but today is the day I will find out that somehow I had become one of them.

“Hi my name is Nevil and I have obsessive ranking disorder” – as said at the Obsessive Ranking Anonymous (ORA) Meeting.

Now back to my wakeup call...

My well trained eyes had just started the ranking scan. My site www.seo-optimization-experts.com was listed in No #1 position for the keyword seo expert mumbai. I felt a Kundalini rush up my seven Chakras, as just yesterday my keyword was ranked at No #12 position in Google search results.

I was not sure how this could have happened (maybe the Gods are finally looking kindly on me), but against my intuition, knowledge and experience working on SEO for many websites, I somehow kept faith that this was indeed possible, after all miracles have known to happen.

To confirm the faith I called up my partner in crime Rajesh who checked for the keyword. Incidentally I am to blame for pushing him into my obsessive habit to search rankings for my keywords every few hours even though I know I have not done anything from my side to affect the same.

A few minutes later he told me it was still in the same position No #12, much to my dismay. I double checked my results again, it still stood proudly at No #1 position.

How could this be possible, I know that Google does not give different search listings across different computers?

I backtracked like a detective solving a big crime (the loss of my ranking). I logged off my iGoogle page, and then searched again.

This time it showed me No # 12 on Google.com: Results 11 - 20 of about 121,000 for seo expert mumbai. (0.17 seconds)



And No # 11 on Google.co.in (Local) Results 11 - 20 of about 120,000 for seo expert mumbai. (0.04 seconds)



Then I logged into my iGoogle account again

Again I was in the No #1 Spot on Google.co.in Results 1 - 10 of about 121,000 for seo expert mumbai. (0.06 seconds)



So can anyone answer this?

iGoogle is a personalized page but are the search results supposed to be different when handled by the same engine and algorithm? Or is it the perfect kind of personalization where Google has managed to deliver the No #1 listing which was exactly what I was looking for…. my website?

But then I thought who cares, for at the end of the day the search results were giving me exactly what I, as a user wanted to see, and that’s a good thing isn’t it.

As I slowly reached understanding and still recovering from the morning incident, a much deep rooted behavior of mine came to surface. Somewhere in my journey the passion to see my keywords high up in search rankings had become obsessive behavior.

“Hi my name is Nevil and I am successfully recovering from obsessive ranking disorder” – as said at the Obsessive Ranking Anonymous Meeting.

What’s amazing is that now I have so much free time to do more productive things like write this blog post.

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Is your competition beating you with SEO?

You have optimized your website for winning keywords, are mid-way with your link building campaign, and have been going absolutely crazy creating fresh SEO friendly content that pleases the users and search engines.

You are obviously very serious about your online business, and yet you cannot seem to cross the Rank # 12, Page 2 barrier of Google search listing for your primary keyword/s.

A series are questions arise from the imaginary situation above:

1. Why is my ranking for the particular keyword not going up?
2. Am I missing out on any SEO strategies?
3. Maybe I am not building enough links? How much will be enough?
4. Do I have to improve my content quality?
5. The search engine has changed their algorithm (…again)
6. Others are using illegal SEO techniques

Now while one could go over the questions in your head, read up on latest search engine algorithms, contact a SEO expert, or blindly start buying links out of desperation, there is an easier way to find your answers.

Simply ask why are the other 10 websites ranking before your website?

Now that does not mean that the above questions 1 to 6 are not relevant, but simply put, one of the easiest way to boost your search rankings is to study the top 5 to ten websites for your keyword and then apply what working for them into your own strategies.

Now I am not asking you to copy the competition or have a strategy that just involves beating the competition at the ranking game. It never works. What is needed is a better balance between your company’s SEO strategies and of those of your competitors.

Like in any business strategy, you have to know your competitors, study what strategies they are using, and then apply the best of those strategies to your own game plan.

In the same way, in defining the SEO path ahead for your website you must analyze your competition. What are they doing to rank in the top 10 that you are not doing? After all those websites are listed on the top for a reason, and they are applying SEO strategies that the search engine in particular seems to like.

Now while finding the answers to those questions in the real business world may be difficult, in the online world all you have to do is to right-click and view the source of the page.

The above simple step will open up a world of information to you.

1. Does the domain name contain the keyword? If the link is a sub domain then does the sub domain contain the keyword?

2. In what Meta tags, title, etc has the competition placed their keywords?

3. Does the link name contain the keyword? eg. www.seo-optimization-experts.com/mumbai-seo-expert.html

4. How many keywords are listed in the keyword tag i.e. is the page focused around one or two keywords, or is it a jumble of keywords listed out.

5. Is the title and description captivating enough? How has the keyword/s been placed in the title and description and at what position?

6. Is the page graphic intensive? Is the site using a lot flash or active server pages? Search engines cannot understand graphics, only the text it can read on the page. Make sure there is a good balance between the graphics and content.

7. How long is the body text? Writing 400 to 600 words is normally fine.

8. Has the keyword (keyword weight) been used appropriately in the body content? Ideally the first 25 words of content should be keyword rich, and the keyword should appear after every 100 words in remaining content.

