June 29th, 2009 | Posted in Blog Marketing
Should you use your own WordPress theme or take one off the shelf? There are pros and cons to each strategy.
First, on off-the-shelf themes. They are not created equal. Some are well optimized and some are not. The free themes often come with their own set of problems, but there are many that are still good and worth having, if you don’t mind sharing the theme with hundreds or thousands of other bloggers.
One obvious advantage to using a free theme is it doesn’t cost you any money, so if you’re on a budget then this may be your best option. Of course, if you have the skills to develop your own theme then you can have an original WordPress theme for the same price. If you aren’t a developer then you’ll have to pay someone to do that for you. Since that person will be working for you, whatever she develops for you will be your property so copyright concerns shouldn’t be an issue. But you’ll have to pay the developer and that could be expensive depending on the skills and experience of said developer. If you do go that route, you’ll need to make sure that your developer has experience in WordPress themes and in search engine optimization.
There are some themes that you can pay for that are themselves already tested. I’m not ready to give you a recommendation on those yet. But know that you can purchase the rights to an already developed WordPress theme. Keep reading this blog for future recommendations on off-the-shelf WordPress themes that are optimized and developed by premium developers.
Allen Taylor
Taylor and Associates
Serving South Central Pa. and beyond
717-528-4005
June 28th, 2009 | Posted in Twitter
Allen Taylor
Taylor and Associates
Serving South Central Pa. and beyond
717-528-4005
June 25th, 2009 | Posted in Internet Marketing
Link building is one of the most important aspects of marketing online, but many new webmasters or small businesses get snookered into doing it the wrong way. As a result, their inbound links end up doing them more harm than good. Here are three ways that inbound links could be killing your authority:
- You Have A Lot Of Links Coming From Bad Neighborhoods - You can’t control where your links are coming from, for the most part. But if you are getting a lot of links coming from bad neighborhoods it could be hurting you. And there’s likely a good reason for it. Your Web karma is likely attracting those scumbags. But how?
This happens to blogs quite frequently. You approve the wrong comment and the next thing you know, spammers are hitting your site in droves. If you approve too many spammy comments on your blog you will likely see your site fall in rankings and authority. But comments aren’t links, you say. How can that be?
Spam commenters target a blog in two ways. They can leave a comment manually or use a trackback technique from another blog. If you have a large number of trackbacks that lead to bad sites or bad neighborhoods then it could hurt you. What’s the fix? Manage your comments with an iron fist and don’t let any bad stuff get through.
Articles can also attract bad links. Since you are providing the content and the links in your author resource box there is not a lot that you can do if a bad site gets your article and publishes it. If you get a lot of those then it could hurt you in the long run. That’s why many Internet marketers are now scrapping the article directory method of distribution and going straight to website owners and bloggers to be guest authors. That way they have more control over their content. I’m not saying that this is what you should do, but if you notice that you have a lot of articles getting picked up by spammy websites then you should consider dropping some of the article directories on your list. They could be a haven for spammers and other nefarious Web creatures.
- Too many links from the same source - Link diversity is very important in link building. If you have a high number of links coming from one source and not enoug from a variety of sources then it could hurt your authority.
For instance, a couple of years ago many bloggers starting developing blog sites off of their other web properties and starting using those blogs as link building tools. The problem was that was the only link building they were doing. Well, Google has grown wise to that and started discounting large numbers of links coming from the same sources. It is now much more important to seek links from a wide variety of sources online.
- Irrelevant sources - The third way that inbound links could be hurting your authority is that you have too many links coming from irrelevant sources. Generally, a few links from sources outside of your niche or from sites not related to yours in any way won’t hurt you. In fact, some of those links can actually help you. An automotive site linking to your real estate site from a post about a local restaurant you both like, if you had a similar post about the same restaurant, could be a local geographical SEO booster for you. But if you get a high number of links from sites that are not niche-related then that could hurt you. Seek to get more relevant links.
When it comes to link building, not everything is in your control. But there are some things that you can control. If you are getting inbound links from a lot of spammy sites or sites in bad neighborhoods, ask yourself what you could be doing to attract those links. You don’t want your ship to sink because of naivete and expressed innocence.
