Affiliate Summit West 2010

A Guide To SEO

Joshua ZieringOwner, FullSpeedSEO.com

How Did I Learn SEO?

• Had A Website.• Wanted To Rank For My Name• SERPS Were Littered With “Josh

Hartnett” and “Nikki Ziering”

How Do I Increase My Rankings?

• Analyzing Your Niche• Dominating The Niche• Tracking Your Progress

Mission Statement: To give you enough knowledge about SEO to:

1) Not get ripped off by snake oil SEO salesmen if you're hiring an outside firm.

2) Make adjustments to your own site with positive ranking results.

Google 66%Yahoo 16.2%Bing 8.8%AOL 3%The Rest 7%

Who Do I Optimize For?Unless you've got compelling evidence not to optimize for Google, it's best to do what they like to see, and let the others catch on.

*June 2009 Nielson

If you haven't bought a domain name...Use Google Keyword tool to try to find highly searched versions of your main keyword.

Picking A Domain Name

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

As a rule of thumb, try to find keywords with more than 8000 global monthly searches under “Exact” match

If it's not taken, FixedGearBike.com isn't a bad domain name to have since it receives 22,200 EXACT match searches. Remember, this excludes “long tail” traffic like “Best Evar Fixed Gear Bikecycle”.

Picking A Domain Name

Picking A Domain Name

If you already have a domain name that you're not willing to change, that's alright. It's only one of about 200 ranking factors.

Remember sites like, eBay, Amazon, and Zappos all rank for keywords not in their domain.

Picking A Domain Name• DontMakeYourNameWayTooLong.com

• A well placed dash is fine. ExpertSexChange.com vs. Experts-Exchange.com. Avoid-Lots-And-Lots-Of-Dashes.com

• If you're a geographically centric business, consider mentioning that. It's easier to rank HoustonFloorPolishers.com than FloorPolishers.com

Is Your Website Optimized? (Boring)• Main Keyword In Title Tag• <h1> Tags• Meta Description Tag

• Do you have a site map?• Keywords in first 250 words of text.• Pro Tip: A CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress will do almost all of this for you. WordPress has been known to follow Google's advice closely.

Optimizing WordPress

• Google Sitemap Generator• All In One SEO Pack• Popular Posts (For last x days)• Lose The Default Theme Elegant Themes ($20/year) Woo Themes ($20/Month)• Page.ly – Managed Hosting with Premium Themes ($15/month). Upgraded, Patched, and Backed Up.

More Notes About On Page Optimization

• Use Google Keywords tool for additional terms you might want to rank for. Use the “Broad match option”.• Use the ~ operator before your Google queries for related terms. Ie ~Dog ~Collars• Make sure your page loads fast. Consult Google Webmaster tools.• Increase Time On Page via “Related Posts” or “Additional Products” at the ends of pages.

Off Page Optimization

Why show Johnny Football and the Homecoming Queen at a conference full of internet nerds?

Off Page Optimization

• Everybody knows “Johnny Football”• His opinion is trusted more than “Stevey Math Team”• If 30 people in your high school know you, it still might be better to only be best friends with Johnny Football or be tagging the homecoming queen.• SEO is similar in many respects. Often, it's better to be tagging the homecoming queen.

Off Page Optimization

• Google uses “Page Rank” to determine how authoritative a site is.• Fun fact: Page rank is named after Larry Page, co-founder of Google.• You need two kinds of links to make your site an authority: Relevant and Authoritative. While a PR 7 is authoritative, if it's a site about chairs and it's linking to your site about bras, it won't do as much good as a PR 7 bra site link.

Off Page Optimization

• Don't freak out about Page Rank. It's a “macro” metric. Big picture stuff.• Page Rank 0's regularly outrank Page Rank 5's. I'd rather be a 0 with lots of visitors.• Don't obsess over Page Rank. Seriously.• Focus on building a profile of high quality one way links. • Trust the rankings, not your Page Rank.

Off Page Optimization:Where Do I Get Links?!

• Guest Posting• Social Bookmarking (Digg,Stumble,etc)• Various Profiles (YouTube, Slashdot, etc)• Twitter Aggregators• Facebook Fan Pages• Sites You Make (Mini Nets)• Link Bait

Link Bait

Link Bait: Link bait is any media that gets people excited, in any capacity, about the content of that media, and inspires them to link back to it so their discourse on the subject is relevant.