9. Is the content interesting to you as the reader? Does the content follow a theme? Is the content relevant to what keyword the page has been optimized for?

10. What is the page rank of the page (You can check page rank of any website by downloading the Google Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com.

11. Which is the first place in the source code the keyword appears?

12. Has the keyword been used appropriately in headline tags and link text?

13. Does the site use java script, tables, frames, dynamic content, CMS etc?

14. Is the page focused around a theme?

15. How many inbound links are there to the page? You can check the link popularity of the page on www.marketleap.com? Visit the sites that have given the link? What is their page rank? What is the link text that describes the link to the website? Has the keyword been used in the link text?

16. How many pages does the site have?

17. Does the site have a good site map that lists all the content pages, videos on the site that search engine spiders can crawly easily?

18. Are there any 404 errors on the website?

19. What is the domain name extension e.g. .com,. net, .edu, .co.in

20. How long has that domain name been in existence? Search engines rank those sites better that have been around for a while, or those that plan to be around for a while?

21. How many directories has that page/ website been submitted to?

22. Has the site used any spamming or illegal SEO techniques like keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text, duplicate content and other such Spam’s? If yes you can inform the search engine of the same but do so with caution. For Google: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Please note that sometimes you will find no reasons why the competitors’ website is ranked above yours. And that’s ok. I have experienced many cases of certain sites which go against the search engines guidelines (set by search engines themselves), and yet they rank above meticulously optimized pages.

Search engines are constantly trying to remove badly optimized or spam pages which offer little or no value to the users. Our intent here is not to focus on the missing pieces/loopholes of search engines algorithms or isolated instances of sites that don’t deserve it and yet are ranking high, but to work within the framework and guidelines for the long haul.

By mapping out the answers to the above questions (preferable on a spread sheet), you will find the overall patterns of what is working for those sites and why, and then figure out ways to modify your SEO strategies to improve your rankings.

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Get your website reviewed by prominent Bloggers

A large part of off-page SEO strategies revolve around link building, directory submissions, article submissions, social bookmarking, vertical engines submissions and blogger reviews.

While blogger reviews may not have made it into mainline internet marketing strategies for companies in India as of yet, it is slowly becoming an important marketing strategy that SEO experts are adopting to achieve higher rankings in search engine results for their clients.

The main reason is that getting links from established, well promoted and high profile bloggers to your website, and to certain important pages of your website (i.e. deep linking) gives you permanent one-way links to the inner pages of your content.

Link building within relevant content (to the inner pages of your website) is great for search engine rankings and building quality links. Any SEO expert will vouch how difficult it is to achieve that with only directory submissions and other forms of link building.

Well established bloggers have built a reputation and readership over the years, and their readers trust their reviews and opinions. Getting an honest review of your products and services from such bloggers will give your website instant credibility amongst their readers in addition to build permanent one way links to your website.

What’s important to note is the word “honest review”. Don’t expect the blogger to write some fantastical review about a product or service that’s not up to the mark. Most bloggers value their credibility built over years, and will not damage it for one review.

When a blogger endorses or reviews a product or service, they are in fact telling their readers that they have tried the product, or used the service and give their honest opinion about it.

This stamp of approval (and sometimes even a critical comment) from an established blogger will get the traffic to your product, service or website.

If you do get a critical comment from a blogger who is reviewing your product or service, ensure that you answer that comment immediately. This lets the bloggers readers know that you are interested in enhancing your product and service and value suggestions to improve the same.

Later on you can let that blogger and his readers know that you have implemented that suggestion. Can you see how this could go a long way in building your credibility and business online?

All marketers will agree that there is no better marketing strategy than the good ol’ word-of-mouth, and in the online business it no different.

While selecting a blogger to review your product or services:

1. Ensure that the blogger is well established (blogging for atleast a year)

2. Check the Page Rank for the Blog (atleast 2 or above is good.

3. Ask to check the hits report or Google Analytics report for the blog

4. What is the profile of people who visit the blog? Would this TG (Target Audience) be interested in knowing more about your products and services?

5. Read through the blogger last few posts, the quality of his writing, and the time gap between the posts. Check for consistency, good style of writing and passion.

6. Check to see if readers are leaving behind intelligent comments, and if the blogger is replying satisfactorily to those immediately.

At the end of the day, Bloggers are consumers themselves and like reviewing and giving their opinions about brands, products and services they like or dislike. Bloggers are humans and feel and think like you, so build a relationship that’s not based on link building.

And lastly, always do a follow up with the bloggers within a month and ask them how you can be of help to them and their readers. Many bloggers may just tell you what they are looking for, and be willing to give credit to the source of information.

Also read:

Get you blog noticed Part 1 and Part 2
My love and Hate Relationship with Blogging
Why Search Engines loves blogs! And so should you
The Bloggers Survival Guide

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Create New Gateways to Targeted Traffic

You have done well with the top 2 to 3 keywords of your website and they are listed in top 3 in search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN, but you are just not getting anywhere with those other elusive keywords that could be driving traffic to your website.

