I have posted some very important information on this site. I have received emails thanking me for my post on locating blogspot blogs for links. Blogspot blogs carry tremendous authority and a link from almost any of these blogs will greatly help your website’s rankings.

I have also received positive feedback from my post on directory listings. Both of these posts deal with the benefits of links for your website’s rankings. It is, after all, links pointed toward your site and the link text in those links that makes your website rank.

Links are the most important element of SEO.

That being said, I have to report, the absolute only way some websites will ever get to the first page of any very competitive Google search is through paid links.

I know some of you have read about the dangers of link buying. How Google will penalize your website rankings if you buy links. I have read the same articles and guess what? Paid links still dominate the majority of the most competitive search results. I have seen over the last year or so that paid links are also very popular with many search results that are not as competitive.

This is because paid links rank a site.

Literally a hand full of paid links costing on average of $500.00 to $1,000.00 a month will rank almost any business website for any relevant search phrase that makes that business money. These paid links will put you in first position for that very important money phrase and many related phrases as well. First, second and even third position for many online businesses equals huge revenue month in and month out.

The cost of the links are more than worth the expense.

I have wanted to post this info for quite some time. However, as a “SEO”, discussing link buying out loud is considered taboo. I’m not scared by much. My job is to increase website traffic, SEO is the process that makes that happen. Specifically, inbound links make that happen. It takes links to rank. It takes large numbers of inbound links to rank and for an increasing number of online businesses of all sizes, it will also take very high authority, high quality links to rank and these links are what you get when you buy links.

Every website can benefit from high authority links. If you would like to discuss the benefits of these types of links on your website’s rankings, contact me today. In a few minutes on the phone, I can do a little research and tell you if the sites that rank where you want to rank are buying links.

If you can’t beat’em join’em

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

The search industry is filled with more than it’s share of information sources, some good, in my opinion, most not quite up to par. Of these information sources, a few I consider very good. One such source, Web Pro News.

One of the things I hear repeatedly on those less than cutting edge SEO blogs and even many websites of providers of SEO is talk of keyword density. This is my opinion of keyword density:

This went out with 1999. Actually, many top SEO professionals have stated publicly that keyword density never really existed, except as a part of a service that could be sold to the unsuspecting website owner. There are still many so called SEOs who reference this relic of an idea but it really tells more about their lack of SEO knowledge more than anything else.

Do not concern yourself with keyword density.

This is posted here.

It would seem that one of my favorite sources of real SEO and search marketing information has the same opinion as I do.

Keyword Density – This one might surprise you a little bit.  Keyword density is kind of a joke.  It is in fact NOT desirable to work 500 instances of your target keyphrase into the text of your target page.  I know this seems counter intuitive to some, but I for one was very glad to see this claim supported by some data in the Ranking Factors session.

If your page is about Blue Beach Widgets, you have Blue Beach Widgets in your title and you have pages linking to your blue beach widgets page with the terms ‘blue beach widgets’ in the anchor text THAT is good.

You do NOT have to whore out the content of your page to have ‘blue beach widgets’ repeated 50 times in the description.  I know you have seen these pages…  they look like:
“Bob’s Blue Beach Widget Emporium has the finest selection of blue beach widgets on the web.  Our blue beach widgets are so much better than our competitor’s blue beach widgets, that all of our blue beach widget customers all think our blue beach widgets are the best blue beach widgets ever. So if you need a blue beach widget, or have a friend that needs a blue beach widget, tell them to visit the blue beach widget emporium to find the best blue beach widgets in the blue beach widget business”

This has to stop people. It makes your site read like a bad skit on the Muppet Show. This kind of thing makes me cringe, and it’s ruining the Internet.  Well maybe it isn’t ruining the Internet like MTV ruined America, but it does make for some horrible web pages.  I still hear SEOs talking keyword density to site owners.  If you are a site owner and some SEO comes talking to you about increasing your keyword density, do everybody a big favor and throw something at them.  Please.

The entire article summarizing ranking factors for 2009 can be read here.

Other than my site, Web Pro News is an excellent source of REAL search engine optimization information that can be put into use on your website today.

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

By far, the most often asked question I get by local business owners is; “How do I get my Google local listing beside the map?”

