Watch Video: Michael Rotkin of SEOChampion.com at PubCon 2007

At PubCon Las Vegas 2007, Mike McDonald of WebProNews spoke with Michael Rotkin, the CEO of SEOChampion.com, about his current projects. Rotkin said he is focusing on link building and working with many local charities and organizations. He explained the differences between mobile search and traditional Web search. Catch the full interview including Rotkin’s explanation of how .mobi will become the next “.com” movement, only on WebProNews.

Watch Video of Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz on WebProNews

WebProNews spoke with Rand Fishkin, the CEO and Co-Founder of SEOmoz.org, at PubCon Las Vegas 2007. Fishkin discusses the prevalence of link buying. He suggests building a marketplace all the search engines approve of and one that contains paid reviews. Fishkin also explains his recent blog post in which he talked about a few Google mishaps. Check out the full interview including a few special surprises, on WebProNews.

AnyPassword an Easy-to-Use Free Password Management Tool...

We tend to accumulate many passwords for different purposes such as SEO, PR and Marketing programs. I use the following FREE Password Management tool and I love it!

AnyPassword is an easy-to-use tool that lets you store all your passwords, user IDs, and related information together in a safe place. The program supports tree-type data structure, password generation, incremental search, import and export of data.

AnyPassword is FREE for individual and not-for-profit charitable entity use.

Here are the Features...

> Hierarchical data structure - You can arrange an unlimited number of records using the nested folders. All records are represented in a tree form.

> Strong encryption algorithm - The program encrypts data files using IDEA/MD5 algorithms. So, unauthorized access to the files is practically impossible.

> Incremental search - You can easily find a record by entering a substring into the search field.

> Password generator - allows you to generate unique passwords. You can specify the characters that will be used in the passwords and set any password length.

> Multiuser interface - The program can be used by several people. Each person can have one or several data files.

> Multilingual interface - (Bulgarian, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish).

> Check it out at: http://www.anypassword.com/

> Read the Reviews: http://www.download.com/

6 FREE Press Release Distribution Sites that Provide SEO Value:

I have put together a list of 6 Press Release Distribution Websites that provide SEO value:

1. PRLeap.com -
   Free distribution to search engines, newswires, and RSS feeds. Fee based bumps get you better placement.
   
   
2. PRLog.org -
   Free distribution to Google News and other other search engines.
   
   
3. EcommWire.com -
   Focuses on ecommerece and requires you include an image, 3 keywords and links.
   
   
4. Express-Press-Release.com -
   Free distribution company with offices in 12 states.
   
   
5. PRBuzz.com -
   Completely free distribution to search engines, news sites, and blogs.
   
   
6. PressAbout.com -
   A free press release service formatted as a blog.

I hope these resources help you in your PR Campaign Efforts!

Crucial SEO Tips for Blogs...

Here are some crucial SEO tips when creating and posting to blogs...

• Build a keyword list as you’re writing posts. Some blogging applications have a “keywords” plugin that automatically identifies relevant keywords in a post – this can be useful for this purpose.
  
  
• Use the “del.icio.us tags” plugin to automatically convert a post’s keywords into del.icio.us tags.
  
  
• Include keywords in post titles, headers and hyperlinked text. Also include keywords in meta tags and page titles.
  
  
• Include keyword-optimized text links within posts that lead back to relevant pages of your website. These text links should include keywords relevant to the page being linked to.
  
  
• Include keywords in blog category names and include a header on category-specific pages with the category name.
  
  
• Include keywords, separated by hyphens, in URLs.
  
  
• Include keywords related to each post in the alt attributes for that post’s image whenever it makes sense and link each image to the permalink page for that post.
  
  
• Hyperlink post titles to the permalink page for that post.
  
  
• Obtain links from other bloggers – ask to be added to their blogrolls.
  
  
• Include buttons for multiple social bookmarking sites at the end of each post.
  
  
• Claim your blog at Technorati (if you haven’t already) and add a Technorati button at the end of each post.
  
  
• Submit blog/RSS feed to blog and feed search engines, e.g. blogs.botw.org, blogsearchengine.com, and blogsearch.google.com/ping
  
  
• Make separate RSS feeds available for specific categories, recent posts only, etc.

Happy Blogging!

Useful and Trustworthy SEO Resources and Tools

Here is a list of useful and trustworthy SEO resources and tools I have prepared...

