The 7 mistakes search engine optimizers make - part 4

Here's the next installment of the Mini-Course.

The 7 Mistakes Search Engine Optimizers Make – Part 4

Failure to regularly update content.

This usually strikes fear into the heart of those web masters that have permanent writers' block.

Or the folks that just hate to write.

Let's put this Mistake into a contextual metaphor.

What would happen if you got a newspaper delivered to your door step every day and it contained the same news, just with a different date?

You'd stop getting that paper delivered, right?

Right.

So, if you think that a Search Engine Spider is going to crawl your site over and over again when the content remains the same – guess again.

Now – let's be clear. A Search Engine Spider can find your site a variety of different ways. Often, it visits your site regularly once it has a copy of it in its own index, but it can also find your site by following links from other sites to you.

Now, once you stop getting new links to your site, what is the incentive to have your site crawled?

Fresh Content.

You see, if Google visits your site over a period of time and sees that your site's content has changed, it makes a note to visit your site more often so that it can re-index that new content and make it available in its Search Engine.

There's some speculation as to how much content has to change, but the popular consensus is that you need to have 1,000 bytes of information different on your page for Google to register it as a "Change of Content."

This usually equates to a few hundred words.

Why do we want Google to crawl out site often?

Lots of reasons – let's look at them all.

1) When your site is new, when Google visits your site, it usually only crawls the first few pages and indexes only the home page. So, by causing Google to revisit your site often, it will crawl deeper each time. Before you know it, your entire site will be in the Search Engine Index. (Either way, Google will eventually get around to your entire site – if you followed the advice in Lesson #1 and made sure that every page of your site is spiderable. But if Google knows your site is updated often, our friend the Googlebot will return more often.


2) When you're experimenting with your On Page and Off Page Optimization Factors, you want to see the results of your changes quickly. If you have the Googlebot visiting your site more often, it's possible that you can see the results of your changes between the major updates faster.

3) Customers like new content! You want repeat customers? Give your customers an excuse to visit your site! Provide them with information that changes often enough so that they return just to see "what's up." Sometimes the "popular" SEO advice is ok too – the common advice to "write lots of good content" actually can make a positive difference – as long as you build all the additional content pages correctly.

In many cases, if you're close to your industry, you'll be able to provide this fresh content easily enough. But if you're not, you can always utilize Syndicated Content to freshen the content on your own site.

Here's what I mean…

There are a lot of industry specific news sources on the internet that welcome the Syndication of their Content on other sites. Basically, they want you to put their content on your site!

You can do this manually, or you can put an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed on your site that will automatically update your site with new content from a specific industry every time new content is available.

How 'bout that?!

Whatever you do to generate the new content, the fact of the matter is that changing the content on your site, especially when it's new to the search engines, can go a long way to getting your site indexed quickly and thoroughly.

Thanks for reading. Next time we'll talk about one of the biggest mistakes webmasters make that literally costs them tons of quality incoming links – and makes getting links way harder than it needs to be.

Johan Setiawan
http://InternetMarketer.SuccessUniversity.com

The 7 mistakes search engine optimizers make - Part 3

Here's the next installment of the mini-course, The 7 Mistakes Search Engine Optimizers Make.

The 7 Mistakes Search Engine Optimizers Make – Part 3

Failure to create enough content pages.

There's a rumor floating around the Internet that one and two page web sites can't possibly rank well in a Search Engine.

Wrong.

They can rank very well in any Search Engine, just not for more than two or three keywords.

Case in point. Yanik Silver has a site called Instant Sales Letters. His site is at www.instantsalesletters.com

This site is a few pages and ranks number 1 for the search term "Sales Letters."

So yes, you can rank well for a keyword phrase with a small site.

But…

If you want to dominate a category that contains dozens or hundreds of profitable keywords or products, you're going to need multiple pages on your site each targeting a different keyword from your category.

I'm going to group these additional pages into one lump term – "Content Pages."

Now a content page can be a product page from your eCommerce Store, a Newsletter, a Review of a Product, a Recommendation for an Affiliate Product, a Listing of Related web sites or Directories of useful resources – whatever.

The point is each one of these pages is another opportunity for it to rank.

So, you need to take care about structuring these pages so that they target the keywords that you've found to be in demand.

If you're an eCommerce store owner selling Truck Accessories, make sure you know exactly how people are searching for those truck accessories in the Search Engines. Then, take each one of your product pages that relates to those keywords and optimize it for those search phrases.