I have read many theories but the most common belief is that getting reviews of your business on sites like Yelp, City Search or the Yahoo local directory will influence your positioning beside the map in Google. I believe this is probably one of the factors Google uses when other factors are not available. However, I know from experience that links play a much more important role in getting your local business website beside the map in Google.

Believing that links are the biggest factor in getting your site beside the local map, I have read that the links with the greatest ranking abilities are those from local businesses websites within the geographically located city you wish your listing to be displayed for. I also believe this is a factor in getting your Google local listing beside the map.

I am sure there are many factors that are used by Google to determine which local business is listed by the map. I am sure reviews and local links are very important to these listings. In my experience, I have been able to get businesses positioned beside the map by the use of geo-targeted anchor text from inbound links.

Example:

To be positioned beside the map on a search for Las Vegas Chiropractor, you will need a good number of inbound links to your business website with “Las Vegas Chiropractor” in the anchor text of those links. Using a variety of anchor text helps to make the link profile look more natural and aides in the effectiveness of the linking. “Chiropractor in Las Vegas”, “Chiropractor Las Vegas” or “Vegas Chiropractor” would all be great anchor text for inbound links to help your local business website to rank in natural search for those search phrases but will also help to get your business website listed beside the map.

If you have a local business that needs the benefits of being listed beside the map, contact me to get started today. My linking will get your business listed in natural search rankings as well as a listing beside the map.

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

36

have been accused

of spousal abuse

7

have been arrested

for fraud

19

have been accused of

writing bad checks

117

have directly or indirectly

bankrupted at least 2 businesses

3

have done time for assault

71 repeat…

71 cannot get a credit card

due to bad credit

14

have been arrested on

drug-related charges

8

have been arrested

for shoplifting

21

currently are defendants

in lawsuits, and

84

have been arrested for

drunk driving in the last year

Can you guess which organization this is?

It’s not the NBA or the NFL!

It’s the 435 members of the

United States Congress…

The same group of idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line!

I received this in my email today, not sure how accurate it is but I believe it probably only scratches the surface. I thought I would share it here. My blog posts tend to get some very good visibility in search results so it is my hope that this bit of information is seen by many.

Please feel free to post a comment below if you found this post in a search.

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

Thanks to a reliable source, I have been educated on the practices of LocalAdLink. If you have not already done so, you might want to start by reading this post.

For starters, LocalAdLink is not relying on any natural search traffic. It didn’t take me long to figure this out. Their traffic comes from a variety of Partner Websites include Photography.com, Davesgarden.com, CNN.com, Facebook.com, and Myspace.com. These are paid marketing channels.

LocalAdLink has also partnered with over 100 Search Engines, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, allowing local business owners to be displayed in searches targeted to the zipcode of the local business. Yahoo may send a small amount of traffic, MSN will send literally no traffic at all so LocalAdLink is relying on Geotargeted ads in Google as well as the lesser used search engines to send traffic to their geotargeted pages. This traffic, which has been bought through PPC buying is then resold to the local business who has paid to be listed in the LocalAdLink network. As I stated in the previous post, LocalAdLink is just another middleman and one of the worst kind at that.

Any service that provides website traffic to a client, in this case small business owners who are probably not very familiar with this type of rip off, are definitely very low in the bottom feeder world of internet marketing. Basically the scam works like this. LocalAdLink sets up geographically targeted ads in cities across the country. Searchers seeking local businesses or services in Google, Yahoo or MSN see a sponsored listing and click on that ad. The ad takes the searcher to a LocalAdLink page where the searcher than has the opportunity to view and click on additional listings on their site. If your business listing happens to be the one that is clicked on, you are charged a pay per click charge that pays for the Google ad cost, the LocalAdLink fee and a commission to the “account rep” that has sold you and your business into the network. Instead of paying Google for the click, you and up paying the search engine and two other middle men for the visitor.

Obviously, this means the cost per click is tremendously higher than if you had a PPC campaign setup in Google, Yahoo or MSN.

Long story short. LocalAdLink is a ripoff for the small business owner and quite possibly a total scam altogether. If your business need help with pay per click marketing, contact me for the help that will make your paid spending return a profit for your business.

Even worse, LocalAdLink is apparently offering their “marketing opportunity” as a business opportunity to those who feel good about taking advantage of small business owners.

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

There is a new local search directory in town, so expect to be cold called.