> SEOmoz.com:

Beginner's Guide to SEO:
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners.php

Search Engine Ranking Factors: http://www.seomoz.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php

Page Strength Tool:
http://www.seomoz.org/tools/page-strength.php

Social Media Marketing:
http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1341

Best Practices for URLs:
http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1422

Google Algorithm Analysis:
http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1467

Increase Blog Traffic:
http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1347

NEW Website Health Check SEO Tool:
http://www.seobook.com/new-seo-tool-website-health-check-tool

> SEOBook.com:

SEO/SEM glossary:
http://www.seobook.com/glossary/

Search Engine Algorithm Comparison:
http://www.seobook.com/relevancy/

Link Popularity:
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml

> Search Engine Tools:

Yahoo Site Explorer:
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

Google Webmaster Guidelines:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) How Confused Are YOU?

Why SEO Marketing may be causing you some confusion...

I have been participating in several SEO training programs, conferences, webinars, teleseminars and the list goes on...

Here are 5 of my personal observations on this topic:

1. Businesses are confused on who should be in charge of internet marketing and search engine marketing for their company website(s), and how to qualify this person(s) to work for them.

2. Should SEO services be done inhouse or outsourced? Who ever you use must be qualified, do your research!

3. Most companies have no idea what the term Organic Search Engine Listing means. Go to http://www.marketingterms.com to learn more about web marketing terms.

4. If businesses do not get educated on this (SEO) topic or hire someone who does, they will be blind sided by the competition who are already on top of this SEO stuff and are preparing their sites for the future.

5. Matching the right Keywords with the first 250 words of your website content is one of the most crucial parts of SEO marketing. This has to be done to special Google and yahoo guidelines.

I hope these 5 SEO observations help you as you prepare your website and internet marketing plan for 2008!

22 Top SEO Terms and Definitions...

Below is a List of 22 Top SEO Terms and Definitions...

SEM
Search Engine Marketing. The act of marketing a website via search engines, whether this be improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination of these and other search engine-related activities.

SEO
Search Engine Optimization. The act of altering a web site so that it does well in organic listings of search engines.

Organic Search
Search results in a search engine that are not paid advertisements. The results that come up naturally based on their indexing within a search engine. Organic search results are good. We all want to come up on top for organic searches using keywords we are optimized for. For example, searching for "marcidesign" will return this website in organic search results.

PPC
Pay Per Click. Advertising method where an advertiser pays for their ads (which are displayed on a given website) if and only if someone actually clicks on the ad.

Title Tag
A meta data element that determines the actual "title" of a given webpage. The title is what shows up in the top bar of your browser.

Meta Tags
Web page specific, descriptive information that helps a search engine identify the purpose and topic of a given web page. Common meta data include a web page's title, description, and keyword listing.

Alt Tag
An HTML attribute typically used within the IMG tag to provide alternate text when images cannot be displayed.

Anchor Tag
An HTML tag that allows you to create a link to another document or web page or to a bookmark within the current web page.

Landing Page
A content-rich web page geared around a particular topic, product or conversion goal. Typically a main navigation item of a website.

Keyword Density
How often a keyword or keyword phrase is used on a given web page.

CSS
Cascading Style Sheets. A language used to describe how a given page or web site will look. Used to control font styles, graphical layouts, color, etc.

CPC
Cost Per Click. Typical rate of measuring the expense involved with acquiring web traffic.

301 Redirect
Method of redirecting an old webpage to a new location. More simply, to display another web page for the web address that you are trying to visit. 301 implies that the move is permanent (as opposed to temporary, etc.)

Conversion
Web traffic that fulfills a pre-established goal, such as purchasing of a specific product or filling out a registration form, etc.

Blog
"Web Log". An online journal of sorts.

SERP
Search Engine Results Page. The listing of web pages that a search engine shows a user once they've entered a search value.

Spider
Programs written to scour the web automatically for various reasons (to index web pages, for spamming purposes, etc.) aka web robots, web crawlers, bots, internet bots.

White Hat SEO
The use of accepted SEO practices in order to get higher rankings, more traffic, etc.

Black Hat SEO
The use of unaccepted or frowned upon SEO practices in order to get higher rankings and more traffic. Use at the risk of being dropped from the engines or at least being removed from high rankings. More on black hat seo.

B2B
Business To Business. Marketing strategy which involves the transaction of goods or services between businesses.

