Rob Emmerson’s SEO Blog

Every single day, more and more people upload brand new websites to the Internet. I don’t have any figures but there must be hundreds of thousands of new pages being added daily (if not considerably more!)

The one thing that all of these new websites need in order to make their existence worthwhile is traffic, which leads me to one of the most common questions I am asked and the subject of this newsletter:

‘How can you generate traffic to a brand new website?’

Of course, there are a number of different answers to this question and what I would do myself is probably very different to what a completely new Internet entrepreneur would do. The reason I say this is that the first thing I do when launching a new site is make use of my existing website traffic by advertising the new site on my other established sites. In addition, I have the luxury of a large mailing list which I can use to drive traffic to the new site.

I appreciate that anyone starting out in online business won’t have these options open to them (and in fairness, neither did I when I first started), so let’s look at things from the beginning. Day one of your first website…..

It is a fact that the quickest and probably most effective way of bringing targeted traffic to your website is by paying for it. Now before you rush off and sink $50 into one of those ‘50,000 hits for $50′ schemes, DON’T, this isn’t what I mean. Those schemes are largely a complete waste of money. Even if you get the traffic that you are promised (as opposed to some software script visiting your site and pretending to be a visitor), it will not be targeted and therefore there is a very low chance that the traffic will generate sales. When I talk about buying traffic, I mean by using the pay- per-click services offered by most of the big search engines.

You probably already know the sort of thing I mean - for example, Google Adwords. Pretty much any search on Google will display a list of adverts down the right-hand side of the page and these are all paid adverts. Every time you click on one of them, the advertiser pays Google a fixed amount which could be anything from 5 cents upwards (depending upon how competitive the keyword is).

Pay-per-click allows you to be very selective about which keywords your advert is shown for and this allows you to target your advertising perfectly. Other big names in the pay-per-click market include Overture, Espotting and Findwhat.

Now, before you all start emailing me and saying that you already knew about PPC let me just say that I am well aware that people know about it. The problem (as I see it), is that people aren’t using this type of service because of the fact that they don’t want to spend any money on advertising. That’s all well and good but the fact is that the Internet is getting more and more competitive each day and the chances of Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most important aspects of search engine optimization or SEO is choosing the keywords that best reflect what your business has to offer its consumers. A keyword is the word or term that an internet user will use to find what they are looking for. The choices of keywords are quite extensive and it is important for a business to choose keywords that are most relevant to their business and will bring in the most consumers.

When many people think of the keywords that are relevant to their business, they will often think of generic words that they feel many will search for. While these types of words can be helpful, search engine optimization works best when you choose keywords that are a little more descriptive. True, many people do search for generic words. However, SEO will not work quite as well with generic words as it will with more specific words.

For instance, there are millions of businesses that deal in jewelry. If a person enters Read the rest of this entry »

How Important is PageRank? PageRank is a measure of how popular your site is. The PR of your site is determined by how many other sites link to you.

When crawling a site, the search engine robots will follow the links on a page, unless they are directed by HTML code to ignore the links. A vote is counted for each link they find pointing to a site. These votes tally up to equal the PR for the site. Actually there is more to it than just that but in a nutshell, this is how it works.

Each link to your homepage or another page on your site will add a bit to the PR. The PageRank of the linking site is factored into the formula, so not all votes are equal. The linking site is sort of sharing their PR with you. The vote carries more weight when it comes from a high PR site. This doesn’t mean that a link from a PR1 site will somehow hurt your PR as some would have you believe. Generally links to your site cannot hurt your PageRank.

It is not the same story for outbound links, so be very careful who you link to. Before I get too deep into that, let’s take a step back and discuss some common ways sites develop links, then we can cover the pitfalls.

Link exchanges are a common way to get links to your site. Basically you put a link on your site and another webmaster adds a link to your site on one of their pages. Linking from a page with hundreds or even thousands of unrelated links to your site is not a good plan. The “vote” would be so diluted from the other links so as to be almost meaningless. But more important, if you link back to the other site and that site ends up being “banned” by the search engines, you will be penalized for pointing to a banned site. This will kill your PageRank!

You should keep an eye on your linking partners for two very important reasons. First, make sure they are still linking to you. Second, make sure they have not been banned. if your link is gone, contact them and ask for it to be replaced. if however, you find that the other site has been banned you should immediately remove their link from your site. If you continue to link to a banned site, your PR will suffer.