I learned of LocalAdLink through a press release that was forwarded to me by email. I had never heard of the company before but I read the release and visited the site hoping to find something worthy of the small business owner’s hard earned money.

I was disappointed.

From the press release:

LocalAdLink is a provider of services that enable local businesses to reach local customers with targeted Internet advertising. The customer facing Web site, LocalAdLink.com, is a local search directory and acts as the central hub for the LocalAdLink technology. When a customer visits LocalAdLink.com, proprietary geo-targeting software identifies the customer’s location and displays relevant local business listings. In addition, LocalAdLink has created an Advertising Network that publishes local business listings on its owned and operated sites, as well as partner sites.

Nothing new there. Sounds like a Reach Local clone. The release goes on to say…

In the past ninety days, over 30,000 small businesses have chosen to advertise on LocalAdLink. We expect over 100,000 more small businesses to begin advertising in the next 90 days. In addition, the i-SUPPLY division will begin its exclusive phased rollout to LocalAdLink’s Independent Salesforce the first week of May. We anticipate revenue growth from both product sales and advertising space created by this new division.

From my visits to LocalAdLink since the press release was released, there really does not seem to be much interest by local advertisers. Many searches returned the dreaded “No Results Found” page. I got this page time after time from searches that should have provided me with some form of a business listing. I even got this page when searching for specific cities.

Obviously, there is more to do at LocalAdLink than the press release would reveal. This is understandable. It is better to get something online than to wait for everything to be put online. This, however, is not understandable.

http://www.localadlink.com/directory/search/hotels-and-motels/Nashville%2C+TN+37201%2C+USA/

That is the link to my local Hotel and Motel category. Do you know what that is? It is an ugly URL. Specifically, it is not SEO friendly. Now it’s not the ugliest I have ever seen, but to be a local search marketing directory, you would expect to see something a little more SEO friendly than that.

As if that was not bad enough, I made one final observation that says all that needs to be said about LocalAdLink. The page title for every page on their site is, LocalAdLink. Nothing more. This makes it almost impossible for any of their pages to rank for the categories or local listings they are selling. This means no natural search rankings that will send searchers to your category or business listing.

Titles on web pages are extremely important. No page title or worse, page titles that are all the same is the death of a website’s natural search rankings. Spending money on any listing within the LocalAdLink is literally like throwing money away.

Do you have money to trash?

LocalAdLink has three packages. $49.95 a month, $99.95 a month and $199.95 a month. None of them are worth a dime.

If you are considering advertising with LocalAdLink, contact me first. I do not do high pressure sales. I specialize in local SEO and my SEO rates provide real contact with a SEO professional that can increase your website traffic.

These search directories offer to send you traffic from their website for a monthly fee. You will pay this fee even if there is no traffic to the pages in the directory. Don’t let the middleman conn you from money that is better spent optimizing your own business website.

FYI: LocalAdLink is hiring!

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

Marketing with blogs is a very smart decision for any business needing increased online exposure and website traffic.

I am not talking about blogging about your business. I’m talking about using other blogs to market your goods and services. Marketing with blogs is much easier than getting businesses to blog, believe me, I know from experience.

Having a blog as a part of your business website is a very smart idea. Posting info about your business on a regular basis is the best use of a business website blog. However, the blog on your business website domain is only one blog. Limited to only the visitors that know it is there. This means it probably has very little broadcasting power when it comes to getting the word out.

A better use of blogs, one which thousands of bloggers participate in daily, is to market products and services offered by businesses all across the net.

Marketing With Blogs the Easy Way!

Bloggers need revenue. Unfortunately for the average blogger, their income potential from blogging is very limited. Many blogs only have a few hundred visitors a month and only a dozen or so regular readers. It can be very hard to monetize such small amounts of website traffic through the programs available to blogs. Bloggers need additional sources of revenue to make their blogging profitable. For this reason, any serious blogger has buttons or banners promoting ads and sponsorships on their site. This is the real power of blog marketing for businesses needing to increase their website traffic.

There are blogs about every topic under the sun. No matter what you sell or offer online, you can easily find hundreds if not thousands of blogs about your business niche. Google provides a cool blog search tool to help you locate these potential marketing channels.