B2C
Business To Consumer. Transaction of goods or services directly to the end consumer.

RSS
A family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed," "web feed," or "channel," contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.

Meta, Title, Header Tags and More Tips...

META TAGS - TITLE, DESCRIPTION AND ROBOTS
The Meta Tags and Title go in the Head section of your HTML and let Search Engines know what was important on a Webpage and so how to rank its importance. They can also tell the Search Engine what language it is written in and other files it needs to take into account. Typically it will look something like this:

[HEADER]
[TITLE]Cheap Halloween Costumes for Children and Adults[/TITLE]
[META name=”description” content=”Very Cheap Prices on Halloween Costumes for all Ages”]
[META name=”keywords” content=”Halloween Costumes, Halloween, Very Cheap”]
[/HEADER]

The Title Meta Tag is extremely important and is widely used by the SE’s most importantly Google. Make it between 5-10 words and put your best Keyword/Phrase at the beginning e.g. ‘Halloween Costumes’.

The Description Meta Tag should be less than 150 characters in order to suit all Search Engines. Anything more than this will simply be missed out with some SE’s. The “description” is what most SE’s use to describe your site when listed in its results. Make sure it is ENTICING for potential customers. It should include at least 5 of your best keywords but DO NOT simply repeat all of them in your “description”.

The Keywords Meta Tag should be a string of keywords and 2-or-3 word phrases that people surfing the net might use to find pages like yours. It is a very common opinion amongst many experts that the “keywords” Meta Tag is used very little if at all by SE’s these days. This is very true but since some SE’s do still use them to some degree DO NOT repeat your keywords more than 3 times in either your
“keywords” Meta Tag or your “description” Meta Tag. Some SE’s will consider this as ‘Keyword Spamming’ and your site could be seriously penalized.

The Robots Meta Tag is a simple instruction that goes in between the [HEAD] and [/HEAD] tags of your web page and tells any visiting Search Engine Robots whether than can index that page (INDEX, NO INDEX) or follow the links leaving that page (FOLLOW, NO FOLLOW). There are basically 4 variations of these instructions:

1. [META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”INDEX,FOLLOW”]
2. [META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX,FOLLOW”]
3. [META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”INDEX,NOFOLLOW”]
4. [META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW”]

ROBOTS.TXT FILE
The Robots.txt file is actually the first thing Search Engine Robots will see when they visit your site. With the use of a Robots.txt file we can tell Search Engines what areas of your site are out of bounds. There are also many other uses for the Robots.txt file but I won’t talk about it here. Using a text editor (notepad, BBedit etc) create a new file and name it, yes you guessed it: robots.txt.

Place in it the following syntax:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /pictures/
Disallow: style.css

This syntax tells Search Engine that it may not look in to the folders “cgi-bin” or “pictures” (these could actually be any directories you name). Save the file, upload it to the root of your website i.e. yourdomain.com/robots.txt and that’s it.

HEADER/TEXT FORMATING TAGS
OK here are the three most important tags used for formatting your text:
[H1] the Main Heading Tag, tells the SE the pages main topic
[H2] a Second Heading and slightly smaller (e.g. subheading)
[p] paragraph and the body of text and content

A typical layout of your HTML code, and therefore your text, should look like this.

[HTML]
[HEAD]
[BODY]

[H2]Title of Your Page Starting with you Keyword Phrase[/H2]
[H3]Subtitle Including Some other Keywords/Phrase[/H3]
[p] Lots of useful information with the odd keyword thrown in but good useful information is what really makes a site successful, after all, Content is King. [/p]
[H3]Next Subtitle Including Some other Keywords/Phrase[/H3]
[p] Lots ore useful information with the odd keyword thrown in but good useful information is what really makes a site successful after all Content is King. [/p]

[/BODY]
[/HTML]

ALT TAGS
These provide the Search Engine Robots with a description for any images you have on your page.

They look as follows:
[img xsrc=”" mce_src=”" alt=”boys policeman costume ” width=”50″ height=”50″ /]
Place in good descriptive key words here without going over board i.e. no spamming the same words in every images alt tag 3 times each.

Watch The Video: StumbleUpon Adds Search Reviews

StumbleUpon looks to take a bigger step in expanding its uses.The Web discovery service added a new feature called search reviews. The new tool shows an icon beside of a link found on major search engines and other content Websites like YouTube. The icon lets users see what sites are popular and how many thumbs up it received. For more information on the SearchReviews added to StumbleUpon, keep watching WebProNews.

