Long Term SEO Planning For Content Sites

In a world that is lead by real time information and search and reacting to friends posting links on social sites sometimes taking a longer view of what people could be interested in can pay off when developing a new website.

This past year when first working with the Castello Brothers on Grape.com there was planning that was done around what content to post as the site started to ramp up. One thing people like is lists, its been proven time and time again lists of things do great. We did quite a bit of research on what types of things people searched for as it related to wineries and went from there.

One thing that surprised some as a choice was an idea that someone else actually gave to me, I would not of thought of it, but the idea stuck and is paying off now. It was something that would not of been on anyones mind at the time but now that its October it is on peoples minds, that term, Haunted Wineries.

Its something that gets very little search traffic for the majority of the year but while in Google Analytics earlier today looking at various sites I took a look at noticed something interesting, here was the last several searches, and they all came within the past hour:

Americas Most Haunted Winery

Haunted Wineries

Haunted Winery

And all of those were searched for a few times, now here is the really fun part. I happened to be watching a show on the Travel Channel about the most haunted places in the US and they were doing a segment on the most haunted winery in American, the Marjim Manor. So it was all very timely but a fun thing to see real time how a show can affect people sitting on their laptops searching while they watch.

So, whats the point, if you are building a content rich site around a topic, think long term about what the users may be interested in, planning your SEO around this can be very valuable and bring you very targeted visitors and allow you to sell seasonal ad packages or products.

Hope this helps someone that may be planning content for a site.

Apple iPad And The Future Of Your Domains

I do not blog about it much but I am a bit of a gadget junkie, I had been waiting for the day that some sort of Apple tablet would be launched, now we know that is officially the Apple iPad. I even held off buying a new Amazon Kindle this past month as the rumor mill started heating up since it was obvious any Apple device would have more functionality than just reading books. I am not really big on single purpose devices so it was worth waiting.

As much as their may be a few people saying the iPad is not the end all be all of tablet computing devices they are really nitpicking items that the general user of the device will not care about, what you need to really look at is how the Apple iPhone changed the idea of what a mobile phone could be. It changed the way you accessed information and provided easy access to casual gaming without having to carry a separate device like a Nintendo DS.

With the growth of social networking due to the non-tech crowds acceptance and use of Facebook (have I mentioned that Facebook topped Google in traffic over Christmas, yes I have, and I just did again) apps for social networking were some of the most downloaded and used on the Apple iPhone. As a matter of fact Twitter apps were some of the most requested reviews on iFones.com during its initial launch.

Before I go any further on my thoughts on this Domain Name Wire did a story on this tonight as well, I had planned on doing mine later this week but wanted to give Andrew some link love while his article was still fresh.

And on that note, I think it is important to note that a source such as Domain Name Wire has pointed out the concerns with how devices like Apple iPad are changing how people access information. Although many domainers, and I am sorry to say this, have their heads in the sand and REALLY do not want to admit the times are changing they better be ready for it because it is happening even if you do not want it too.

I spoke to a few folks at the conference about type-in traffic and although the people that spoke to Andrew for his story may not be seeing it the people I spoke to admitted openly that type-in traffic had declined rapidly over the past few years. Now I have nothing that can show exact data but that coincides pretty directly with the growth of the iPhone, better smartphones in general, and also social networking.

Why does the iPhone and now the iPad matter?

It  is all about the apps and also about the way people use browsers on their mobile phone. This is also the same thing on all the Android based mobile phones that are coming out, it is all about driving people to the internet through applications, it is the same information provided in an easier to access manner with more functionality thrown in than a typical website allows. People like this, the app store is making Apple millions/billions of dollars. This is not going to change, you cannot hide from this anymore. The Apple iPad is going to accelerate this, probably more so than we can even comprehend right now.

To give you an idea, within 48 hours after the iPad was announced I had 26 emails from people to iFones.com with tips about their upcoming plans for apps that will be optimized for the iPad. Most were small time developers, but so were many of the developers that now rule the app store.

You cannot hide from this....

