A recent student asked me a couple of question via Facebook about what to do once you’ve had some success on Google.

He asked:

1. I’m showing up at #3, what do I really need to do to fight for the #1 or #2 position?
2. OK, so I am finally #1, now what?

The answer to the first questions depends on several things. First, have you made sure that the rankings you are seeing are not due to the Personalization of Search? Be sure you are logged out of your Google account when doing a search.  It might also be helpful to ask a friend from another part of the country to do the same search you are doing and have them tell you where they see your listing.  Check out this link for several other things Google says you can do to help turn off search history personalization.

Once you are certain you are not showing up at the top of the listings due to personalization, you’ll need to look at who are you competing against?

For example, if you are number 2 or 3 for Olympus Digital Cameras and number 1 is Olympus.com and number two is Amazon.com, the odds are you are NEVER going to be #1. It’s nearly impossible to beat out the website of the company that owns the name brand of a product you are trying to sell.

If the sites listed at #1 or #2 are not related to a particular brand then you need to evaluate some of the other search factors that play a roll in competitive industries such as:

• the quality and number of inbound links,
• the authority of your site and of the sites that link to you,
• the title tags of the pages that link to you,
• the text used on those sites that link back to you,
• your own title tags, quality of your content and other on-site SEO factors,
• the age of the sites ranking above you,
• quality of the content, etc.

If you can’t stand toe-to-toe with them on those fronts then you will need to work on those aspects of your SEO.

You might also want to look into a competitive analysis tool like the one from Michael Marshall called SEO Recon.  It can help you figure out what SEO factors of your site you need to work on and what areas not to change in order to compete for competitive phrases.

The easy answer to question #2 is to pat yourself on the back and continue doing what you’ve been doing! Obviously it’s working.

The thing NOT to do is to do nothing and expect your number 1 listing to remain. Stay diligent in your SEO efforts and be sure to stay on top of the latest changes to the Search Engines algorithms or you might find your #1 site is now #101.

Good Luck and Good Rankings!

Steve Scott
SEO Training Educator
877-736-7361

A friend of mine recently reached out to me on Facebook and asked, “Hey Steve, can you give me some tidbits on how to increase website traffic to http://www.momcentral.com“.

Here was my response:

“Boy is that a loaded question! These open ended general questions really need to be looked at on a case by case basis as every company has a different set of goals, competitors, and requirements to being successful.

The best single tidbit I could give you for SEARCH traffic is to build links to your site from other high quality websites that are in similar or related fields using the keywords you want to get your site found for.

The other thing is to write new and unique content for your website on at least a weekly basis (2-3 times a week is even better).  Don’t forget about the Social Networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  Participation in those places is necessary.

You could also try doing targeted Pay-Per-Click Ads or even targeted Facebook Ads to really reach your specific demographic.

The thing is that there are over 200 Ranking Factors that Google and the rest look at to evaluate your site… many of them having to do with the architecture/design of your site.

Also, you compete for traffic on a keyword phrase by keyword phrase basis and not business to business so the words you want to be found for need to be researched and qualified and the content and links you create should focus on those words.

The whole process is MUCH more complex than it was 10 years ago and it’s harder and harder to manage.  I mean, I teach a 5 Day SEO Training course that runs from 9-5 each day and even after all those hours we’re only really scratching the surface.  Many of the topics I cover could easily be stretched out into a full day course in and of itself.

The best thing to do is to try to stay on top of the changes.  One way to do that is to sign up for my SEO Tip of the Day at http://www.tampa-seo.com/. Another way is to check out and get involved in SEO industry sites like http://www.searchengineland.com or http://www.seomoz.org or even http://www.searchenginenews.com.  Each of these sites (as well as many others) have great info and articles every day that help you learn and stay on top of what’s going on in the Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing Universe.

Good Luck!”

Steve Scott
Tampa SEO Training Academy

Directory Listings may not be as influential as they once were but they are still an important part of your overall off-site SEO strategy.

A link on a well known or popular directory still has value to you particularly if your main keyword phrase is in the Title Tag of the page linking to you and you can link back to your site with your keyword phrase in your listing.  (This is one of those times where having keywords in your company name can be extremely useful.)

For years now I’ve been recommending Dan Paris and his directory listing site Info Vilesilencer http://info.vilesilencer.com to my students.  IVS researches and displays the internet’s original SEO friendly free directory list.  It also lists the top paid directories, niche directories and offers a professional manual directory submission service for those who don’t have the time or experience to submit to the directories themselves.

But my favorite part of the site is the free downloadable Excel file that you can use to submit your site and to track your submissions if you plan on doing it in-house.

Mention the Tampa SEO Training Academy and Dan may even give you a small discount on his already ridiculously low priced submission packages.