If the above scenario sounds familiar, then you are part of thousands of other website owners who feel they are not being able to target and rank for those additional keywords they found after much hard work and analysis.

Now we all know that finding the right keywords is not an easy job. Even a SEO expert will agree to that. It takes a considerable amount of investment in time and skill to identify winning keywords using various keyword analysis tools, and in analyzing user preferences and the competition.

I can imagine the frustration when all that hard work sees no payoff.

The main reason this problem occurs is that search engines prefer that the pages are optimized around just one or two keywords, and those keywords appear in your title, description, other relevant META tags including the body content.

So if your website has 10 pages, then ideally only 10 to 12 keywords should be targeted. Then what happens to the other 20 keywords you found that have the potential to drive that extra traffic to your website.

The solution to the above problem can be found in creating Gateway Pages or Information Pages.

A gateway page is a highly focused page created around a specific keyword you want to target for search engine listings. So the additional keyword that found no space in your existing website’s structure (and in the search engines indexes) can now be targeted using gateway pages.

These highly focused pages act like additional entry points to your website. Each page represents a keyword or a keyword phrase you want to target, and each keyword targeted, means additional traffic to your website.

The best part is you can create as many number of gateway pages without redesigning your website.

Gateway pages are content rich pages and are useful for the users, as well as search engines. The user love information rich pages that solve their problem/need, and search engines love nicely optimized focused pages that can satisfy the users query for that keyword.

So is there anything magical about gateway pages? No, they are the same like any other normal page you would optimize for your website.

You would follow the same SEO principles one applies while working with normal pages which includes:

1. Focus the page around 1 keyword or keyword phrase only.

2. Focus the page around a topic/theme.

3. Ensure that the page name, title, Meta tags, and body content are written around that keyword.

4. Gateway pages can be scaled down versions of your existing design interface (the focus is on the content) so they load faster and can rank far better than heavily designed pages).

5. Write content that appeals to the user and not the search engines.

6. Write around 400 to 600 words of body content around that topic.

7. Use headings and sub headings to layout your content, and use the keyword in the heading tags like H1, H2.

8. Use the keyword (check keyword weight) in the body content.

9. The first 25 words of your body content should be keyword rich, and then evenly distribute the keyword in the remaining body content. Make sure it reads well.

10. Build links from your gateway pages to your website and from your site to gateway pages.

11. Link to other pages in your website that are related in content.

12. Link to other popular sites with similar content that could add value to your readers.

13. Get links from popular and related sites to your gateway pages.

14. Include gateway pages in your sitemap.

15. Gateway pages can be linked to sections like articles, resources & tips, how-to etc.

16. Your gateway pages can also be submitted to article submission sites without your article being treated like duplicate content by search engines.

17. Add one new page of content to your website each week i.e. One new keyword targeted each week.

Your gateway pages are an ideal way to target new keywords, and at the same time giving fresh and useful content to your users and search engines.

At the end of the day what is it that people want to know? Are your potential customers looking for how-to articles, reference material, comparison charts, interviews, financial or technical advice, contact numbers, FAQ’s, tips and tricks, location maps etc?

Some cautions while creating gateway pages

1. Don’t create information pages with the same or just rehashed content as on your website or worse from a website off the internet.

2. Don’t create copies of your index page and use them as information pages.

So you now have the secret to targetting additional keywords - by creating content rich pages and optimizing your Meta tags around that keyword.

SEO Expert Mumbai
www.seo-optimization-experts.com

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The Blogger’s Guide to Survival

What will it take for a blogger to survive the uncertain future ahead?

Any avid blogger will tell you that blogging is very hard work, and there have been cases where bloggers have admitted to letting blogging disrupt their family life, friendships in the real world, finances and time.

I am not a fan of extreme behavior. But I do admire some of the reasons they give – one of my favorites is that blogging is not just about writing or sharing, but the enormous satisfaction one gets being an active participant in exploring human experiences, knowledge, emotions and passions.

Let’s take a trip into time, back to the early hay days of the Internet. You had to pay for everything; set up of the website, hosting, server managed services, email accounts, and promoting your website. Other than that one needed the services of costly website developers to change a line of text, or a simple graphic.

It was little wonder that only companies could afford these exorbitant rates, leaving individuals and many professionals as passive participants, who could view, compare, give feedback, or buy.

Today the individual has the power to be active participants on the Internet with blogs, social bookmarking and social networking becoming commonly used terminology by college students, innovative brands and even large organizations.

Blogging gave the individual the power to create attractive pages of content with pictures, videos, and share it with the world on click of a button.

The present seems secure enough, and thousands of new blogs are being created each day, the numbers of users reading blog are on the rise, bloggers have started making a modest sum for their hard work, and popular blogs are ranking well in search engine results.

But what’s sad is that 90 percent of them will witness a sad demise because of simple things they did not know (not did not do) when they started blogging. Around 8percent of blogs will never be read, and 1 percent will give up after a year of hard struggle. Well that leaves 1 percent of blogs that will have any hope for survival, let alone success.

