Using Google’s Webmaster Tools User Administration Option

Here is the latest blog post I did for the Search Engine Academy about how to use the new User Administration option in Google Webmaster Tools.

Would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Naturally on Valentines Day, Google has put out another of their classic Google Doodle’s.  This one is sure to “melt your cold, cold heart”.  Check it out by visiting the Google homepage and click the little boy in the Google Logo holding the Valentines Day card.  Be sure your speakers are  on before you do.

The Tampa SEO Training Academy is pleased to announce that Search Engine Academy’s Director of Training, John Alexander, is celebrating his 10th year offering SEO Training Workshops to individuals and businesses from around the world.

John has been a trailblazer in the SEO Training industry as he and his original partner Robin Nobles were one of the very first people to show others the Search Engine Optimization tactics and techniques needed to succeed

I’ve know John personally for over six years now and have been a student of his for about 9.  His leadership has powered the Search Engine Academy to 15 locations around the world and I’m extremely proud to be a part of his organization.  Without him, the Tampa SEO Training Academy would not exist.

So please join me in “raising a glass” to John and the Search Engine Academy on this momentous occasion.  Here’s to another 10 years of continued success and growth.

Check out John’s announcement here.

Steve Scott
CEO & Director of Training
Tampa SEO Training Academy

Hard to believe that 5 years ago this month I began training students on the best tips, tactics and techniques for achieving top ranking in the search engines. Since then hundreds of students have come through my class room and have gone on to great success for their businesses or that of their clients.

To celebrate, I’m offering a very special 5th Anniversary promotion.  All the details can be learned by checking out our latest press release.

Thanks for all the wonderful support over the last five years… can’t wait to see what the next five hold.

Steve Scott
CEO & Director of Training
Tampa SEO Training Academy

As part of a new series of FREE Webinars being put on by the Search Engine Academy, I wanted to take a quick moment to invite you to join me for a Free Webinar I’ll be holding on Wednesday November 30th at 1pm eastern.

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

http://www.tampa-seo.com Video transcript (with minor edits).

Hey Guys, Steve Scott here from the Tampa SEO Training Academy.  I received an interesting question from one of my former students that I thought I’d share.  She says, “I’ve discovered one of our competitors is beating us to the punch on launching a new product that parallels ours… NOT GOOD.  What suggestions would you make for me to find information on their activities that wouldn’t be obvious to the naked eye?”

Well, what I was thinking about after reading this was a great tool from Google called Google Alerts.  What Google Alerts allows you to do is set up an alert so that whenever Google finds anything on the web that mentions something you are interested in, Google will send you information about it.

So, if you go to http://www.google.com/alerts you’ll see this page that shows up.  You simply go to where it says “Search terms:” and say you want to find something about the New York Jets, just type in New York Jets.

Then, you can select what you want to find, whether it’s everything that Google discovers, News items, Blog posts, Videos and so on.  I typically just leave this on Everything.

Next, select how often you want to find out about it. Whether as it happens, in other words as Google discovers it, once a day or once a week.  I usually go once a day.

You can then change the volume of information you get.  So if you are getting a very large amount of information or setting up an alert on a topic area that’s sure to have a high volume of data you can select “Only the best results” rather than “All results”.  I’ll generally leave it at only the best results at first.

Lastly, you can select where you want the information delivered to?  Select either your email address, which would be your Google account that you’d want to sign in with or you can set up an RSS feed and use that instead. I’m going to say to just send it to my Tampa SEO Training Academy account and hit “Create Alert”.

Now what will happen is, you see I’ve got several of them here, whenever Google finds any information about what you want an alert about it will send you email.  So this is great!  You can put in your own company name, you own products or in the case of the client, since she’s trying to discreetly keep an eye on her competitor, she can put in the competitors name,  company name, the URL of the company, the name of the competitors product or product line.  Now, anytime Google finds any information out about that particular product or company name, they’ll shoot her an email.

So it’s a great tool, easy to use,  easy to set up… Again it’s www.google.com/alerts and I would definitely suggest you check it out.  Even if all you do is put in your own company name in for brand management so you can be informed of when Google finds information about you that you might not have know that somebody else put out on the web.

Good Luck and Good Rankings.

Steve Scott

Some SEO folks used to believe that you could gain some small amount of relevancy by placing your keyword in a BOLD tag rather than using it in a STRONG tag.

In actuality, Google’s Matt Cutts says he was shown the piece of code in Google’s  algorithm that says <b> and <strong> are viewed as the same in the algorithm.  The same goes for italics <i> and emphasis <em>.   See for yourself at the 50 second mark in this video:

Of course it’s important to keep in mind that this video is 4 years old!

My opinion is that since <strong> is the newer tag, you should use it over <b> within any new content you may be developing.  I don’t think either is better from an SEO ranking perspective but in the future if a decision is made to change, it makes sense that the newer tag would be favored over the older tag.

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.