Remember, directory listings should not be your only link building strategy but they should play a part in your overall link building plan.

Are you ready for your Caffeine fix?  You’d better be!

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s spam team, announced yesterday at SMX Advanced Seattle 2010 that Caffeine is officially live and shared some of the ways their new index is different from the old Google.

In the old days… Google would crawl the billions of pages on the internet, index them all and then update one of their data centers with all the information they gathered.  They would continue to do this to each of their data centers over several days until everything was up to date.  This was affectionately known as the Google Dance.  The problem was that you might have to wait a bit before you could find your pages in Google index or you might see different results in the SERP’s depending on which data center you hit when you searched.

With the release of Caffeine, there is a new Sheriff in town. Instead of crawling the billions upon billions of pages on the internet first and then updating a single index, Caffeine can now crawl a document, process it and then immediately pushes it out to all of their indexes.  This makes Google’s indexing a much more dynamic entity and allows the user to find information closer to “real time” then ever before.

In fact, Matt stated that Google’s entire index is about 50% fresher than it ever was before.  NICE!  So…, instead of waiting days or weeks for your new or updated pages to be indexed, once Google crawls your page they can almost immediately push it out to their engine for the world to see.  Caffeine’s new way of indexing the web also make it easier for Google to scale up and grow their search engine with even more relevant results for their users.

According to the official Google blog post, “Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day.” Now that’s a lot of data.

From my perspective, Caffeine is set to bring forth a new level of near-real-time search to the market they already dominate.  I gotta say…. I LIKE IT!!!

Here’s Matt talking about Caffeine at SMX.

Steve Scott is the owner of the Tampa SEO Training Academy

I was just assigned the claim token XJKJ57RMGWP8 from Technorati.  They sent me the code after I registered my new blog’s web address with them.

At first I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with it.  The instructions said I should put the claim token into a post on my blog but that seemed a bit odd.  Couldn’t somebody else then use the claim token from my blog post for their own purposes?  Not really sure how that would be useful… but it did kinda feel like I was putting up a password of some kind into the public domain.   Not something I do willingly.

So anyway… as I sometimes do, I did a little searching around and found the following link on Technorati’s site: http://technorati.com/blog-claiming-faq/.

The faq page lists all the details on how and why Technorati uses a claim token to verify my site.  Basically, by putting my claim token into an actual blog post and making sure it is visible in my sites feed, Technorati could tell that I had the administrative rights to place posts on the blog I am trying to list with them.

By claiming my blog using the token, Technorati will now list me in the categories and for the tags that I previously assigned to my blog when I registered it.  It also enables me to see links from existing sites in their index that point back to to my blog.  That all certainly sounded like a good reason to go for it.

This claim token process reminded me a lot of using a verification code for Google Webmaster Tools.  In order to verify you are a webmaster of a particular site, Google requires you to put a piece of HTML code onto your web sites homepage.  Once you can prove to Google you can make changes to your site that no one else could, they open the front door into what they know about your site and how you can improve it. (If you are not using Google Webmaster Tools you should do so immediately!)

In addition, verifying my blog using the Technorati claim token allows it to show on my Technorati public profile page… also a good thing.

To my amusement, they even mentioned that I might think it was a little weird putting a verification code onto one of my blog post but they say “it’s the best method we’ve found so far to demonstrate to us that you control the blog.”

Technorati also advises that you “remove the code once the claim is complete.”  So, if you have read this post and my claim code above has a bunch of goble-dee-goop for a claim token, you’ll know that my site has finally been verified.

Now, why don’t you go try it yourself.  Just register with Technorati and off you go!

Happy Blogging…

Steve

Steve Scott is the owner of the Tampa SEO Training Academy

I often say to students, clients, and prospects that a web designer is a lot like an interior decorator. The interior decorator will make your home look great and help you pick out beautiful furniture, create a color palette to paint your walls, and select all the accessories to make your house a home. In much the same way, a web designer can develop your website so it looks great and includes all the bells and whistles.

However, you would never talk to an interior decorator before you spoke with an architect or a contractor, would you? A Search Marketer is the “architect” you need to speak with before you design your website. They can help you not only design your site correctly but also help you develop your online strategy and build your brand.

Remember, it’s not that the web designer is doing anything wrong or trying to hurt your chances at getting found. It’s just that most web designers and programmers do not have the knowledge or the level of understanding regarding many critical SEO aspects and can inadvertently cause your site to do poorly in the Search Engines.

So here’s a small bit of advice… don’t make the same mistake so many others do when it comes to their website. Talk to a reputable SEO company or get yourself educated before you decide to design or redesign a website for your business.

Steve Scott
Owner and Head Trainer
Tampa SEO Training Academy