Now I am not trying to discourage anyone from blogging, its most fulfilling, but rather asking you to look within to see the reason why you want to blog and about what? Answering those questions could mean the difference between success or the demise of your blog.

In the animal kingdom, it’s the survival of the fittest.

In blogging it’s the most persistent, innovative and passionate bloggers that will survive. It will not be just what you do, but what you feel, and how you perceive the world you so write about that will make the difference.

Great Tips for blogger survival:

1. Write about something you know, and are passionate about. After all you will not want to write 3-5 times a week on a subject that you are unfamiliar with, or are not passionate about.

2. Add your complete profile with a nice photograph. Readers like to know a little about you.

3. Be persistent, your readers expect something new each time they visit.

4. It’s not about quantity, but quality. Write clean good copy,and use humor and examples with nice visuals.

5. Innovate, don’t give the same content rehashed, do things differently.

6. Make your blog customized, attractive and easy to navigate.

7. Add a search to your blog.

8. Allows your readers to interact with your blog (polls, comments, social bookmarking).

9.Your readers are your customer’s; get to know their likes and dislikes, pay attention to their comments.

10. Create links within your blog posts to your other blog posts.

11. Create links from your blog post to your website (if you have one)and from your website to your blog.

12. Build links from other blogs and popular websites to your blog.

13. Register your blog on blog search engines and blog directories.

14. Announce your blog to the world on press release sites.

15. Submit your blog posts to popular article submission sites. Don’t overdo it.

16. Register your blog feed (Atom/ RSS) with content feed syndicates.

17. Track the visitors on your blog using services like Google Analytics.

18. Monitize your blog with adwords and select affiliates that adds value for your readers.

19. Track and read other blogs in competition with you. What are they doing different?

20. Track the most popular blogs, see what they are doing (how often are they posting, the titles, the quality of content, do they use graphics and videos, do they allow users to leave comments and rank posts etc).

21. Leave interesting comments for other bloggers

21. Read Get you blog noticed.

22. Read My love and Hate Relationship with Blogging.

23. Read Why Search Engines loves blogs! And so should you.

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Get Your New Blog Noticed (Part 2)

In my previous posts, I have covered Why Search Engines Love Blogs! And So Should You, and highlighted that search engines do love blogs and bloggers.

Also for those who need a little inspiration on starting your first blog, do read about My Love and Hate Relationship with Blogging which also explores the synergy between blogs, search engines, rankings and keywords.

This article is for those few brave souls, who have just initiated their journey into blogging, and need that amazing high one gets when your blog is finally getting read by a substantial number of readers, please read Get your New Blog Noticed (Part 1) of this article first.

As promised, and a seo expert always keeps his promise, here are some of the strategies that have worked for me:

Deep-Linking

As a SEO expert in Mumbai, I often advise new clients to start a corporate blog for their employees, customer, vendors, associates and investors. The benefits of doing so are many, as seen in the trend where many corporate blogs are doing very well in building brand loyalty, customer loyalty and driving business through existing customers.

I also advise my clients to start a topic specific blog of their expertise. To give you an example of this, my corporate website is www.seo-optimization-experts.com, so I started a blog Zen of SEO, which tells the truth about SEO based on actual experiences and mistakes I made during my journey. My SEO blog attracts marketing professionals, seo students, Internet marketing professionals, readers and businessman like you.

Now comes the easy part; Create relevant deep links between your corporate website pages, corporate blog posts and topic blog posts. Your website, corporate blog and topic blog are treated as separate sites as far as search engines go, so don’t hesitate to use you’re your content for link building purposes.

Each blog post is a potential to build another link to your corporate website. But don’t overdo it. I don’t think the search engines would penalize a site for too many links (unless the site is just a whole bunch of links for the pure purposes of link farming, and trying to trick the search engines to give irrelevant results), but it could a big turn off for your readers who just want to enjoy the story and don’t care much about your hair brained strategies to dominate the internet.

Cross-Linking

It’s easy to create links when you are the master of your website and blogs, but how do we get other websites/ blogs to give the same quality links back to your blog.

As in the real world if you have to build a new contact, you would approach that person, introduce yourself, inform that person of the value you offer, and maintain a good relation with that person.

In the blog world building links is no different.

1. Approach websites that has content/target audience similar to your blogs and offer some additional value to their readers, or even better write a good intelligent review about some service/products that website is offering. Send a nice email highlighting the same with a link back to your blog post. Online marketers like collecting testimonials so there is great probability that they will link back to your blog.

2. Approach other bloggers who command high loyalty. Most of the time if you have a professional approach, a good pitch and a value proposition, most bloggers will not mind writing a small review and linking to your blog. After all the bloggers need to create content daily, so offer then a helping hand. Many bloggers advocate semi-advertising in their posts, and bloggers define their tastes, preferences, likes and dislikes about brands all the time. So why not get onto the bandwagon.