I typically access Facebook and Twitter from my iPhone equally as much as I do from my laptop, this means I never hit a browser. With the iPad this will increase even more, with the larger screen and other applications that will be available on it there are many times I am not even sure I will have to take a laptop with me for travel. This changes things.

With visual and verbal search on the iPhone and now on the iPad typing in a website name will become something that is more of a hassle than anything, neither visual or verbal search is big right now, but it is coming.

Look, I hate to see type-in traffic decrease as the next person but I also know that there are trends you cannot fight, you have to see what is coming and plan on how to take advantage of the trends. Social media, mobile computing devices, these are things that change the way people access the sites we have.

Your goal should not be to fight them, it should be to find out how to take advantage of them. It is possible you just have to find the way.

SEO+Social Media+Mobile Apps=Success

Staying in the same place = Failure

Measuring Incremental SEO Changes

One of the things that many people get frustrated with is measuring the progress of their search engine optimization changes. As we know it can take days, weeks, or even months to see results of the changes made to the site being worked on.

And to make matters even worse, it will also depend on how "important" the search engines see the site as well since a site that is visited by the search bots more frequently will be more likely have the results of the changes show up faster.

Recently I decided to test some incremental changes one by one, the site I was testing on is a site that has been established for some time, has a Pagerank of 4, but does not necessarily get updated daily or even weekly.

Since I am a big believer that the title tag is the most important single item you can do for on-site SEO (feel free to argue that one....) I wanted to modify one pages title tag from something that was less competitive to something that was more competitive but when the site was first launched the site would not of had the link juice to rank for.

The term is still directly related to the site content but is the higher searched version of the product term it focuses on.

One thing I like to look at before measuring anything like this is the number of Google search results for the term based on how a typical user would search for the term and not a techie  (without quotes in other words).

In the case of this term there are around 5 million or so results that show up with a solid range of companies on the first 3 pages. Overtime my goal is page one but for now I want to see what one little tweak can do, can that one tweak take the site from not showing up to showing up for the search (at least in the first few pages) and how fast will that happen, or even will it happen.

After I measure the initial tweaks results then I will do one more change, all "white hat".

Results? Well after just two days the site now shows up on page 3 of the Google SERP's for the term and that is before any further optimization is done and without waiting for any real aging on the term.

It would be completely expected, from past experience, that over time that ranking would do even better without any further optimization, since I have the benefit of time for what I am testing I am scheduling to check the results after one month then two months before making any further changes.

After that I will start to make further optimizations to the site, at times we tend to ignore the fact that we need to measure SEO results over time. We expect fast results and with competitive terms it may take time before you see those results.

Sometimes we get spoiled with long tail search terms ranking fast, but when working with more competitive terms it is best to measure over time and not get frustrated.

Local Search Review From 2009

As someone who spends the majority of his time thinking about local search and all things that pertain to small businesses taking advantage of all that the web has to offer I was absolutely overwhelmed by all the information linked to and provided in this great 2009 year in review post at SearchEngineLand.com:

SearchEngineLand.com Local Search Review

There is so much information linked to in that one article you could spend a week reading and analyzing it. We all know that geo domains are primed for success after the failure of newspapers and legacy media and Google is becoming the default "Yellow Pages" of today. 2009 will go down as the year the shift started full bore.

I highly recommend reading the story in the link and taking your time to read a good portion of the links within it.

Selecting A Small Business SEO Company

All SEO companies targeting small businesses are selling snake oil!

OK not really but there are many out there you need to watch for which I believe has given the industry a bad name. Search Engine Optimization is something every company with a website or developing a website should take into consideration as they develop their plan for implementation.

If you are not familiar with SEO the simplest explanation without getting technical is the following:

SEO is the process of building your website in a manner that allows it to show up in the search engines for specific items that people maybe searching for, and more importantly it is optimizing it in a way that draws in searches that are specifically targeted at the products you sell.

There are many more technical explanations but that one really is the gist of it.

Now, why did I say many companies are selling snake oil, well let me first say, my company is not an SEO company, I say that very specifically because we do more than just optimize sites. That said we do work with customers that do want some level of SEO work done on their websites and we do build every customer website with SEO in mind from day one. Our success getting customers the search traffic they want has been great but we never guarantee anything, period.

