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The Benefits of Splitting Off Into Microsites

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Are two blogs and/or websites better than one?

Many website owners, as their businesses expand, come to the dilemma of splitting their sites into a few microsites so they can rank better for their targeted terms. This is not really an easy topic and before you make such a radical move there is a lot to take into consideration.

Reasons to Split a Site Into Microsites

1. Your brand name is not doing very well and you would like a part of the business to be re-branded and market it separately.

2. Your businesses are expanding into a few different niches, thus the one site you have can’t really serve all those different businesses.

3. You think that by splitting your site into several smaller ones you will manage to engage the visitors interested in a particular service or product. Conversion may increase as users will think that they are at a specialist’s website rather than a generic one offering all sorts of services or products.

Risks and Dangers

There are certain risks you will be taking by making such a big change and you need to think carefully before you make any decision. [Read more…] about The Benefits of Splitting Off Into Microsites

Creative Techniques To Help You Profit From Seasonal Blogging

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2010 World Cup FootballAlthough many of us are blogging for the long-term in very specific niches, there exists many more dynamic opportunities to achieve blogging success as well as various styles that can be adopted. Over the years I have learned that there are some of us who have not really mastered the quality of patience and do have difficulty being committed to tasks and goals that require long-suffering dedication that leads to success.

So I have a few ideas through which I can offer some inspiration for the short-term blogger and how you can take advantage of the various changes and seasons of popular events. [Read more…] about Creative Techniques To Help You Profit From Seasonal Blogging

How the Compounding Effect of Blogging Gives Your Blog a Huge Boost

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The compounding effect of blogging is a topic I often discuss in my books, to my clients, and at speaking engagements, but in order to understand the compounding effect of blogging, you have to understand the importance of search engines in sending visitors to your blog.

Consider this…

Where do you go to find information about just about anything when you need it? Do you check the Yellow Pages? Nope. Do you go to the library and look at an encyclopedia?  Not anymore.  Today, most people have access to the Internet and they turn to Google or their favorite search engine (with Google being #1) to find the information they need on just about any subject.

Example — Imagine you have a website and you want to increase traffic to it.  Here’s how the compounding effect of blogging works:

  1. You have a website made up of 20 pages. That’s 20 entry points to your website for Google to find, index, and deliver in relevant keyword searches.
  2. You add a blog to your website, and you publish a blog post everyday for a year. Now you have 365+20=385 entry points to your website for Google to find, index, and deliver in relevant keyword searches.
  3. You publish posts on your blog and those posts offer interesting, useful, helpful or entertaining content that your audience finds value in. In other words, those posts are shareworthy.
  4. People find your blog content and realize it’s interesting and shareworthy. They share it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. with links back to your blog. They write about it on their own blogs with links back to your blog. Now, the number of entry points to your website (via your blog) has increased exponentially. Your Google search traffic increases as all of these additional incoming links to your blog and website boost your Google search rankings, and traffic to your site from referrers across the web increases, too!
  5. Your website went from a static destination with 20 standard entry points to an interactive, engaging site with hundreds or thousands (or more) of entry points and an increase in traffic from search engines and referrers! You can’t buy that kind of exposure and growth potential!

The compounding effect of blogging really is that simple. It’s about creating shareworthy content and entry points, and it’s a method of building organic search traffic that has a good chance of turning into a long-term, sustainable traffic-stream and help you build a loyal audience.

Bottom-line: any blogger can benefit from the compounding effect of blogging, but it starts with creating shareworthy content.

Image: stock.xchng

Performancing Blogosphere Roundup – May 26, 2010

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If you’re a blogger on the go, you might know that WordPress is available for a number of mobile devices including iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry. SplashPress Media’s Darnell Clayton discusses the Blackberry edition at Blog Herald. I’ll be covering the iPhone and iPad versions in the future. (The simple summary is that the iPad-specific version of WordPress beats the iPhone version, and it’s great to be able to monitor a blog when I’m about and can’t carry my laptop around.)

Are you looking forward to the release of WordPress 3.0? It’s been delayed slightly to later this month or early June because of bugs, but the second beta release has been out since early May. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet but Six Revisions has a guide to the new features. Amongst them are a new interface for installation, a new default theme with both header and background customization, a link shortener feature for better micro-blogging integration, a merge of the single site version of WordPress and WordPress MU (Multi-user), and tons more. On a related note, Drupal 7 is in the works, though no release date just yet.

While a non-Mac computer is just fine for blogging, I’ve made a MacBook Pro and an iPhone (and iPad) an important part of my multi-computer blogging setup. From May 25th until Sep 7, 2010, Apple is offering a freebie for qualified people within the educational market. Students (college and K12), faculty/ staff members, parents, and PTA/PTO executives might all be eligible to take advantage of Apple’s educational offer: buy a Mac and you’ll get a free 8 GB iPod Touch (basically an iPhone without the phone capability, just the WiFi). Note that this is a rebate offer. You do actually pay for the iPod Touch upfront but get credited within 90 days of making your claim. Please see their qualifications details.