Another way is to leave intelligent comment on the bloggers post with something nice to say about the blogger, and then give a small link to your blog to explain in detail. Most times the blogger will leave a good comment and not delete it. I don’t personally use this method, but as they say, in this matter, flattery may get you what you want.

3. Some SEO experts and bloggers have good relations with other fellow bloggers. A good seo expert should be able to get some of these bloggers to write a good review and link to your blog/ website. It will drive traffic to your website and add to your link building campaign.

Create a RSS Feed

Most blog software’s like Blogger allow users to create an automatic RSS feed Eg. http://www.seo-optimization-experts.com/atom.xml is the feed for my blog. If you notice it’s a very simple page, no major formatting, no pictures and videos.

RSS also knows as “Real Simple Syndication” is a mechanism used to distribute content without depending on the browser or email client. Users subscribe to RSS feeds to get latest updates (headlines with a small brief) about their favorite websites/ blogs across the internet in one place.

In your case, your blog posts form part of content that can be syndicated across news/content feeds. Once your RSS feed is published, you can submit the feed to many of the feed aggregators and have your content/ blog post distributed across their network of users. You can start by using this link http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm to submit your blog to many feeds.

Submit to Article Sites

I have covered article writing in my previous posts, SEO Guide to Article Writing, where I have explained in detail on why to submit to article sites. Article sites are a great way for distributing your content to many sites without the fear of landing into soup for duplicate content. In addition you are building credibility as an expert in your domain, quality links, and driving traffic to your blog.

By submitting your blog posts to article submission sites having high page rank, you are basically syndicating the same content across various channels, getting links, and traffic. Now that’s a good deal!

A note of warning, don’t just submit your article to 1000 sites, rather be wise and work with a few key article sites. In this way it’s easy to build a good relationship with those sites and their audiences, as they feel that you have not plastered your article across every living website in the world.

Also its easy to keep the momentum up, otherwise submitting each blog post to 1000 sites would be rather time consuming I would say.

Go Social with your Blog

Social bookmarking is the next wave to hit the new media landscape. Millions of users surfing the internet now have a voice and can rate/bookmark and suggest websites, blogs and share their likes and dislikes with the billions of surfers.

Wikipedia describes social bookmarking as a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.

In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.

Register your blog with services like digg, reddit, del.icio.us and stumbleupon. Give your readers an opportunity to suggest/ bookmark/tag your blog post across the social media landscape and watch the traffic come in.

If you like this blog post, please suggest this post to the social bookmarking sites listed below the post. It will be highly appreciated.

Make a Noise

Hey you have worked hard to get your blog started. Now is the time to announce it to the world, atleast the online world. Submit your blog to blogger search engines like Technorati, and other blogging directories on the net. As you submit your blog to the various directories out there, your blog is reaching out to newer audiences.

You can also submit your blog to PR sites which allow companies to submit press releases and announcements. It may not do much for your rankings, but many journalists are known to scan press release sites for a good story. Could it be you?

You can also announce your blog by putting it on your visiting card, in your email footer, on your corporate website, Facebook (profile, posts on wall, comments etc), Youtube profile, Linkedin profile, and finally the good ol’ word of mouth.

These should keep you busy for the next few months, and by then you will be raring to get into more advanced techniques of marketing and promoting your Blog.

But that my friend’s is another time, another story!

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Get Your New Blog Noticed (Part 1)

In my previous posts, I have covered Why Search Engines Love Blogs! And So Should You, and highlighted that search engines do love blogs and bloggers.

Also for those who need a little inspiration on starting your first blog, do read about My Love and Hate Relationship with Blogging which also explores the synergy between blogs, search engines, rankings and keywords.

This article is for those few brave souls, who have just initiated their journey into blogging, and need that amazing high one gets when your blog is finally getting read by a substantial number of readers.

Please track your blog readers using services like Google Analytics, it just takes 10minutes, and it will provide you with a vault of valuable information on your reader’s preferences, where your readers come from, and how they interact with your blog.

For those of you thinking about right now “Hey, I like writing for the love of it, and I don’t need any readers for approval”, I would like to say kudos to you, and do continue the good work.

But if you are serious about sharing your hard work (its blood sweat and tears when you have to do it 5 times a week) with the millions of users searching blogs daily, then let’s continue our journey down the rabbit hole.

A quick recap on the statistics on Blogging - comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)
• Total internet audience 188.9 million
• Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US alone
• Facebook: 41.0 million
• MySpace 75.1 million

Well that the good news!

But the bad news is that with the thousands of new blogs churning out each day, what hope is there for a reader interested in your topic to reach you. You many have written brilliant masterpieces, but how do you let others know that (remember most poets and artists die poor and unrecognized because they don’t reach out to share themselves with others.

In this post, I will not get into details about the quality of your content, and I am assuming you have written good clean copy. Good copy being informative, entertaining and engaging (Don’t forget to get your keywords in the body content as well the labels/tags).

There are various ways to promote your blog and reach out to the millions out there. The strategies below will not only assist you in getting more traffic to your blog, but also get you higher rankings for your blog, as well as corporate site (if you have one).