Allen Taylor
Taylor and Associates
Serving South Central Pa. and beyond
717-528-4005
June 24th, 2009 | Posted in Search Engine Optimization
I’ve been saying for a while now that keyword density is a poor way to judge SEO effectiveness. Yet, many content writers still try to produce strict keyword densities and every now and then I get a request from a client to write content with some kind of strict density requirement. I usually tell them I can write it that way, but I don’t recommend it. Most of the time those clients either go away and try to find someone who will satisfy their ardent desire or they listen to my advice and allow me to write content the way I prefer - with the subsequent search marketing benefits that come with it.
The truth is, keyword density hasn’t worked for a while now. The last time it did work I think was when my grandfather read by candlelight.
If you can pardon the sarcasm, I’m responding to this article at WebProNews. Mike McDonald and Rand Fishkin took a vote and decided that keyword density, H1 tags, and W3C validation weren’t worth the promises made by the inner circle. Duh, really?
I agree. For the most part.
Where I Get Off The H Tag Bus
Where I disagree with the conclusion is on H1 tags. I think there is some merit to using the H tags in general and they do proffer some (limited) SEO support. Of course, you won’t get your ship to sail on H1 tags alone. But I think they can be of some ranking benefit if you do it properly.
As a former newspaper editor I designed my pages with the biggest headlines at the top. This is a generally accepted journalism practice (GAJP). The top headline is always the biggest and they get smaller as the reader scans down to the bottom of the page. And that’s the way I like to design my web pages as well. Top to bottom, large to smaller.
Why Your H Tag Should Follow My Example
H tags are not written for search engines. But then, content isn’t either, is it?
Well, yes. And no.
The problem is, you can’t ignore the search engines and you shouldn’t ignore your site visitors. You have two audiences. Just as you would be a fool to write content without considering keywords, you are ill informed if you try to write it to some strict keyword density. It just doesn’t work that way.
So it is with H tags. They are important, though likely not as important as they once were. The search engines constantly change their algorithms, partly to improve the way they deliver content to their users and partly to keep the SEO community guessing. It’s in their best interests to do it that way. And frankly, it’s in all of our best interests.
Headlines and subheads should be written to draw the attention of readers and spiders. But not at the expense of communication. My three-part test for any headline, title, or subhead are these:
- Does it give the reader a reason to keep reading?
- Does it feed a search engine spider a keyword and, more importantly, the right keyword?
- Does it look well on the page?
In other words, I’m concerned with reader interest, page design, and search engine optimization. Keywords in your H tags are noticed by the search engines. But do it in a spammy sort of way and you’ll get kicked in the shin. So are H tags important for search engine optimization? In a limited way, yes. But I wouldn’t hang my entire wardrobe on them.
Allen Taylor
Taylor and Associates
Serving South Central Pa. and beyond
717-528-4005
June 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Twitter
You’ve seen them. The sales pages that promise thousands of Twitter followers in 60 days. You don’t have to do anything but go to sleep. The software program will do all the work. All you need is a Twitter account.
It’s all bullshit.
But I’ll be honest with you, nonetheless. I haven’t tried any of these programs. And I won’t either. To me, the entire system loses credibility when I see someone with 200 followers and two tweets writing in his bio, “Get 16,000 followers in two months”. Do you seriously think you can teach anyone how to get 1,000 followers until you’ve done it?
Besides the obvious logical fallacy, there is also the philosophy. Every business is different. Your business might be based on hard core numbers. The more you touch the more you are likely to sell. Not all businesses are based on that concept. Some businesses are based on the idea that you have to meet the right prospect and that requires an extensive, and intensive, lead qualification strategy. These software programs won’t do that for you.
They essentially look for keywords in places like Twellow, Twitter user bios, URLs, user names, and tweets. But keywords are just vague descriptions of an individual’s purpose for using Twitter. Even then, if someone isn’t very selective about what they place in their bio and the things that they tweet about (which is a lot of people) then you’ll just be attracting a lot of untargeted people who have no interest in your product or service.