Linking is an important SEO strategy and as long as you keep an eye on your link partners it makes sense to exchange links. A better strategy, or one to use in addition, is generating one way links to your site. These are links that other sites put up that point to your site without you having to link to them. There are many ways to develop these one way links. Remember, they can never hurt you because, in theory, you have no control over them. Here are 4 ways to get links back to your site.

1. Post comments on public forums, articles, blogs, etc. with a link to your site.

2. Submit your original content to social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Technorati, or any of the hundreds of other social sites on the net.

3. Submit articles on your topic to article databases and include a link to your site in the article resource box.

4. Pay for them. Although this is not my favorite way to develop them, it is available.

When you develop a linking strategy and stick to it you will quickly develop more links to your site than you would think. This will improve your PageRank, and it will help drive traffic to your site.

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Rob Emmerson has helped hundreds of webmasters with SEO questions. He now offers a free 7 day SEO course . In addition you can get more useful SEO tips and tricks at Rob Emmerson’s SEO Blog.

Over the years, quite a few clients have told me that search engines hate them. When search engines hate you, your web site is nowhere to be seen in the first 30 search engine result pages and has very low search engine referral traffic. This means that you are losing out on many newsletter subscribers and customers.

When I help my clients fix their relationship with the search engines, I often discover that the underlying problems are very similar. Review the list of typical problems below and see whether your site can use an SEO relationship expert:

- The web site contains too many ads and links to other web sites. Sometimes business owners get overly excited about the multitude of fine products and services on various other sites. In fact, that they want to tell their web site visitors about these products and services. Every single one of them (exactly 1,293 as of 5 pm yesterday).

Resist the temptation. While other web sites may indeed offer excellent resources, your web site should be all about you and your business. You may link to other web sites and products, but do so judiciously. Carefully weave relevant resources into the overall content of each web page.

Having links to a few products and resources that appeal to your target market is fine, but having 30 links on every page is too much.

- The web site has no real content. I have reviewed many solopreneur web sites that consist of just 3-4 pages. These include a Front page, a Newsletter page, an About Us page and a Contact page. Each page contains 5-6 sentences that haven’t been changed since the web site was created three years ago.

Search engines like fresh content, and they like content that changes on a regular basis. It is not enough to have a few pages with a few sentences on each Read the rest of this entry »

RSS is the interactive communication tool being popularized by bloggers. It is also the newest method for ezine publishers to deliver their content to the web.

RSS puts control back where it belongs. Publishers have control over their content, and subscribers have control over what they read.

This system requires that subscribers manually subscribe to the feeds they choose to read. One simply cannot just enter an email address and hit a subscribe button, attached to an autoresponder.

RSS feeds require an aggregator to read them, similarly to the way a browser reads HTML on a web page. As a result of this necessity, absolutely no one can be subscribed to a feed without consent. This makes the reader 100% responsible for the acceptance of the content to which they have subscribed. The receipt of feed content can never be unsolicited, nor can it be redundant. One cannot have more than one active subscription to a particular feed.

Rather than having to open an over-flowing mailbox, to find the information you are looking for, RSS acts as a special delivery agent, placing the content right next to your toast and coffee. Feeds are delivered straight to the desktop of the subscriber via the aggregator, providing the subscriber with freshly updated information, as it is refreshed by the source [publisher].

The subscriber receives the most recent headlines available, not a bulky periodical, and from there, can choose which articles they want to read, by clicking on that particular headline. When the reader finishes reading the feed, they just exit the program. There is nothing to store, nothing to delete.

Because RSS is set up as a dynamic, interactive system, publishers can allow, and often encourage, reader comments. This fascillitates dialogue between authors and readers, in real time. It invites the reader to express opinions, or ask questions. It provides readers with access to their mentors, that is non-invasive, yet direct.

One consideration to keep in mind is that not all RSS feeds are created equal. Not all aggregators can read all feeds. This is not a case of one size fits all. There are several different versions Read the rest of this entry »

There is a lot of talk about PageRank, but how important is it? PageRank, or PR is basically an indication of your websites popularity, measured by links to the site.

