SiteProNews: My Tactics for Getting Those Top 5 Spots in Google

My Tactics for Getting

Those Top 5 Spots in Google

By Titus Hoskins (c) 2010

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Actually, getting in the #1 spot is best, but I will settle for the top 5 or even anywhere on the first page for very competitive keywords. Obtaining those top rankings for your targeted keywords in Google will obviously be very important to achieving your online goals.

I don’t have some magic formula, just online marketing stuff that works. Very simple stuff that everyone can do to get those top rankings. Here are some of the tactics/things I do……

via SiteProNews: My Tactics for Getting Those Top 5 Spots in Google.

Why You Shouldn’t Pursue the Long Tail – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Why You Shouldn’t Pursue the Long Tail

Eric Enge | Aug 24, 2010 | 2 Comments

You’re about to build a new site from scratch. You have great content. You have a search engine friendly site architecture. You have plans for a great link building campaign, and you’re ready to get active in social media.

So how long will it take to start getting great traffic from search engines, and, what will that traffic look like? Great question!

The reality is that it takes some time. The time is quite variable, however.

via Why You Shouldn’t Pursue the Long Tail – Search Engine Watch (SEW).

6 Ways to Learn SEO

Syndicated From: SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/KPBMwsM3Rqk/6-ways-to-learn-seo

Posted by randfish

One of the most common questions we receive here at SEOmoz is “What’s the best way to learn SEO?” There are many ways to answer, but in this post, I’m going to cover the responses I give most often and those I’ve seen have the most success. But, before I describe each of these, it pays to understand that not all learning methodologies are the same in style, substance or where they can take you. If you’re completely new to SEO, some of these won’t be appropriate and if you’re already a veteran, others won’t teach you much you don’t already know.

Thus, let’s start with a chart of relative knowledge/experience levels (similar to this old/outdated post on levels of knowledge):

Now that we have some context, let’s dive in to the ways I recommend learning SEO. For each, I’ve provided a description of the process, the ideal starting level(s) (and where you can expect to reach via that methodology) and a list of resources with my notes.

#1 – Free Online Guides

A number of free guides, eBooks and downloadable PDFs exist on the web to help provide insight into SEO. Some are highly comprehensive while others touch only lightly on the topic. The key to being successful with this process is to identify guides that are both up-to-date and accurate in their recommendations. No council exists to regulate the dispersal of SEO information and thus, a few proprietors of free guides can lead you down incomplete or even dead wrong paths.

Recommended for: New to SEO, Aspirant, Journeyman

List of Resources:

• SEOmoz’s Free Beginner’s Guide to SEO (just updated for 2010)
• Aaron Wall’s SEO Guide for Bloggers
• Google’s Starter Guide for Webmasters
• Danny’s Checklist for Learning SEO

Time Investment / Commitment Required: 1-3 hours should get you through any of the guides above

#2 – Published Literary Works

For those who like to curl up with a book, a number of authors/publishers have come out with solid resources in the past couple years. Books have a unique advantage over online guides in that they’re often better written, more carefully edited and can be more easily judged on the reputation of the authors/publishers. Conversely, they are hard to update (even in the book I wrote last year, a few links and references are already broken) and thus, don’t always contain the most up-to-date information.

Recommended for: New to SEO, Aspirant, Journeyman

List of Resources:

• Inbound Marketing by Dharmesh Shah & Brian Halligan
• Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing by Kris Jones
• Search Engine Optimization Secrets by Danny Dover
• Marketing in the Age of Google by Vanessa Fox
• Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day by Jennifer Grapone & Gradiva Couzin
• The Art of SEO by Rand Fishkin, Jessie Stricchiola, Eric Enge & Stephan Spencer

Time Investment / Commitment Required: The largest of these is ~450 pages, which might take between 4-8 hours depending on how fast you read

#3 – Blogs, Forums & Search Communities

In my opinion, everyone learning SEO can garner value from discovering 3-5 favorite sources of information online and keeping up to date with each on a daily or weekly basis. Forums and blogs pump out a tremendous quantity of content, but just by browsing the headlines and reading teh stories that stand out, you can get exposure to strategies, techniques, news and trends that would otherwise be difficulty to stumble on by yourself.

Many SEOs (myself included) first learned the practice almost entirely through contributions, questions and threads on industry blogs & forums. Today, I’d suggest starting with a base from a free guide or book, then diving into the communities to stay sharp and get individual questions answered. I’ve provided a few of my personal favorite resources below, but will be working on a more comprehensive list in the near future.