Don’t Follow Me Please
Every day I get followed by people that I have no interest in. The next day about 80% of them unfollow me. That’s because I haven’t followed them back. The only reason they followed me is because they were hoping I’d follow them back. They’re called auto-followers and they’re just trying to snooker me (and you) into following them so they can push their offerings on you. I refuse to play the game.
If you are just interested in finding people who match your keyword list then following them so they’ll follow you, stop it! You won’t get very far that way. You might get a following, that’s true. And you might actually get some sales from those people who aren’t very discriminating. Good for you. But the smart folks aren’t going to play along with that. We’re too busy building relationships because, at the heart of doing business online - through Twitter and everywhere else - is building solid relationships, not meeting some number requirement.
If you really want to know how to use Twitter for your business then I suggest talking to one of the thousands of people who are doing it the right way - manually. We review our follower lists to drop the baggage, keep track of our favorite tweeps, tweet when we have something important to say, and act genuinely so that we can build relationships instead of card files. Sorry, Twitter isn’t for counting numbers.
Allen Taylor
Taylor and Associates
Serving South Central Pa. and beyond
717-528-4005
June 22nd, 2009 | Posted in Blog Marketing
Is optimization any different for a blog than for a website? Yes, in some ways it is. You still have to use keywords, and links help a bit. But if you write a blog in WordPress then there are some specific things that you should do to make sure your blog posts are optimized.
You could write longer posts and that will help, but even short posts can be optimized for search engine traffic. This is not a comprehensive list of elements to add to your WordPress blog posts, but if you do these things then you’ll be off to a good head start.
- Write a great title with your primary keyword near the front of it.
- Include a couple of subheads with h2 or h3 tags.
- Within your blog post, use one or two links (but no more) with your primary keyword, or a variant, as anchor text leading to a relevant web page on the same subject.
- Use categories with your keywords and categorize your blog post appropriately in a relevant category by name.
- Tag your posts with keyword-related tags.
- Install the All In One SEO Pack plugin and include meta data for your blog posts.
- If you use photos with your blog posts then make sure each photo has an alt tag associated with it.
- Include a title attribute in one of your a href tags for your anchor text. This title attribute should be different than the anchor text, but it should be keyword-related.
Blog post optimization is much more comprehensive than this, but this will get you off to a good start. If writing is not your forte, however, you might have a ghostwriter write your blog posts for you. Even then, you should know how a blog post should be optimized so that you can make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.
Allen Taylor
Taylor and Associates
Serving South Central Pa. and beyond
717-528-4005
June 21st, 2009 | Posted in Twitter
Allen Taylor
Taylor and Associates
Serving South Central Pa. and beyond
717-528-4005
June 19th, 2009 | Posted in Selling Online
Some people are confused about the difference between marketing and selling. Selling is when you discuss the features and benefits of a product or service with a prospect and attempt to get their business by delivering a good closing line and acquiring the fee for the trade. Marketing is bit more broad minded.
The sales process is a neverending cycle that includes marketing. Marketing and sales go hand in hand, though in many organizations the person doing one may not be very good at the other. That’s because they have different functions. And whether or not you are performing the task online or off line is not a concern. The nature of selling is the same in either world as is the nature of marketing. Still, the two are drastically different.
The Difference Between Marketing And Sales
When you build a website, that’s marketing. When you send out a newsletter to your list, that’s marketing. When you advertise your website using PPC or display advertising, that’s marketing. But when you tell your prospects on a landing page about the benefits of your service along with its features and ask them to click the button to make the purchase, that’s sales. Or you might ask them to call you instead, which is lead generation, a part of the sales process. Still, that’s marketing.
Confused?
Don’t be. I’m not playing semantics. It’s important to understand the difference between sales and marketing because different prospects require different approaches. For instance, someone who has just started researching homes in Adams County Pennsylvania but isn’t planning to move until the Fall is not a buying prospect. So why enter sales mode? Identify where the prospect is in the buying cycle and it’s easy to determine how you should approach him. While the aforementioned prospect may not be ready to buy a home today, he is still a potential customer and therefore I should be marketing to him. But how?