If you're an Affiliate Marketer recommending Consumer Electronics, make sure that you're recommending those products on separate review type pages. Meaning, if you're recommending a Plasma Television, make sure that you have a few different pages each recommending a different popular make an model number.

And make sure that those pages are optimized correctly for the most relevant and in-demand search terms. If you're selling an information product with a variety of uses in a single industry, write as many article pages that you have search terms for. Each article page should be optimized for one or two closely related search terms, and they should all, in turn, lead to your sales page.

And don't forget, you can trade articles not just links with other web site owners. While your competitors are slowly trading just one link at a time, you can blow by them by getting multiple links at once by providing quality content in the form of articles to other web sites.

Remember that Google and Yahoo! rank pages – not sites. That's why you need to think about maximizing your content, whatever it may be, in order to maximize your chances for ranking.

Case in point: For my Yahoo! Store at www.myweddingfavors.com, I made sure that each on of my product pages was optimized for the list of keywords that I knew people were searching for.

So, in addition to optimizing my home page for "wedding favors," I also optimized my internal pages for terms like "Beach Wedding Favors," "Wine Wedding Favors," "Candle Wedding Favors," etc.

No, you don't need a lot of content if you don't need to rank for more than a few keywords. But if you want to dominate an industry or category, you need to have at least one page of content for every keyword you want ranking for.


Thanks for participating in our e-course on the 7 Biggest Mistakes that prevent webmasters from Stomping the Search Engines. Next time we'll talk about the reason why stale content may be costing you sales. Hint: It's probably not what you're thinking.

Check out Stomping the Search Engines at www.instantseoexpert.com/index3.html and understand how you can use syndicated content to create multiple pages in your own site!

Johan Setiawan
http://InternetMarketer.SuccessUniversity.com

The 7 mistakes search engine optimizers make - Part 2

Here's the next installment of The 7 Mistakes Search Engine Optimizers Make.

The 7 Mistakes Search Engine Optimizers Make – Part 2

Failure to make the right kind of site maps.

In the last episode, we talked about making sure that your sites are fully crawlable. This is a key component for any search strategy, especially if you want your site to rank well for multiple related keyword phrases or different products.

One of the ways that we can insure that a Search Engine Spider crawls your site deeply is to provide it a road map of your site. This road map, called a "Site Map" is a very simple page (from a design standpoint) that only serves one purpose from a Search Engine Optimizers point of view – to get those interior pages into a Search Engine's index.

A Brief History of Site Maps . . .

Before site maps were recognized by the Search Engine Optimization community as a tool for good search results, it was used by Fortune 1000 companies to help visitors to their site find out where a particular service or product was located.

For example: If you want to do some sort of business with your Bank online, you might find that their home page doesn't quite get you to the exact location on their site that you want.

After all, a typical bank might offer Car Loans, Student Loans, Home Loans, Credit Cards, Investment Accounts, Mutual Funds, etc.

And if per chance you arrived at this Banking site on a page other than the home page, you might get a little turned around from a site navigation standpoint.

So, Site Maps were created.

What is a Site Map?

A Site Map is a page that contains a basic HTML link to EVERY page on that web site. Every Page, not just your main topics but every page.

Site Maps do not need to be fancy (in fact, it's better if they are not), they just need to contain a logical order and links to all of your pages.

How does this benefit us? Three ways . . .

First, a site map gives your customers an easy navigation system to every page in your web site. Now, don't confuse the use of a site map as a replacement for logical navigation on your regular pages. You want to make sure that your site can be navigated simply and easily from any page on your site.

However, some folks (a very small percentage) prefer to see the entire site's structure on one page and choose their destination from it.

Second, a Site Map is a fantastic way to get a Search Engine Spider to SEE and CRAWL every single page in your site. In the last episode, we talked about optimizing different pages in your web site for different keywords. A Site Map is a perfect solution for ensuring that a Spider can get to every one of those optimized pages.

Third, and this is Big: A Site Map provides an opportunity to send Link Reputation to a particular page. Now, Link Reputation is a discussion that's beyond the scope of this mini-course (in fact, we talk about it for nearly an hour in Stomping the Search Engines), but it is perhaps one of the most important factors in Off Page Search Engine Optimization.

You want the links on your Site Map Page to "Say" the right thing about the pages that they are linking to. It's like a Vote. So, make sure that your Site Map is Voting correctly for all of your interior pages.