Recommended for: All

List of Resources:

• Forums / Q+A
  • Cre8asite Forums
  • SearchEngineWatch Forums
  • Onstartups Answers (SEO)
  • Quora (SEO)
• Blogs
  • Search Engine Land
  • SEO Book
  • Search Engine Roundtable
  • Search Engine Journal
  • Performable Blog
  • Conversation Marketing
  • Distilled Blog
• Other
  • SEO Alltop
  • Delicious SEO Tags
  • Techmeme

Time Investment / Commitment Required: 30-45 minutes per day or 90 minutes per week (if you aggregate your time into a single slot)

#4 – Building Sites & Earning Rankings

Many in the SEO field will say that building your own sites and practicing SEO in the real world is the only way to learn. I disagree with that message, but I do concur that it’s possibly the most crucial step to advancing your career and abilities.

My view is that if, prior to building a site and attempting to earn some rankings, you have a great mental model of the field, you can build a truly defensible strategy for your site(s). If you simply register a domain that sounds nifty and start trying to rank for a keyword you think is popular, you can get a very warped sense for how to do SEO and what matters in the short, medium and long run. At the very least, read a free guide and engage a bit on some of the online communities.

Once you’ve got a base of knowledge, building a site is the next logical step. I strongly suggest starting small and preferrably with a topic that you’re personally passionate about rather than one that just has high AdSense payouts. I’ll recommend a number of options for building/hosting below, but if you have the technical know-how to configure your own server and write from scratch, that’s a perfectly reasonable alternative (just make sure it’s not too time consuming to leave room for some actual SEO).

Recommended for: Aspirant, Journeyman, Authority

List of Resources:

• Posterous
• Page.ly
• WordPress
• Tumblr
• SquareSpace

Time Investment / Commitment Required: A minimum of 4-5 hours for setup and creation of initial content, and more likely 40-50 hours to produce something high quality and robust and conduct initial off-site SEO/marketing efforts.

#5 – Conferences & Events

If you’re hungry to learn SEO in person, see real life examples and hear stories from the front lines (as well as meeting the practitioners and evangelists), getting out to events is an excellent next step. The last few years has seen an explosion in the quantity and variety of events in the field and many have different foci and target audiences, so be sure to choose the right one for accomplishing your goals. Many of the large conferences are focused on drawing out discussion around topics, advancing the discourse in the field and promoting networking while some smaller events are more specifically geared to pure education or intimate networking.

Recommended for: Journeyman and Above

List of Resources (in order of upcoming dates):

• Blueglass Los Angeles – July 19-20
• SES San Francisco – August 16-20
• SEOmoz PRO Seattle – August 30-31
• SMX East New York – October 4-6
• Inbound Marketing Summit Boston – October 6-7

Time Investment / Commitment Required: Typically 2-4 days plus travel time

#6 – Online Classes

The online online learning series I’m familiar with in this category is Market Motive, but they’re impressive enough to warrant both a category of their own and a recommendation. Founded by Michael Stebbins and John Marshall (who previously founded & sold ClickTracks) along with Avinash Kaushik, Todd Malicoat, Bryan Eisenberg and more, the staff is a who’s who of Internet marketing. When this many great brains get together, the results are smashing. Market Motive combines webinars, phone calls, coursework and more into a comprehensive curriculum. They end the series with a dissertation defense given over the phone and only passing candidates earn certification.

I’ve personally been on a few calls with early entrants and master certification candidates and been seriously impressed. Since I’m recommending them so highly, I connected with the folks at Market Motive, and they’ve put together a discount  for moz readers. You can sign up for MarketMotive using the code “SMZ6TOOLSMC” and get $600 off their master certification course + 3 months of SEOmoz PRO membership FREE. But, make sure to do it in the next 5 days as the upcoming master certication course starts on July 19th.

Recommended for: New to SEO, Aspirant, Journeyman and Authorities/Gurus seeking formal, recognized certification

List of Resources:

• Market Motive

Time Investment / Commitment Required: Over the course of 90 days, this is a 10-20 hour per week commitment, possibly more when cramming for the dissertation.