SMX Social Media, NYC 2007: Watch The Video... Adam Sherk of Define Search Strategies

Search and PR Strategist for Define Search Strategies, Adam Sherk talks with WebProNews at SMX Social Media 2007 in New York City. Sherk discusses topics he covered in the session The Marketer’s Role in SMM. He talks about aspects you should look for when hiring new employees and how big publisher’s are coping in today’s world. For the details of the interview with Sherk, keep watching WebProNews.

7 SEO Resources for Online Marketers and Small Business Owners...

1.) Top 10 Useful Web Tools
The editors of Pandia share their favorite online tools for blogging, exploring and information management...

2.) LinkedIn Companion for Firefox
LinkedIn is an online network of more than 10.5 million experienced professionals. LinkedIn helps you be more effective in your daily work and opens doors to opportunities by helping you develop and manage your network of business...

3.) SeoQuake 2.0.10 - Firefox SEO Add-on
Seoquake is a Mozilla Firefox extension aimed primarily at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization and internet promotion of web sites. Seoquake allows to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet...

4.) MetaTags 2.3.5.2 Firefox Add-on
This sidebar displays page meta-information (metatags, links, etc.) Has automated search engine submission menu. Features include: Watches currently loaded Web page and automatically updates the sidebar. Displays metatags, links, language, base...

5.) SEOHAND 0.0.4 Firefox SEO Add-ons:The add-on is used as an extension for the site http://www.seohand.com. It activates when the working area of the site in the location bar. The area gives to user opportunity to identify Google ranking for his sites. This operation does this add-on...

6.) Small Business Guide to Optimizing Universal Search
The buzz in the search marketing media and increasingly, the business press, on the importance of unified or universal search is gaining momentum and is unavoidable...

7.) 14 Best Practices and Tips for Video Optimization SEO
14 Best Practices and Tips for Video Optimization SEO - Organic Search Engine Marketing with a B2B Twist...

> BONUS RESOURCE:
20 Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools

SEO Keyword Research Tools

Here are Some Excellent SEO Keyword Research Tools - Highly Recommend for ALL SEO Marketers...

Overture Keyword Selector Tool:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
This is a good first step to generate a basic keyword list of phrases containing the actual term you entered. Yahoo! has indicated that the search numbers are old and inaccurate so don’t count on exact numbers. However, it’s a useful tool to determine if a keyword is being searched for at all.

Good Keywords: (Free Download)
http://www.goodkeywords.com/
This free download for Windows users is similar to the Overture Keyword Selector Tool. It also has a feature that identifies common misspellings of words.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Enter a search term or terms into the ‘Keyword Variations’ section, and you'll be shown other keywords that contain that term or are related to that term (synonyms). You can then sort keywords in terms of search volume popularity on Google. Google does not provide actual number of searches.

You can also use the ‘Site-Related Keywords’ section of the tool to identify the keywords of an existing web page by entering the page URL.

Wordtracker Free Keyword Suggestion Tool:
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
Wordtracker has a robust fee-based keyword tool that’s popular among the SEO crowd. In addition, this free tool is useful for building a list of synonyms. Enter a search term and you'll be shown 100 potential keywords related to (and including it), ranked by daily popularity. You can also sign up for the free trial of the paid version (recommended) to dig deeper into related keyword terms. This is a great way to identify secondary keyword phrases.

Microsoft AdCenter Labs Keyword Group Detection Tool:
http://adlab.msn.com/contextSim/Default.aspx
This tool will also build a list of synonyms.

Trellian Free Search Term Suggestion Tool:
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
This tool provides synonyms as well and is very similar to Wordtracker’s tool above except that it ranks the keywords by annual searches as opposed to daily searches.

Bruce Clay’s SEO Tool Set Traffic Check:
http://www.seotoolset.com/cgi-bin/checktraffic.cgi
Use this tool to produce an estimate of daily search activity for a specific keyword phrase across the major search engines broken down by Google, Yahoo and MSN. This one will provide actual numbers (but they are still estimates).

SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool:
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/
Provides aggregated data from the free Overture, Google and Wordtracker tools listed above.

