Register Success

Today, while I was registering some websites I found one of the sites on the list was no longer a directory.  I was surprised when I clicked on the link and was taken not to where I expected to go! Anyway, the site has been removed from our list of general directories.

If you find any broken links or links to the directories are no longer what they said they were, just email us and we will fix or remove the link.

Thank you so much for your help with this.

Regards,

Administrator

Register Success

Google is always offering ways to enhance your search experience with all kinds of nifty tools.  I recently checked more of the items under the Show Option feature on the search page.

Clicking on this opens up a number of options to help enhance your search experience.  The one that I have been using a lot lately is the Wonder Wheel.  This great option allows me to find keywords that are related to each other and also see what web sites come up on the page when you search.  As a keyword research tool this can be very helpful.  I used this when I was working on keyword research for a very technical site.  This helped me to see what words worked with that site and what keywords didn’t fit.  I used other tools also, but the Wonder Wheel adds a new dimension to my keyword research for clients.

I thought I’d show an example in pictures. I searched for Search Engine Registration Wisconsin.

and get this.

And isn’t it cool how Register Success came up as #1 and OnYourMark.com is #2.  I love it when a plan comes together!

Have fun using this great tool offered by Google and let me know how it helps you with your Search engine optimization success.

Kathy
Internet Marketing Consultant

What does reciprocal linking and risk have to do with your website?

A client’s question about the risk of adding links prompted me to write this post.

Links are an important part of the search engines’ algorithms and building, good, quality links helps in building site validation with the search engines.

Reciprocal Links – A Natural Web Process

A natural process of the web is reciprocal linking which can be defined as asking your business partners for links and offering links in exchange.  And, as it seems to be in most things in life, moderation is the rule. Excessive reciprocal linking can result in your website being penalized by the search engines.

When deciding what links to add to your website ask your self some questions, the “what’s in it for me” questions.

What is the expected return on investment of this link? Remember to include any time you spend asking for a link and then the time you spend adding a link in this ROI. If it costs you $50 to ask and add the link and you will only realize $51 is it worth the risk to add?

Is the website relevant to your business? Take a look at the websites you are considering linking to. How does is it related to your business? A website design and hosting company might link to a site like DIYSubmit.com because it is related to what they do.  An automotive parts manufacturer and a manufacturer’s rep would link to each other and probably not to a site about arts and crafts.

Add links to sites you respect, that give value beyond page rank and are useful, interesting resources.

The privacy statement on all of our OnYourMark websites includes a statement about Links to External Websites and says that we make no representations with respect to privacy practices, privacy statements, or the content of such websites.  Ask your webmaster about your website privacy statement and external links if you are unsure about this.

How do you determine if a reciprocal link is appropriate for you?

Let’s look at two examples.

Company A is a company that you do or have done business with. They have information about your company on their website and may also list you as a client on another page on their site. Adding a link to the page with information or articles on your company could be considered a prudent link risk.  But first:

Ask yourself the “what’s in it for me” questions. What is the expected return on investment from this link, does the website add more value than a good ranking and is it a useful and interesting resource? A yes to all three would make this reciprocal link less of a risk.

Company B is a site that you might have done business or advertising with. This site has an article or information about your company on it. They also have articles and information on other companies. This might not be a link you would choose to reciprocate.

Again, evaluate potential return on investment, their page rank and added value and is it a useful and interesting resource? If the expected ROI is negative or too small this would outweigh a positive answer on the other two questions and you might not want to add a link to this site.

Links make the web go round. Experience is the best teacher when determining where the risks lay in your link building strategies. What works for one website might not be good for another and what worked two years ago might get penalized by the search engines today.  Make sue you have a monthly search engine maintenance plan for your website in place that checks your links.

Keep checking back here for more information on search engine registration, optimization and other Internet Marketing information.

About the author:

Kathy Gaster is an Internet Marketing Consultant at OnYourMark, LLC and manages monthly search engine maintenance, pay per click ad campaigns, search engine optimization and search engine registration for clients.

We have added a few new directories to the DIYSubmit.com website.  We like to add directories that are human edited and offer free submission.  If you only want to choose one directory to submit to choose DMOZ.

It is best to not pay for links or get involved in a link exchange service offered through an email.  Matt Cutt from Google has more information on this at his blog “Natural links are better than non-natural”

Link building isn’t all about getting listed in directories.  Internal links are also important. Breadcrumbs are a great example of internal links. Your internal links should be within one to two clicks of the important information. Below is an example of using breadcrumbs on a website.  The breadcrumbs are: Home: Services: Marketing Services: Search Engine Optimization.  If you click on the image below you can try the breadcrumbs on the page.

Building quality links starts with a website with link worthy content.  The first place to start your link building is on your very own website.

I have been reading and listening to webinars and other information on Google Analytics and using it with Google AdWords accounts.  What I have learned is it can be a good source of information if used properly.

I have Google Analytics basic reporting set up for my clients’ websites marketing with AdWords.  I must say it really helps.  I also learned about one filter for lower case URI.  Now I just need to figure out how to make my index page show up only as one page.  I will keep searching until I figure out how to do that.  If anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

One of the useful tools I learned about is the AdWords keyword position.  This is under traffic sources if you are using AdWords.  What this tells me is which position a specific keywords gets the most clicks.  Looking at keywords actually held some surprises for me.  One keyword got the most clicks in 7th position and very few in first, second and third.  Good information to know as I was able to adjust my bids to work on getting them into the position where they worked the best.  Very interesting and useful stuff to learn.