There are a few things that you need to pay attention to when selecting a search engine optimization partner.

If they promise you page one listings run away, here is why. In many businesses you can guarantee something, when it comes to the search engines you are always at Googles (or Bing, or Yahoo) mercy. The provider can do everything right but at the end of the day there is always a chance that Google may not rank the site on the first page number one listing.

If they guaranteed it there are a few things they may be doing that you need to ask about or be aware of, there are companies that will take advantage of the lack of awareness of how the search engines work and will sometimes do one of the following to show you a first page listing:

1. Paid submission directories or search engines - Many will pay a fee to have your site listed number one in a lesser search engine or website directory or possibly take advantage of pay per click advertising on a lesser search engine or directory. These listings are only there if you are paying, quit paying and the listings go away.
2. Black Hat SEO - When it comes to search engine optimization there are two main types without getting to technical, there is white hat which is the proper way to optimize the site, and there is something called black hat. Black hat is the process of trying to trick the search engines into ranking your site but doing things that Google and others frown on. It may work for a short period of time but sooner or later Google will catch on and your site will be banned from search and your competitors will be smiling.
3. Using very odd searches to rank - What this means is showing you a page one ranking for a term that really no one searches for, for instance if you are interested in showing up for Chicago Hair Salons they may work to optimize for Chicago Illinois Hair Salons On Rush Street. You can see how it changes the value of a first page ranking.

Those are just a few things, there are many more but after speaking with customers lately I have a concern that there are people still working down these paths with customers.

All that said, there are many very upstanding SEO companies out there, there are MANY MORE good than bad. Make sure you select one you are comfortable with and ask the right questions.

Minisite To Google First Page In Less Than Month

Its been about a month since launched the Mathbooks.net minisite. I thought it would be good to review the results of the launch of this keyword rich minisite.

First off this site was done a little different than others I have done in the past. I had originally planned to build the site myself but due to time constraints I chose to outsource to AEIOU.com. So, this site is a combination of keyword researched content written by a selected writer I use for many of my sites and SEO and site development done by AEIOU.com. I also did a bit of my own link building but the majority was done by AEIOU.com.

Rather than take you through all 15 keyword selections I chose to target we will show the results for the top two: Math Books and Mathbooks. These are the most generic terms that could be chosen other than the singular version of the words which normally means that they will also be the most competitive. Math Books was shown to have a search volume of 90,500 in the month of March per the Google Keyword Research Tool.

Before the minisite I was getting anywhere from 1 to 3 visits per day parked. This created revenue but I knew I could do better with a site if I could rank well for the terms selected.

Well, the results are in, currently if you search for the term Math books the site ranks between 4 and 6 (seems to move around a bit but always consistent) and Mathbooks is ranking in the 4th spot. That is in less than a month, first page for a generic keyword in less than a month is a very solid result and shows that the work and investment can pay off.

Traffic is more than 10 times the visits per day than parked and revenue has obviously increased along with that. I very soon will be implementing Ebay Affiliate Ads on the page as well which should allow for even further increased revenues.

Yahoo Search Results Matter For My Minisites

I very seldom focus on checking my Yahoo search results for my various minisites and developed domains and spend the majority of my time verifying Google search results. I have found that recently Yahoo has been showing certain minsites of mine in the first page of their listings causing a measurable increase in traffic and revenue.

One example of this is my site PensacolaBeach.me . Pensacola Beach is a popular tourist destination in the Florida panhandle. I knew the SEO for anything related to it would be tough up front but have had some success with certain targeted terms but did not expect to rise to the front page of Google (or Yahoo for that matter) for quite some time for the term Pensacola Beach.

I had noticed that mid last week the traffic had went up and that revenue from Google Adsense was also increasing. I took a look through my Statpress statistics and also my Awstats details and figured out that the term Pensacola Beach had increased in the common keywords driving traffic. Looking at referrers Yahoo was now referring a solid amount of traffic. I then went to Yahoo (really cannot remember the last time I used Yahoo for a search) and found that indeed I was in the first page of listings for the term Pensacola Beach.