What A Good Marketer Does
Well, the how of marketing is a different topic altogether, but online I may market to that prospect by building a website that is optimized for search engine traffic. When the searcher begins looking for Adams County real estate then, if I’m done my job well, he’ll find my website. Since he is in research mode he likely won’t call me today. But if I am a good marketer, he’ll visit my site again before he’s ready to buy. Eventually, he’ll be ready to actually visit a few homes and a good marketer knows how to lead that prospect to the point where he is ready to pick up the phone and call, or send an e-mail, and ask for a face-to-face meeting. When that prospect has reached the buying stage of the marketing process, that’s when you go into sales mode and give your final closing statement and wait for a response. But knowing when is the key. A good marketer can tell the difference. Typically, I’ve found good salesmen don’t have a clue. It’s OK to be a good salesman, but it’s even better to be a good marketer. Are you a good marketer?
Allen Taylor
Taylor and Associates
Serving South Central Pa. and beyond
717-528-4005
June 18th, 2009 | Posted in Search Engine Marketing
Google is increasingly becoming more concerned with user bounce rates for ranking purposes. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that the world’s largest search engine is putting less and less emphasis on inbound links and more and more emphasis on bounce rates for ranking purposes. Consider the following:
- Google has started to use page content as snippets based on individual search queries
- Google’s primary concern still is, and always has been, delivering the best results for each individual search query to every user
- Quality is a measure that cannot be defined by a constant
- Search rankings are individual keyword phrase dependent
- Bounce rates are an indicator of user value attributed to individual search query results and a searcher’s intent
- Bounce rates are not only measured by page, but by keyword phrase and by traffic source
When it comes to web page metrics, Google is an all-seeing eye. The search engine can measure a wide variety of useful metrics even if you do not use Google Analytics as your metrics tool. The limitations on Google are few and the abilities are many. If your site is crawlable, Google has access to your pages and can measure data you have not even considered. That gives the search engine a huge edge in the search engine marketing cat and mouse game that spammers and spam teams like to play.
Why Google Is Concerned About Bounce Rates
Google has been reporting bounce rates for web pages through Google Analytics for a long time now. It started out as a way for the search engine to let webmasters know which pages their users found more value in and which ones were not “sticky”. But like all things related to Google, the nature of the metric has changed over time. It is no longer useful just to webmasters.
Bounce rate has always been a measure of user value. If a certain page of your website does not connect well with your site visitors then bounce rate tells the story. A high bounce rate may indicate that you are not answering site visitor questions very well. It could also indicate that you have done a poor job of “targeting” that page through the search engines. Even if your largest traffic sources are social media and not the search engines, a high bounce rate may mean that users do not find your web page of much value.
It’s unfortunate, but social media can increase your bounce rate. StumbleUpon is notorious for delivering high traffic that bounces. Blogs have higher bounce rates than static web pages because users generally read one post and they’re gone. Subscribers particularly read one post then leave. That is because they’ve already read your past posts and therefore have no reason to stick around. For these reasons, Google likely considers the traffic source in measuring your bounce rate metric.
Still, bounce rate can be an indicator of user value, particularly where search results are concerned. A user entering your site from StumbleUpon is not looking for the same thing as a user coming from Google. The Googler is actively seeking information on a particular search topic. The Stumbler may be browsing or reciprocating a past action on your part. Twitterers and Facebook users may visit your site for altogether different reasons.
When a searcher enters a search query in Google, she expects to find an answer to a question she has in her mind. She may not query her question directly. But if your page turns up as a result for her query and she visits your page based on the snippet offered on the search results page, you have just a few seconds to convince her to stay. If she does not quickly find what she is looking for then she will leave. A bounce in that case is considered a negative vote in Google’s eyes, probably much more so than a bounce from a social media site.
How Keyword Phrases And Bounce Rates Relate
Bounce rates in and of themselves mean very little. For every web page you publish there are at least a dozen keyword phrases that your page can rank for. Each of those are judged by their own merit where that page is concerned. Many of the keywords you can rank for are completely irrelevant to the content of the page.