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Prioritize and Summarize – Final Step of the 8-Step SEO Strategy

Syndicated From: SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/CYGpb6-ETvc/prioritize-and-summarize-final-step-of-the-8step-seo-strategy

Posted by laura

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

My friends, you’ve made it. You’ve sat through over 10,000 words I’ve shoveled into these  SEO Strategy posts (so far), and for that you deserve a serenade.  This serenade calls for a nice glass of wine (preferably a good Tokaji to go with the music) and a comfortable seat while we wrap up our journey together. Got your wine? Ok, now let the exceptionally gifted Sandor Lakatos send some beautiful Hungarian gypsy music through your speakers and let’s begin the end. (PS – If you really like this music I suggest this album)

There are two things you can potentially do here to wrap this up.  The first, prioritization, is optional. The second, summarizing the document in an overview, is pretty important. If you’re not into prioritizing all this stuff you’ve put together then just go right to the Overview section and skip the Prioritize one. Here we go.

PRIORITIZE

Well, hello go-getter. Glad to see you’re ready to do some prioritizations. There are two ways I’ve done this before, and at this point I don’t need to tell you again that however you want to go about this is up to you.  Create this document in the manner that seems best for you.

a) Prioritization Summary

After you’ve created your magnum opus of specific recommendations in Step 6 that will make the next big internet sensation out of your client’s product, you may want to take all of those recommendations and wrap them up in a nice (short) summary that says, “this is the most important thing you can do, and these things are very important also”.  Let them know where they can start and what they cannot ignore if they want to see results.  This is different than the overview which we’ll look at later, that will summarize the entire document in a much more broad manner.  This is specific to the recommendations that you’ve listed. You and I know that the more of the recommendations they follow (especially the high-impact ones) the better off they’ll be, but you and I also know that the chances of the client implementing 100% are usually not so great, so make sure you let them know what’s the most important.

b) Prioritize by Item

This is more time- and labor-intensive, but I’ve found it has really helped for teams who have a lot on their plate. Prioritizing each task that you’ve given your client in Step 6 can help them place your recommendations in their queue along with the 1,000 other things they’re working on, without having a doubt as to what will potentially make the most impact. Without specific prioritizations they might just implement whatever is easiest, and then call you in 4 months when there hasn’t been any change in results.

For example, the template I’ve built has prioritizations to choose from built in, so that I can stick these in wherever necessary. If I have several recommendations under a category (like Specific Content to Build), then each recommendation within that section will get a prioritization.

Feeling even more ambitious? (Might be the sugar in the Tokaji – go with it!)  Note which team each recommendation should be owned by.  For example, recommendations for external linking might be relevant to Design, Web Dev, and/or Biz Dev.  Specific terminology recommendations might be relevant to Writers/Editorial. I’ve learned the more you give them the more they’ll get done, and the better it will look for you – both in presentation and when they start seeing results.

SUMMARIZE IN AN OVERVIEW

This is it. This is the big shiny bow on this custom handmade contribution of your unmatched talent and innate inner wisdom that you’re lovingly bestowing upon your client. The crescendo, if you will.

The overview is for the beginning of the document.  Rather than just jumping right into demographics and recommendations, give the client a short summary of the purpose of this document and what they’ll find in it. Here are some of the things you might consider putting in this one or two paragraph overview (I don’t suggest it be much longer than that):

• Summarize why this document has been commissioned – what is the goal they are trying to attain
• Recap the issue(s) the client is having now (the reason they’re seeking your help)
• Explain the potential outcome the client can attain after implementing
• Explain the originality of this document – that it is a custom set of recommendations created specifically to meet the clients individual visibility needs (or something like that). And that it is not a best practices document.

This, by the way, follows the typical steps to persuasion (shown here in my words):

1. Show how awesome life would be if everything was perfect and nothing needed help
2. Show the reality – here is a problem & here’s how its hurting you
3. Let them know you have the solution for them
4. Let them know the solution is attainable if they take action
5. Give them the tools to take that action (this is really the rest of the document)

By the time they’re done reading your overview they’ll be salivating for what’s in this SEO Strategy document.

And with that we come to a close of the 8-Step SEO Strategy. Thanks for taking this journey with me and I hope some of the info in these 8 steps has given you insights and ideas to make you worth gobs of money. 

So go forth and conquer dearest SEOs, and don’t forget who led you on the path to multi-million-dollar SEO fame when you get rich off of this stuff.  You can find me here (very soon).

Xo, Laura

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