7 SEO Web Terms Every Business Owner Should Know...

1. Search Engine Rankings: The position a website has on a search results page when a particular keyword is searched for. One should only be concerned with rankings for Google, Yahoo and MSN Search at this time, as other engines either do not have material amounts of traffic, or are actually driven by one of the big three search engines.

2. Search Engine Marketing: The marketing of one's website through a search engine, whether through paid search or search engine optimization. Abbreviated as SEM.

3. Search Engine Optimization: Techniques used to improve a website's rankings in the search engines. Consists of on-page optimization, indexing improvements and link building. Abbreviated as SEO.

4. Flog: A fake blog, generally created to promote for a particular company, product, or idea.

5. Inbound Links: Links coming into a site from another site.

6. Paid Search: An advertising method that involves the purchasing of traffic from search engines. Advertising is attached to individual keywords and is generally purchased via a pay per click financial model

7. Local Search: Any of a number of search engine marketing techniques that cater to geographically specific businesses (e.g. plumbers, doctors and restaurants etc...). Local search can be either paid search advertising or natural search listings.

10 SEO Mistakes that YOU Never Want to Make...

Before you publish and submit your site you should know these SEO mistakes most Website developers make. Optimize your pages before you submit them.

1) Non-descriptive page titles - if you use a WYSIWYG editor, it may be titling your pages the same as the page name. Pages with the same title on the domain will not get listed. The search engines see them as duplicate pages and won't index past the same title twice. Use a short 7-9 word descriptive title for each page and make sure each page title on your site is unique.

What do you think is a better title for your page is A or B?

A. Home Page
B. Top 10 SEO Mistakes

(B) is the correct title!

2) No meta tags in page - If you don't put a description meta tag on your page and it gets listed, it will list the first few words of copy on your page. Keyword meta tags are not read anymore by most major search engines and just putting a keyword in a keyword meta tag will not you listed for that keyword.

3) Thinking if you build it, they will come - you watch too many movies... here's your reality check. Submitting your site to the search engines is not enough. Without good optimization efforts, you can't compete for keyword rankings on a global basis.

4) It has to be pretty - that depends largely on the purpose of the site. For the most part, design is subjective. What looks good to one person is unattractive to the next. The search engines don't care what your graphics or animation or color scheme is. It just has to be well organized, well-written, user friendly, consistent, logical to navigate, provide a valuable service and be 'sticky'. Killer sites aren't just aesthetically pleasing, they are highly useful, well planned and easy for the search engines to crawl. The design grabs their attention, the content keeps it.

5) Too much animation - Animation has it's place and can be quite clever and appropriate on a lot of sites if used to the best advantage, but too much of it is unnecessary and will aggravate visitors. Never use blinking text or pop up ads... how do you like them?

6) Cannot resize text - When you build a site you have to take into consideration that the web is not print. It's a movable media that displays differently on each monitor. To be useful, you have to offer options to your visitors. If you use .css, you need to specify the text in .em instead of .pt for the vision impaired and Mac users.

7) Different design for each page or section - How will your visitors know they are still on your site if it's pages are not consistent? You can guarantee consistency by placing navigation in the same place on each page and your logo in the same spot at the top of the page. If you have expandable menu items, put them on every page of your site in the same place. Your visitors will expect it to be there and it's not user centered if they have to learn a new navigation system for each section. Use consistent navigation on every page. A different design and way to navigate it for each section is confusing.

8) Background Music - A different song on each page that loads is the most aggravating thing on the internet. Even an on/off button is aggravating if it has to be used for every page load. Unless it's a presentation that the visitor selects, sound has no place on a professional site and what good does it do to optimize for maximum traffic if you alienate your visitor...

9) Poor maintenance - Orphaned pages are pages in your site that have one way links or no links to other pages. Outdated and poorly written pages with broken links could affect getting your site indexed. A lot of broken internal and external links could keep your site from getting indexed.

10) Main focus - You can have several topics on your site, and indeed you should have for interest and support. But there should only be one main focus that tells what your site is all about. One main subject that lets your visitor know exactly what your page content is about. What is the purpose of your site? Spell it out with your headlines, tag line and graphics. If it's not apparent by looking at the main page, your visitors have no reason to dig deeper.

There are a lot more mistakes site builders can make, some biggies and some minor, but correcting the ones listed here will make the biggest impact on your site as a whole and the ability to get it listed properly, and they're so easy to correct.