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.