One of the areas in Google Analytics that I really find helpful is the bounce rate information.  Some of my pages have a bounce rate of under 30% which is very good.  I remember one month I checked the overall bounce rate of one of the websites and it was at 0.05% and I thought that something was wrong.  It actually was a very good month for the information that was contained on this website.  It has moved up some but is still a fairly low bounce rate.

I am using the bounce rate information about specific pages to work on improving the page.  And Google has a tool to help me do that also but that is for another post.

As a non-programmer with only HTML knowledge, my biggest challenge with Google Analytics was converting some of our websites over to the latest code.  I was having trouble figuring out how to set up the goals and the funnels so they worked like they did with the older code.  One of our great programmers was able to give me some time and technical help with that aspect so all is good.

Now on to long tail keywords, conversions, ROI, spreadsheets and statistical information as I get back into studying “Web Analytics, An Hour A Day,” by Avinash Kaushik.

About the Author:

Kathy Gaster – Internet Marketer -  OnYourMark, LLC in Sussex, Wisconsin
http://www.onyourmark.com

This past Tuesday I traveled to the Chicago area to attend a monthly meeting of the Chicago Glazer Kennedy Inner Circle.  Perry Marshall, author of “The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords” and Scott Tucker, a mortgage broker,  talked about blending online and offline marketing to achieve the best of both worlds to a full house.

After the presentation Scott and Perry answered audience questions and then Perry did an in depth AdWords study of a chapter member’s AdWords campaign for anyone that wanted to stay.  Perry explained the mistakes made in choosing keywords to bid on in this campaign.  He said they were very common mistakes especially for the first time advertiser.

Perry talked about picking a niche and becoming the best at that one item, like lemon scented soap bars and once you get really good at that, add another item.  He explained about broad match, exact match and phrase match keywords and how to use them effectively.  He also showed one of his AdWords campaigns and how progress was made through testing ad copy and keyword phrases for optimal results.

A lot of marketing information was covered during the evening, which was supposed to end at 9:30 but was still going when I left at 11:30.  I had a two hour drive so just couldn’t stay even though it was hard to leave before it was over.

I have read The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords and would recommend it to those who are interested in Pay Per Click advertising.  The other book I recommend is Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Handbook by Boris Mordkovish and Eugene Mordkovich.

Spending time every month to check your website’s positions in major search engines using your search keywords is a good idea.  And once you see where your business website comes up in Google, Yahoo!, MSN and other search engines what do you do with that information.

What keywords are working for you and bringing you up on the first page in search?  It’s nice to see your website in one of the top 8 positions on page one! That means you have rich keyword content on the page, a good page title and description and good links.  It also means your code is pretty good with your “alt” tags on your images filled in and good outlining.

Now your goal is to stay in that good search position and get your other pages up there also.  That is where search engine maintenance for an hour a month comes in.

For our clients this hour is spent first checking to see where the webpage comes up with the client’s keywords.  If the client has slipped down in the page ranking then it is time to “tweak” the tags, the titles and see where the page text can be “tweaked” to boost keyword density without losing readability for the visitors to the site.  After all the website is there to provide information and services to human visitors first and appeal to the search engine robots and spiders second.

If the website has been up for a number of years it might be time to take a look at the outline code and make sure heading tags are coded correctly helping your reader scan through the page for the information they are looking for and guiding the SE robots to your main points also.

The other elements of the website are also good to look at also.  Check and make sure that each image has an alternative tag to make your site accessible for people with disabilities (Section 508 compliant).  Add titles to your images also using appropriate keywords.

Regular monthly search engine maintenance helps to keep your website fresh and updated.  Even just looking at the website can remind you to change the marquee because the September trade show is done and it is on to a new month and a new trade show!

What if you don’t have time to spend or the knowledge of code to do this?  Well, then you hire an Internet Marketing professional to do it for you.

Google’s put a positive spin when announcing its quality score change.

I remember my mother telling me when I was younger to “believe half of what you see and none of what you hear” and “to take things with a grain of salt.”

Today, I find her words to ring true as I try to navigate through all the information about the right way to optimize a website for the search engines. Search engine optimization information can be downright confusing and contradictory at times.

I had a small business a number of years ago. I manufactured a product line and sold it to both the wholesale and retail trade. I had developed a number of techniques in my product development and because I sold finished product I would share general information that could also be found from other sources but not share the more advanced techniques that I had developed myself.

I think the same holds true in most industries, including Search Engine Optimization. If an author is in the business of providing search engine marketing services would they write about all the techniques they use to optimize a website? If they did wouldn

The following tips are from an e-mail OnYourMark Marketing received from the Google AdWords Team.

- Don’t reply to or click on links in emails that ask for personal, financial, or account information.

- Check the message headers. The From: address and the Return-path should reference the same source.

- Instead of clicking the links in emails, go to the websites directly by typing the web address into your browser, cut and paste or use bookmarks.

- If on a secure page, look for “https” at the begging of the URL and the padlock icon in the browser.

- Keep your computer’s antivirus, spyware, browser, and security patches up to date and regularly run system scans.

- Review your accounts regularly and check for unauthorized activity.

- Use a browser that has a phishing filter (Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Opera).

To read more on these tips please visit Google’s Blog on Phishing
or contact your Register Success Team.