I have personally applied all the strategies listed below, and learnt the hard way by the many mistakes one makes when trying something new. This is months of hard work on a platter for you! Enjoy.

Since this blog post is going to become too long, I am going to break it up into 2 parts. I will be putting up the blog promotion strategies that have worked for me in the next blog post Get your New Blog Noticed (Part 2).

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Why search engines love blogs? And so should you!

Ask this question of any SEO expert and they will tell you “fresh content” and “backlinks”, other than Google took over Blogger. The last one is my favorite as no one can argue with that.

Search engines like fresh content as its valuable for their users, and links show that other sites or blogs (and not just your own website) think that the information on your website is useful to their readers.

A blog can be an individual’s viewpoint, a life journal, a school girl’s diary, a poet’s space, an artist’s expression, or just about sharing your moments with family and friends. One can share information, pictures and even videos with no previous knowledge of designing and programming.

Companies use blogs to promote their latest products, introduce new services, announce upcoming events, share event pictures and videos, announce special offers/discounts, run opinion polls, introduce new team members, special announcements, build loyalty, and invite their customers to leave comments and give testimonials.

Home businesses and young entrepreneurs use blogs to increase awareness and attract traffic to their online business, new ventures, and daring expeditions into the unknown.

Professionals use blogs to brand themselves, create awareness and credibility, make money (yes that’s possible), and share their knowledge and experiences.

Housewives use blogs to share cooking tips and recipes, their children’s growing moments, travel log of the last trip, and shopping expeditions.

We SEO experts use blogs for achieving higher rankings for specific keywords. Unbelievable, and yet in many instances my blog link appears higher on search engines results page than pages that I optimize personally for the same keyword.

Getting started with blogging is relatively easy. You can sign up with www.blogger.com or other such blogging platforms.

If you don’t own a domain name for your blog, no worries, you can start with a free subdomain with Blogger. Eg. www.thisbemyjourney.blogspot.com or map it to your company’s domain name Eg. www.seo-optimization-experts.com/seoblog.html.

Statistics on Blogging

The numbers vary but agree that blogs are here to stay!

comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)
• Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
• Facebook: 41.0 million MySpace 75.1 million
• Total internet audience 188.9 million

eMarketer (May 2008)
• 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)
• 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)

Universal McCann (March 2008)
• 184 million WW have started a blog 26.4 US
• 346 million WW read blogs 60.3 US
• 77% of active Internet users read blogs

Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report is now available. For a detailed report go to http://www.technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/

The report states that Brands make up a major part of bloggers' online conversations. More than four in five bloggers post product or brand reviews, and blog about brands they love or hate. Even day-to-day experiences with customer care or in a retail store are fodder for blog posts. Companies are already reaching out to bloggers: one-third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates.

Bloggers believe that blogs are being taken more seriously as information sources. One in five bloggers don't think that newspapers will survive the next ten years. Half believe that blogs will be a primary source for news and entertainment in the next five years.

Bloggers are most open to receiving marketing messages from other blogs. Even non-blog web content is more influential among this group than traditional media sources for brand information. (ref Technorati 2008 Report)

But wait, that’s not all. The report also states that Blogs are an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers. The majority of bloggers we surveyed have advertising on their blogs. Marketers realize that bloggers are creating high quality content and attracting growing, loyal audiences. So there is potential for profit from blogging. (ref Technorati 2008 Report)

Well you are convinced, and you start writing periodically, uploading photographs and videos and have shared your blog link with many friends, but a few months down a nagging worry start to hit you (this is for those who don’t track their readers using tracking software’s like Google Analytics) that you are writing for “you” alone and your mum who thinks “my son is the best”.

While there is nothing wrong with writing, just for the pleasure of writing, I am sure you all want to reach out and touch someone else with all your hard work. The real challenge is to get your target audience to read your blog whether its family, friends, colleagues, or readers around the world who would be interested in what you are writing about.

Trust me even friends will betray you if what you write does not make them want to come back, so pay close attention to the questions below and answer them as honestly as you can.

What would make your blog special to your audience?

Why would they want to bookmark your blog?

Why would they want to link to it and tell others?

What is my ultimate goal for this blog?

While the first 3 questions require you to dig down deep inside your minds and hearts, the last question is most critical. What do you ultimately want out all the hard work, late nights and coffee cups invested into your blog?

Well, whether your blog is for the purpose of sharing knowledge, gaining credibility, increasing visibility and rankings, building customer loyalty, sharing information, making money, or assisting our fellow men in the journey of life, the bottom line remains - search engines love blogs, and so should you!

To know more about promoting you new blog, read my blog postGet your New Blog Noticed (Part 1) and (Part 2).

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Mumbai SEO Expert Series - Success with Keywords (Part 5)

For those who have not read Success with Keywords Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4, I suggest you do that now before you read any further.

Welcome to the last installment of the Mumbai SEO Expert Series - Success with Keywords. I hope you have had a great journey so far, and as I had promised we will continue our keyword discovery process and try and find additional keywords that could drive business to my website.