Fourth, Site Maps are also an additional way to distribute Google Page Rank. If your Site Map is just one link off of the first page, it can pass a significant amount of Google Page Rank deep into your web site. This helps create a site structure where just about every internal page has the same chance of ranking well in the SERPs as your home page.

Finally, Site Maps allow you to use dynamic linking strategies to control where Page Rank does and does not go throughout your site.

For example, a common mistake is to have a normal link to your privacy policy on every page of your site. In actuality, giving your privacy policy page the same Page Rank as every other page of the site is a big waste of whatever Page Rank you have available.

So use a good Site Map!

Next time we'll talk about using interior content pages strategically to rank high for all of your best keywords – simultaneously.

Check out Stomping the Search Engines at www.instantseoexpert.com/index3.html and understand how you can re-distribute Link Reputation within your own site!

Johan Setiawan
http://InternetMarketer.SuccessUniversity.com

The 7 Mistakes Search Engine Optimizers Make – Part 1

The 7 Mistakes Search Engine Optimizers Make – Part 1

Failure to make sites that are fully spiderable.

Web masters spend a great deal of time carefully optimizing their home page,
tweaking the keyword density, the meta tags, making sure that they have all of
the so called proper on page factors just right.

And there it stops.  The internal pages of a site end up getting treated like so
many red-headed step children – just hanging there in cyberspace with little
regard for their own Search Marketing Factors.

This is a killer mistake.  One of your primary goals as a web master is to ensure
that if you're selling a product, you're able to have your site found when people
are looking for that product.

Now, one of the most common mistakes a web master makes is Optimizing their home
page for too many keywords.  They think that they can cause their home page to be
ranked well for all of their products or keyword phrases.

And that's just not true.

So, what's the key to having your site rank well for a variety of different
search terms?

Notice that I said "Your Site"?

The key is to make your site full accessible to a search engine spider.

You see, Google and Yahoo! rank pages – not sites.  Ah HA!

That means that, all things being equal, any one page in your web site has the
ability to rank well.

Now, your home page will usually rank better for a given keyword than an interior
page (and there's a reason for this), but if you structure your site the correct
way, any interior page of your site has a fantastic opportunity to rank for a
very specific keyword or keyword phrase.

That's why you need to treat each page as a Search Engine Optimization
Opportunity.

Make sure you spend time optimizing for every page in your site.  If you're
having trouble ranking for a particular keyword, write an article or newsletter
that uses that keyword as the subject, throw it onto your site and --- MAKE SURE
THAT IT CAN BE CRAWLED!!

That's SO very important.  You need to make sure that all of the pages in your
site are able to be accessed from the home page.  You see, most of the time, a
Search Engine Spider will enter your site from your home page.  There, it will
begin to crawl through your site via the links it finds there. If one of your
interior pages can't be accessed from the home page, it could take a long time,
or maybe even never, for the spider to find that page.

The moral of the story?  You can't cause your home page to rank well for more
than 2 or 3 specific keyword or keyword phrases.  In order to place in the SERPS
for a number of different terms, you need to rely on other pages in your site
that are optimized (both on page and off) for those alternative keywords.

And the best way to ensure that those pages have a fighting chance at finding
their way onto the first  pages in Google or Yahoo!? – make sure that your site
is structured so that a spider can find just about every page in your site from
links on the home page.

Finding that difficult to do?

In the next chapter, we'll talk about using a Site Map to help the Search Engine
Spiders find their way to the pages you want them to.

*TEST*  To quickly check and see how many pages of your site have been indexed by
Google, go to the normal Google search box and search as follows:

site:yourdomain.com

This will tell you at a glance not only how many of your pages have been crawled
by Googlebot (Google's spider which shows up in your server logs), but more
importantly, it shows you how many pages have been actually indexed.

In the coming lessons will talk about mistakes to avoid in order to get high
rankings, but Step One is to make sure each page of your site can get crawled and
indexed.  And remember, use the interior pages to rank for all your relevant
keyword phrases – it's not all about the home page.

Check out Stomping the Search Engines at www.instantseoexpert.com/index3.html and
see how you can get YOUR site indexed in 48 hours!

Johan Setiawan
http://InternetMarketer.SuccessUniversity.com

Internet Marketer ToolBox

I juset created this blog which will contain all the internet marketer tools that they use for their business

Regards
Johan Setiawan
http://InternetMarketer.SuccessUniversity.com