For instance, if your page on gardenias has the following sentence in it then you could possibly rank for one of the words in that sentence regardless of the rest of the content on that page:
Sunshine is important to the growth and health of your plant life.
A searcher who queries the following
sunshine health life
could see your page in the search results at Google even though they may be seeking information regarding the health and life of humans and the effects of sunshine on the quality of it. If she decides to click on your search result and finds that your page is about gardenias, not what she was interested in, then she will leave. There goes a negative vote against your web page.
But don’t be disappointed. That negative vote will register as a negative vote against the search query she made, not against the page itself. In other words, your bounce rate for the phrase “sunshine health life” will go up, but your bounce rate for the page itself may be unaffected, at least as it relates to ranking for your primary keyword. Users who search for
gardenia sunshine
may find your page helpful and stay on your site longer, causing your bounce rate for that keyword phrase to do down. A lower bounce rate for that keyword phrase for your page on gardenias could then result in higher rankings because site visitors have voted on its value by staying on your site longer after finding your page using an adequate search query.
Should You Change Your Page Content Based On This Information?
The obvious question at this point is: Should you now change your page content so that your pages are more relevant to the search queries you want to rank for? If you’ve done a good job optimizing your web pages then you’ve already done that. What you don’t want to do is tweak your content in an attempt to discourage your pages from ranking for arbitrary keywords that are not helpful to your targeted audience. Google’s algorithm is doing that for you.
This is all a part of Google’s ability to judge what a web page is about based on latent semantic indexing, which is a fancy way of saying that Google can tell what a page is about by looking at keywords and related phrases. That’s why using the exact keyword phrase every time you mention a concept is not necessary. You can get creative with your language and Google figures it out.
For instance, if you are writing about gardenias, you don’t have to say “gardenia” every time you reference that particular flower. You can use synonyms like “flower”, “cape jasmine” or “cape jessamine” - both are alternate names for gardenia - or the Latin name “Gardenia jasminoides”. Google will figure out what your page is about based on your creative use of language related to the core topic.
Make your content original and unique from the outset and gear it toward user value because as more people find your website based on the content you have created and stick around to enjoy your website the longer they will stay on your site. As users find your pages based on search queries and social proof they will inevitably “vote” on its value with their feet and either raise or lower your bounce rate for each keyword phrase you rank for, which will in turn raise or lower your rankings relative to other web pages going through the same process.
None Of This Negates Other Ranking Factors
Keep in mind that this is simply one ranking factor. This does not negate other ranking factors like domain age, inbound link quality, on-page optimization, etc. Nevertheless, I believe that Google is putting more emphasis on bounce rates for individual keyword phrases per page. Site traffic patterns are not easily manipulated by webmasters like on-page and off-page elements such as keyword usage, meta information, and link building. Because site owners cannot manipulate individual user behavior on their sites, I believe bounce rates for individual keyword phrases will become more important for ranking purposes in the future and that will force site owners and webmasters to focus on quality, valuable content, which is what you should be doing anyway.
Allen Taylor
Taylor and Associates
Serving South Central Pa. and beyond
717-528-4005
June 17th, 2009 | Posted in Pay To Click Advertising
This week I had to renew a few rented referrals on Neobux. So when it came time to rent more referrals (7 days after the last time I did that), I only had enough money in my account to rent 3 referrals. I went ahead and did it.
I could have waited until I had enough money to rent 7, but I’d have to wait 2 or 3 days. Meanwhile, I’d have operated on fewer referrals overall. I thought it prudent to go ahead and rent 3 referrals and wait 7 days to rent more. Two days from now I’ll be renewing some referrals I’ve got that are getting close to expiring. Ten of them. But only 5 to 7 of them will be renewed because of their production levels. How many I renew will depend on my budget. I hope I have enough to renew 7 of them.
I’ve said before that referrals are the most important part of running a pay-to-click business. You make your money on other people’s production, not your own. But you don’t make any money on that if you don’t do your own clicks daily. Focus on the nuts and bolts and the income will take care of itself.
Allen Taylor
Taylor and Associates
Serving South Central Pa. and beyond
717-528-4005
How to become an accredited social media douchebag 