In this article we are going to explore some of the tools and resources available that will assist you in your journey to finding winning keywords.

Each keyword you target becomes a funnel of traffic to your website, each keyword will have competition, and each keyword targeted is potential business.

So the KEY to SUCCESS is in the KEYWORDS you select!

Till so far we have managed to create a list of around 50 great keywords that are focused around my business, my products/services, my target audiences, and my competition.

A quick recap of keywords identified so far…

Seo expert, seo expert mumbai, mumbai seo expert, seo experts in mumbai, seo expert in mumbai, seo expert india, seo experts in india, seo expert in india, seo company mumbai, seo firm mumbai, seo company india,

seo services mumbai, seo services in mumbai, seo services india, seo services in india, seo content services mumbai, seo content services india, seo link building mumbai, seo link building india, seo directory services mumbai, seo directory services india, seo consulting mumbai, seo consulting india,

seo marketing mumbai, seo marketing india, internet marketing mumbai, internet marketing india, seo jobs mumbai, seo training mumbai, seo training india, seo outsource india, outsource seo india, sem mumbai, sem india, sem services mumbai, sem services india,

Seo specialist mumbai, seo specialist india, seo firm mumbai, seo firm india, seo mumbai, seo india, web marketing mumbai, web marketing india, mumbai seo, seo in mumbai.

In the end of Part 4, I had left you with some food for thought …

From the keywords list I have created so far:

1.How many users are actually searching for my keywords?

2.What is the search trend and search volume for my keyword over the past 4 years across top search engines?

3.What competition am I up against for my keywords?

How important do you think it is to know the above metrics? How will the above data assist in planning a seo strategy for my website? How will the above data affect my rankings?

If you are still reading further, you have obviously understood the importance on knowing the metrics of success. So here goes…

The key to successful search engine optimization begins with a simple keyword phrase. Everything depends on that keyword phrase. You'll be including those keyword phrases in your META tags, your title and other important tags, as well as in the body content of the page itself.

I have listed a few tools and links below that I have found very useful in my research:

(This list is dedicated to my partner in the SEO Company, Rajesh, who will smile when he reads this ------> Enjoy)

Google Insights:

Google’s recently launched Google Insights offers search marketers and online businessman a chance to look at the vast amount of user search volumes in Google universe over the past 4 years. With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames for a keyword, and even compare it against other keywords.

Search by Categories: Narrow data to specific categories, like finance, health, and sports.

Examples: Entertainment category in India (last 30 days) Seo in India in 2008, 2007... The top vehicle brands in France (last 30 days)

Search by Seasonality: Anticipate demand for your business so you can budget and plan accordingly.

Examples: soccer in 2006 vs. 2007 basketball in 2008, 2007,... hotel in 2008, 2007,...

Search by Geographic distribution: Know where to find your customers. See how search volume is distributed across regions and cities.

Examples: pizza in Italy vs. the USA ski in Australia vs. Switzerland soccer in Brazil, Italy, Germany, UK

Wordtracker:

Wordtracker is a Web-based service is a great tool for anyone who is serious about identifying the right keywords. Be sure to check out WordTracker's KEI, Keyword Effectiveness Index, which is an index factor built into WordTracker that compares the 24-hour results (the *potential* for traffic) with the number of competing Web pages to help identify which keywords are most effective. The higher the KEI factor, the more effective the phrase will be, based on the phrase being both popular but having low competition.

Thesaurus.com:

Use a thesaurus to discover keywords and phrases you've never considered.

http://thesaurus.reference.com/
http://www.plumbdesign.com/thesaurus

Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture):

Offers a Search Term Suggestion Tool, which is available through the advertisers' area. Simply enter your keyword phrase, and you'll learn how many people actually searched for that term during the previous month. This tool won’t tell you how many people are searching for your keyword phrase at other engines, but give you an idea of how popular the keyword phrase is.

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There are many more tools out there; all you have to do is “ask for it”. The above tools will help you get started.

In the beginning, there was a word, and that word was KEYWORD.

For those who have taken the time to journey with me over the last one week, thank you and hope to you again soon.

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Mumbai SEO Expert Series - Success with Keywords (Part 4)

For those who have not read Success with Keywords Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, I absolutely insist you do that now before you read any further.

As I had promised we will continue our keyword discovery journey and try and find additional keywords that could drive business to my website. The next question we ask is very important in today’s competitive world – What is my competition doing?

While I firmly advocate analyzing the competition for the purpose of finding new keywords that could drive traffic to my website, I feel competition in life is rather unnecessary and a futile attempt “one” makes to feel better that the “other”.

You need someone to lose, to feel you have won! Have you ever considered why? Somewhere within there is someone who feels rather small, and to feel bigger, it needs to become better at something, and to become better at something, someone needs to be smaller than you. So we compete in the workplace, in our homes, with friends, in love and in life. If that seems lame, it is, look within and you find that someone small inside you, trying to make itself feel bigger, by making someone else look smaller.