This is good news for a few reasons, the obvious is that the SEO work that has been done for long tail terms has also paid off for the primary term I expected to wait longer for results on (I just started the development in January).  Also, for you .ME fans, with the results I have had so far I cannot complain about developing this on the .ME extension (more details coming on .ME and SEO in the interview I am posting Monday).

I know that it comes to no surprise to anyone that Yahoo matters, but as much time as I spend focusing on Google search results and placement I really found the amount of revenue and traffic increase I received interesting and actually worth spending sometime researching in future developments. For those that fall into the same camp as I have in checking Google only, you may find it worth the time to spend a portion of your effort verifying placement in Yahoo results as well.

On a side note, I am now only 2 sites away from having all my minisites moved over to my HostGator account. After much pain at my previous hosting provider (outages, changed configurations, DNS issues) all while paying for a VPS I have successfully moved to a HostGator reseller account and have had better performance and the support has been great.

Yes, anything ad you see on this site for HostGator is an affiliate but when it comes to hosting its gotta be right. If you are looking for a good provider or just starting from scratch you really cannot go wrong with them.

Minisite Development Domain Selection Tips

I have had several (dozens...) of emails in the past week asking various questions about developing minisites, using wordpress for minisites, revenue on my minisites, and how-to create minisites.

As most people will tell you, I do respond to each and every email rather quickly most of the time, if I miss one its because Outlook may of been a little aggressive filtering it to junk mail.

That said, I thought I would do a few posts this week about various minisite development topics and how I choose between doing the Minisite development myself or if I outsource and also what names I choose and why.

First things first, when do I choose to build compared to outsourcing to someone else?  This comes down to a couple factors, the largest one being time to be quite honest. I have a very demanding sales job that I do along with my Domaining. People ask why do both? Well I actually like the field I am in and the job I do so I use outsourcing based on using my time more effectively (if you really want to get an idea of how to work effectively read 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris).  I would expect the majority of domainers work a full-time position while domaining part time, outsourcing is the key if you plan to develop any of your domains if that is the case.

The second big one is the type of site I want built, I have zero graphic skills or  graphic creativity, I admit that freely, if I want a simple minisite with simple text content that can be SEO'ed I have that process down to minutes for the site creation. I create those on my own, if it is a site I think could use more of a designers touch and a nice logo then I outsource.

That said, one thing I have learned from experience is make sure the minsite focuses on keywords that have a decent PPC.

I will give a really good example of this, I like to use certain domains for testing various SEO work and Google Adsense optimization.  A few months back I purchased KingCobras.org. I recognized ahead of time that the site would not have high PPC values but it was a name that receives quite a few searches per month (approximately 22,000 for exact match) and would be perfect for what I was testing (SEO on images).  The site is not pretty by any means but I was able within a month to go from a couple visitors a day to 200 to 300 a day (pageviews are higher obviously), it has leveled now in the 100 range due to lack of attention but can easily be rasied back up to that level.  I was able to get a reasonable CTR but the earning per click was a measley 3 to 6 cents. Once again, expected, but it just goes to show to anyone just picking terms to grab traffic if you are looking for dollars and not cents per day pick your content and terms. Thats the point right, to make money:)

Now as far as that site goes, it gets good traffic, I now have a base to build revenue from, there are revenue models that I know will actually make some money off that site and they will be implemented in the near future and I will report on this.

Now, lets go the opposite direction, a site that gets much smaller search volume but pay per click is much higher. WomensBikeShorts.com. Exact match searches are around 2,900 a month which is much lower than the KingCobras.org site so traffic is lower, BUT revenue is much better on a per day average. Why is that? Well its because it is a product people are looking to buy, when people search for a term like Womens Bike Shorts they are looking to buy a product, when they search for King Cobras they are researching. Big difference between what people will pay per click between those 2 intentions.