When the search engine spiders crawl a site they follow the links on the page, provided that they are not directed by HTML code not to. A vote is counted for each link they find pointing to a site. These votes tally up to equal the PR for the site. There is much more to it, but in the short version this is the way it works.

Each link to your homepage or another page on your site will add a bit to the PR. Not all votes are equal though, the PR of the linking site is also factored into the equation. The linking site is sort of sharing their PR with you. The vote carries more weight when it comes from a high PR site. This doesn’t mean that a link from a PR1 site will somehow hurt your PR as some would have you believe. In general, a link pointing to your site will not reduce your PR.

It is not the same story for outbound links, so be very careful who you link to. Before I get too deep into that, let’s take a step back and discuss some common ways sites develop links, then we can cover the pitfalls.

One fairly common method of getting links to your site is through link exchanges. Basically you put a link on your site and another webmaster adds a link to your site on one of their pages. Linking from a page with hundreds or even thousands of unrelated links to your site is not a good plan. The “vote” would be so diluted from the other links so as to be almost meaningless. A more important point is simply if you link to a banned site, your site will be penalized for doing it. This will kill your PageRank!

You should keep an eye on your linking partners for two very important reasons. First, make sure they are still linking to you. Second, make sure they have not been banned. if your link is gone, contact them and ask for it to be replaced. However, if the other site has gotten banned, then remove their link from your site as soon as possible. Your site’s PR will suffer if you link to a site that has been banned.

Linking is an important SEO strategy and as long as you keep an eye on your link partners it makes sense to exchange links. Here is a better plan to put in place, generate one way links back to your site. These are links that other sites put up that point to your site without you having to link to them. One way links can be developed in a variety of ways. Keep in mind that, because you have no control over them they can not hurt you. Here are 4 ways to get links back to your site.

1. Post comments on public forums, articles, blogs, etc. with a link to your site.

2. Submit your original content to social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Technorati, or any of the hundreds of other social sites on the net.

3. Submit articles on your topic to article databases and include a link to your site in the article resource box.

4. Pay for them. Although this is not my favorite way to develop them, it is available.

When you develop a linking strategy and stick to it you will quickly develop more links to your site than you would think. This will not only increase your PageRank, it will increase the overall traffic to your site.

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Rob Emmerson is a leading expert in SEO and has written extensivly on the subject in articles and eBooks. He offers a free SEO Course at http://www.theseosecretrevealed.com. in addition he writes a Blog on SEO at http://www.robemmerson.com

RSS streamlines communication between publishers and readers. Since RSS has had a popularity surge, webmasters have been experimenting and using RSS feeds to deliver content in new and innovative ways. Typically, RSS feeds contain news headlines and content summaries. The content summaries contain just enough information without overwhelming the reader with superfluous details. If the reader is interested and wants additional information they can click on the item in the feed, accessing the website which contains additional details. RSS readers aggregate multiple feeds, making it easy for individuals to quickly scan information contained within each feed. Feeds are generally themed, allowing users to opt-in to feeds that are of interest.

The big benefit to RSS is that individuals opt-in to content of interest, totally controlling the flow of information that they receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, users simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and they will not receive any additional updates from that source. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, allowing users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion.

RSS is a great supplemental communication method that does not burden the publisher with maintaining lists or following strict privacy guidelines. RSS feeds are compiled according to the user’s choices, removing any burden that is placed on publishers of email newsletters. Publishers no longer need to be concerned with spam, privacy policies, and age guidelines.

Publishers using RSS as a communication vehicle are able to create keyword-rich, themed content, establishing trust, reputation, and ongoing communication with current and prospective customers.

What Kind of Information Can be Delivered in RSS Feeds?

Blogs Feed

Many blogs are catalogued in an RSS feed, with each blog entry summarized as a feed item. This makes it easy for visitors to scan blog posts for items of interest.

Article Feed

Articles are often placed into feeds to alert readers when new articles and content are available. The feed entry is typically an article summary or introduction. Readers can then ascertain if the article is of interest and read further.

Forum Feed

Many forums now have add-ons that allow participants to receive forum posts via RSS. The RSS feeds often will show the latest discussion topics; if users are interested they simply click to enter the forum to participate in the discussion. As the topic is updated they will see new entries in the RSS feed.

Schedule Feed Read the rest of this entry »