A quick recap… As you can see my keywords list had gone up quite a bit, Seo expert, seo expert mumbai, mumbai seo expert, seo experts in mumbai, seo expert in mumbai, seo expert india, seo experts in india, seo expert in india, seo company mumbai, seo firm mumbai, seo company india, seo services mumbai, seo services in mumbai, seo services india, seo services in india, seo content services mumbai, seo content services india, seo link building mumbai, seo link building india, seo directory services mumbai, seo directory services india, seo consulting mumbai, seo consulting india, seo marketing mumbai, seo marketing india, internet marketing mumbai, internet marketing india, seo jobs mumbai, seo training mumbai, seo training india, seo outsource india, outsource seo india, sem mumbai, sem india, sem services mumbai, sem services india.

So we are up to 36 keywords that revolve around my business, products, services, location, the target audience, and the Industry.

Now let’s see what the competition is up to:

1. Study the keywords your competition has used and are ranking well, and why?

2. Check to see if you have those keywords in your list of winning keywords. If the competition has used a keywords and you have not, analyze why you did not come up with the keyword. Is your competition using services of a seo expert, keyword analysis tools and insights that you are unaware off?

3. Study the top 5 to 10 sites for each of your keywords (what seo strategies have they used, is the keyword placed in the meta tags and body content, is their title and description inviting you to click the link)

4. Check your optimized pages, are they missing something – then ask why is the competition ranking higher than you? Have they done something different? What page optimization strategies have they used? Have they used link building strategies?

There will always be keywords you would have missed out, so why not steal a few from the competition. It’s the easiest thing to do. Right click to view the source for the page and check for the keyword tag on that page.

A few keywords that I had missed out (potential traffic churners):

Seo specialist mumbai, seo specialist india, seo firm mumbai, seo firm india, seo mumbai, seo india, web marketing mumbai, web marketing india, mumbai seo.

Till so far we have managed to create a list of around 50 great keywords that are focused around my business, my products/services, my target audiences, and my competition. Good job, but the story has not ended, in fact it’s just the beginning.
Some food for thought for you till the next time we meet…

From the keywords list I have created so far:

1. How many users are actually searching for my keywords?

2. What is the search trend and search volume for my keywords over the past 4 years across top search engines?

3. What competition am I up against for my keywords?

That should be enough to keep your brain racking… now I will try and get myself to switch off my notebook and catch some sleep...

In my next post in this series I will show you tools that can assist you further in finding the right keywords and keyword combinations to drive traffic to your website…. (Continued in Part 5)

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Mumbai SEO Expert Series - Success with Keywords (Part 3)

For those who have not read Success with Keywords Part 1, and Part 2, I suggest you do that now. No sense in joining us in the middle of a great story, with no clue how it began.

It all started with a promise of an adventure, a journey to keyword discovery to find additional keywords that could drive business to my website.

A quick recap… As you can see my new keywords list is focused around my business, expertise and the services that I can offer.

These include Seo expert, seo expert mumbai, mumbai seo expert, seo experts in mumbai, seo expert in mumbai, seo expert india, seo experts in india, seo expert in india, seo company mumbai, seo firm mumbai, seo company india, seo services mumbai, seo services in mumbai, seo services india, seo services in india, seo content services mumbai, seo content services india, seo link building mumbai, seo link building india, seo directory services mumbai, seo directory services india, seo consulting services mumbai, seo consulting india.

The next step is to create new keywords focused around the users I expect to visit my site and use the services I offer. I always ask my questions like why will the target segment come to my site, what do they expect when they reach the website, and do I have the content/ tools required to satisfy their needs and questions.

Each target segment may belong to different age groups, different vocations, different mindsets, and have different requirements and needs to feel satisfied. This will be better understood with the list below.

Let me list out some of the TG I hope to attract:

1. Marketing professionals
2. Website developers
3. Seo students
4. SEM professionals
5. Outsourcing seo (from other countries)

A marketing professional wants to increase his business, and wants a good ROI. He (or she) wants to understand the process and how it will impact the brand, brand loyalty, and the bottom line.

A website developer is looking for a partner for help in optimizing the pages, link building, directory submissions, and article submissions for his clients. He (or she) wants to know about time, cost and quality of the work.

A Seo student is looking to learn, find tips and tricks, new tools, search for a job, and keep up-to-date with the seo industry.

A company looking to outsource their seo needs to a seo company or seo expert, to countries where the costs are still reasonable, with services with a promise of quality and speed.

This above is by no means a comprehensive analysis of the target audience, or a complete list of the target audience I expect to visit my website, but just an indication on the importance of knowing your customers, and the keywords that can follow.

A new list of keywords based on the TG, seo marketing mumbai, seo marketing india, internet marketing mumbai, internet marketing india, seo jobs mumbai, seo training mumbai, seo training india, seo outsource india, outsource seo india, sem mumbai, sem india, sem services mumbai, sem services india.

Eventually, you may want to create separate pages targeting each of those different audiences, because each of those audiences represents a window or entry into your site.

In my next post in this series I will analyze the competition and see what kind of keywords and keyword combinations come up…. (Continued in Part 4)

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