So, to circle back around to selecting outsourcing or for that matter minisite topics. Its about revenue, if you are looking for high pay per click terms look for services or products, develop your site to match the terms that bring the biggest payback. I would rather a site that gets 20 unique visitors a day getting 20 to 30 percent CTR with 30 cent clicks than a site getting 200 visitors  a day with 10 percent CTR getting 3 cent clicks. 

All those factors need to go into your decision process when choosing a name for development, deciding if the outsource cost is worth it, or if you want to do it yourself.

I will be posting later this week with an exact how to of how to launch simple Wordpress Minisites that have been proven to have solid CTR for those times when you cannot justify or just do not want to outsource your domain development.

Minisites Looking Good After Google Pagerank Update

My Wordpress Minisites and other Minisite types seemed to of fared rather well during this weeks Google Pagerank Update.

Overall the Pagerank results are definitely more positive than negative and with this I have seen an increase in traffic for targeted keywords to many of my minisites. Here are several that came out looking good:

Branson Mo

Port Isabel

Pensacola Beach

Hot Tubs

HotTubs.net did not increase in Google Pagerank but did get a traffic bump this week for ranking well on various related keywords. The rest of the list above went from pagerank 0 or 1 to Pagerank 3.

Overall I have also noticed that many of my sites may of stayed the same on pagerank but keyword driven traffic that I have been fighting for has increased measurably over the past week or so.

Now hoping a few of my newer sites like Math Book,  Cayenne Pepper and Glucomannan start showing even stronger results.

Make sure you check your sites, both in SERPS and Google Pagerank, you might just find good news.

Wordpress Plug-Ins for Minisites

Wordpress is one of the most flexible and easily implemented tools for developing minisites for your keyword domains. Whether I am looking to develop a high traffic minisite or a more niche topic I can find ways to use Wordpress as the base for my site and use one of many free Wordpress themes to customize the look and feel.

Many webhosting providers provide point and click install of Wordpress through Cpanel and Fantastico which makes the process even faster.

Once up and running I have several Wordpress plug-ins I use to make the site more SEO friendly and make site more functional from both an admin and user perspective.

There are hundreds of Wordpress plug-ins, these are my goto plug-ins for vritually every site, some I recently started using and am moving back through my older sites to add:

Add to Any Share/Save/Bookmark Plug-In

This tool adds a button at the end of each post that allows the viewer to easily share your story on Digg, Facebook, and may other social news and network sites.

Download Add To Any

Google XML Sitemaps

To make sure your site is fully indexed and visible to Google (Yahoo and Microsoft as well) it is very important to create a compliant sitemap. This plug-in automatically creates the proper file and updates it as you add posts and pages. It is very configurable and allows automatic notifcation of sitemap updates to Google, Yahoo, and more.

Download Google XML Sitemaps

All-In-One SEO Pack

The All-In-One SEO Pack makes it a snap to easily setup your post titles, meta tags, and other important SEO items in one spot. Where I really find this tool useful is on a per post basis you can configure description, keywords, etc.

Download All-In-SEO Pack

Statpress

Statpress is a tool for viewing stats for your Wordpress blog, this allows for reporting based on last referrer, keyword referrals, and other areas of interest as well as tracking the top referrers and keywords. I still use Awstats but find myself referring to this frequently as well.

Download Statpress

OK, a couple that I do not use on every site but have found useful too:

FeedWordpress

This plug-in allows for automatic posting of RSS feeds from other sites to yours. If you are wanting to setup a niche news aggregator using Wordpress this can be an quick and easy way to do that.

Download FeedWordpress

WP Super Cache

If your site gets frequent updates and high traffic this is a must, this plug-in creates cached files of frequently viewed pages of your site. I have a couple sites that this became a must on after traffic grew over 1000 uniques a day.

Download WP Super Cache

Twitter Tools

This one is a recent addition for me, this allows for your blog posts to be automatically fed to twitter or for your twitter posts to automatically generate blog posts on your Wordpress blog. I also use it to create an auto-updating "tweet view" on my right sidebar. Its a nice way for visitors to keep up and gives the site a more personal feel in my mind.

Download Twitter Tools

I am sure there are many more that can be pointed out that can be useful, feel free to leave a comment with plug-ins that you  find useful as well.