Link Bait

www.money.co.uk

Link Bait

Link Bait

Link bait isn't limited to “phony” articlesExamples

• Contests. ie Drew Carey on Twitter.• Viral Videos. ie David At The Dentist Etc.• Creative Web Applications / Mobile Apps• BE EVOCATIVE.

“Linkbaiting sounds like a bad thing, but especially if it’s interesting information or fun, it doesn’t have to have negative connotations. I hereby claim that content can be both white-hat and yet still be wonderful “bait” for links.” – Matt Cutts

Link Bait

With creativity, there is no subject or website you can't write creative link bait for.

This is the reason your website needs a blog.

This is the reason you should probably have a mini net made about your niche.

Link Bait Exercises

A. The Downfall – Think carefully about your niche, and what would absolutely devastate it. What would take the world as you know it and turn it upside down? I wrote this as an RIAA executive in 1999…

“I’ve seen it. The future. It’s grim for music sales as we know them today. Last week a friend invited me over to his house, he’s an “internets” genius of one sort or another, and he showed me an MT3. It’s music on the computer, and it’s small enough

Link Bait ExercisesB. The Savant – The idea here is to take a normal person (or child) and make them really good at something related to your niche. For those unaware, a Savant is a person who excels at or is knowledgeable about one specific thing, but generally terrible at everything else.

Link Bait ExercisesC. The Dream – Simply think of something that you wish existed in your niche, and make it exist. If it doesn’t fake or make it. If it does, brand it and sell it. If it sort of does, change it. If it exists somewhere else, but could apply to you, rebrand that bitch.

“I’d only been able to overclock my Dual Celeron board to 533Mhz, but when I saw my friend Tim nitrogen cooling his car, I knew I’d found my answer. Using his license, we bought 5 liters of compressed liquid nitrogen...

Link Bait ExercisesD. The Hero – Be the hero. Make the hero. Or Make the hero look like a douche. This is popular no matter what niche. Reddit and The Consumerist often loves these kinds of submissions. Hint.

The following is something I wrote about being a hero...

Link Bait Exercises“The girl behind the counter told me ‘I, like, have never heard of a plasma that cheap before. I think the internet lied to you dude.’ I insisted, showing her the newspaper advertisement from her store, and pointing at it. She said, “Well, whatevs, I don’t think it’s here, but I mean, you can totally try looking. Damnit Tanya, FML! Seriously…” She was starting to lose her focus. Feeling an impending sneeze coming on, I found myself with a heavy hand. Perhaps because I was afraid I’d hit her if I lifted up my hand. Whatever the reason, I sneezed on this girl. Not just like a little guy. I blew her away hurricane style. Parts of hair came out of her pony tail I blasted her so bad. I laughed until I noticed that she had her mouth open and was slowly tasting.”

Link BuildingBlog Comments

• CommentLuv – DoFollow plugin for WP.• Look for “Footprints” if you find something.

Social Media• Submit Great Content. Diggers are snobs. Rightfully so.• Your Twitter followers will want to blog/link great content, give it to them! Don't mislead them with your profile though. I personally hate lots of off topic tweets.

Link BuildingWhen all else fails...Look where your competition gets their links. Yahoo.com site:TheirDomain.com

Link Building

• Google Blog Comment Finder• “Link Excavator” Competition Link Finder• Blog Commenter iFrames site for you and when you submit the comment, takes you to the next site. Great if you have interns.

SEO ToolsRank Checking Tools• Rank Checker – Free from SEOBook

• Authority Labs – Various Plans. Starts at $25/month monitoring 10 domains. Web Based. White Label Reports.

SEO ToolsTools I Couldn't Live Without.• SEO Information On SERPS

Great for assessing competition in a niche.

SEO ToolsTools I Couldn't Live Without.• NoDoFollow FireFox Plugin

SEO ToolsTools I Couldn't Live Without.• Coda Development Software

THANK YOU!Questions? Comments? Venomous hate mail?

Twitter: @JoshuaZiering

Email: JoshuaZiering@gmail.com

Website: www.FullSpeedSEO.com