A quick search with this blog search tool will easily provide you with a list of blogs to investigate further. Visit and save as many as you feel may meet your marketing needs. This would be blogs that directly relate to your businesses niche. These blogs will also need to have at least a few comments on the posts on the blog. No comments generally means there are no regular visitors to the blog unless the blog’s comments have been turned off. You do not want to use any blog that has comments turned off as this generally means the blog has very low traffic of is maintained on an infrequent basis. A real blogger wants comments and the discussion they bring to the table. Comments are the life of a blog.

Once you have your list, email each blogger to see what their rates are and what types of marketing opportunities they offer.

A banner or a button on a blog is a affordable way to put your business website in front of very targeted visitors, however, getting a blog post about your products or services is a much better way to get website visitors now and in the future. Buttons or banners cannot be indexed into search engines like a blog post will. Generally, you can but a blog post or a blog post review from bloggers for a very affordable cost.

The best thing about marketing with blogs is the cost. A small business can effectively market their products and services using blogs for as little as $25.00 to $50.00 a month. For those who don’t have the time or inclination to do the work themselves, I offer a blog marketing service that can very affordably put your business products or services on the pages of blogs that will send you visitors.

Email or call me to learn more about my blog marketing service today.

877.321.5718

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

Online directories offer many options when submitting your site to their directory. Most common are paid listings, reciprocal listings and free listings.

Paid listings are a waste of money and time. The only directories worth paying for are BOTW and the Yahoo directory. The traffic within the directories are minimal so there is really no need to spend money for a prominent placement within the thousands of directories available online. Directories are really only good for the one way links. Free listings are worth the effort, however, free listings can take many weeks or even months to show up in the directory. To get your listing reviewed and posted within the directory as quickly as possible, you should select to do a reciprocal listing.

With reciprocal listings, the directory will list your submission in a much quicker time, sometimes within hours, after you post a link to the directory from your site. So, I discovered a way to use a reciprocal links page to get those directory listings listed in as quick a time as possible.

When you select to reciprocate the directory link, you must first post the directories link on your website. The directory will immediately check to see if the link in on the selected page you submitted when you submit your listing. Once they find the link to their directory, your listing will be reviewed within a few weeks if not days. Listings without a reciprocal link can take months to be reviewed.

The benefit of this technique is getting the approved listing as fast as possible. The drawback is having all of those directories listed on your reciprocal links page. So, I cheat a little.

Once the directory has visited the website and approved my listing, I wait a couple of weeks and then delete the listing from my reciprocal links page. After they have checked for the reciprocal link on your site, 99% of the directories will never visit your site again. So, you expedite your listing and end up with a one way link from almost every directory you post to without taking months to get the link. Once the directories you have posted to have listed your site you can then go back and remove their listing from your links page. This keeps your links page manageable and in time all of the directories you have linked to will be removed.

Of course, you could always just leave the directory links in your links page, but why? The visitors to your website, if they actually do find your links page, are probably not there to visit online directories. More than likely, they are looking for websites that are very similar to yours.

Use online directories for what they were intended for, a source of one way contextual links.

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

With many SEO specialist there is a theory that there’ is no such thing as a worthless link. Every link has some value as long as the link comes from a respectable site. This would include directory listing websites. I would be one who believes that there is no such thing as a worthless link. Some links carry a great deal more weight than other links but any link you can get is better than no link at all.

Online directories allow you the opportunity to place a contextual link in a related category with the anchor text of your choosing. The opportunity to place one way contextual links within a targeted category in large numbers seems almost too good to be true. Actually, it is. Directories no longer carry the ranking weight they once did. However, I can tell you from experience, directories can still help to position a website in search results for less competitive search rankings and are very good for local business websites.

Directory listings are always a very good starting point for SEO. Pick four or five title phrases that make sense for your website. These phrases should be four to six words in length and should contain very good targeted keywords for your website. Alternate these four or five phrases in as many directories as you have time to submit to using a different description for each of the four or five title phrases.

I usually submit to 100 to 300 directories for any site I am working on depending on the website topic.

Results will vary. Directory listings are worth the effort. I recommend submitting to 10 to 20 directories every week until you have submitted to several hundred. Unfortunately, it can take many weeks or even many months to get accepted into the directories you submit to so be patient.

I recommend using a reciprocal link when you submit to the directories. Learn how to use reciprocal links for speedy directory listings.

 Link to this page

 Link to this page