Adapt or die. It’s a common refrain, and it applies to bloggers as well as online busineses. While newspapers are not online businesses per se, that’s the direction some traditional publishers are tending, but what they’re offering isn’t just digital content. A few are now selling SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services — an important aspect in building a strong web presence for a blog or website. For example, Gannett Newspapers, who are behind USA Today and other publications, are one of several publishers going in this direction, though they are targeting local markets individually. I guess in terms of adapting, it’s in an interesting approach, but who would associate newspapers with those sorts of skills? Search Engine Land has the details.

5 Ways to Make Your Blog Timeless

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Blogging is immediate, particularly for niches that rely on breaking news realtime. Thus it’s easy to forget that readers will visit your blog and read posts months, years, and even decades after they were written. Here are five ways to keep visitors engaged with your content, and prevent them from bouncing after they scratch their heads in confusion over your outdated blog posts. [Read more…] about 5 Ways to Make Your Blog Timeless

Blogging Tricks Will Only Bring You Part of the Way

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Recently, I was working with someone that considers themselves an expert in social media marketing, SEO, and other popular terms these days for promoting a site and getting it some traffic. The person ran their ideas past me, and there were two things I quickly noticed.

The first was that they had probably read some blogs that told them to do various things to increase their SEO, things like bolding keywords, stuffing meta tags with keywords, and changing out H2 tags for H1 tags all in the hopes of beating their competitors.

The second was that they were focused on various tricks relating to creating landing pages, buying links, and other marketing methods.

All of the information this person passed by me was older information, most of which was nearly useless today as well as short sighted, with possible results that would end in disaster.

Imagine if you will, owning a blog for years, slowly building it up, trying to get to the next level in traffic, revenue and whatnot, hiring an “SEO expert” and having that person create, via tricks, some serious traffic.

You pay the person, thinking they’ve done a great job, and three months down the road, your site starts dropping in rankings, traffic dries up, and various other things happen that puts your site lower than it was before the “SEO expert” came along.

This is a far too common occurrence in blogging. Even the bloggers managing their sites make mistakes in SEO, marketing and social media in hopes of creating a hugely successful, viral, high positioned page that they can leverage in terms of making huge amounts of money or popularity that they can leverage in other ways.

People have to stop and realize that blogging tricks will only get you part of the way to your goals, and if done incorrectly they can actually cause huge setbacks.

Too much optimization, too overt in your self-promotion, and you’ll end up wishing you could undo your hard work.

The best advice I can give someone looking to do better with their blog would be to research as much as you can before you act in any way to effect your blog in any important way.

Don’t just leap into action after reading one person’s experience, and always check the age of the information because all the search engines are working hard at providing the best natural, gaming free search results.

The Top 50 SEO & SEM Bloggers Worth Following

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Image representing Matt Cutts as depicted in C...
Image byPubConvia CrunchBase

Anyone who wants to run a serious blog or website needs solid information on the ever changing nature of the SEO/SEM game. If you’re looking to make it to the top of the charts on the web, you’ve got your work cut out for you and you’ll want every tip, trick and piece of advice you can find.

That’s why we’ve put together this list of the Top 50 SEO/SEM Experts. These are the folks you want to keep an eye on, in no particular order:

Matt Cutts – Most of those already involved in SEO know the name Matt Cutts. He’s a Google employee who specializes in SEO issues, with a passion for the prevention of link spamming. His blog is very down to earth and filled with insight you can’t get from someone who doesn’t work at Google.

Rand Fishkin – As a major contributor to SEOmoz.org, one of the net’s premiere SEO sites, Randy got involved in the Web game back in the early 90’s. He’s been invited to speak with the engineers of both Google and Microsoft, not to mention given presentations at Stanford and NPR.

Daron Babin – After starting his career at NBC TV and winning prestigious awards in the broadcasting industry, Babin turned his attention to SEO and SEM. He’s not one of the stars of the SEO world, running WebmasterRadio.

Jim Boykin – A regular conference speaker on the topics of link building campaigns and search engine marketing tools, Boykin not only blogs about SEO/SEM, he’s built tools to help marketers along on their path to success. His down home style appeals to many, but his success is even more attractive.

Aaron Wall – One of the most powerful SEO bloggers online, Wall is the man behind SEO Book, a giant and irreplaceable resource for the SEO industry. Being featured in the Wall Street Journal and a popular speaker at PubCon speaks for itself.

Danny Sullivan – Starting out as a journalist, Sullivan went on to cover search engines in a big way. He has a podcast and also writes for Search Engine Land. The scope of Sullivan’s knowledge makes him a big favorite for aspiring SEO experts.

Barry Schwartz – Another writer for Search Engine Land, Schwartz uses his blog to track the conversations taking place at the most popular SEO forums online. He’s known as one of the hardest workers in the SEO industry.

Bill Slawski – Coming from a background in law, Slawski started out part-time, but his fascination for the SEO world lead him towards a career in consulting. He focuses on ethical, proactive solutions to SEO issues and along with lots of research and experimentation yet delivers the information in a laid back way.

Todd Malicoat – With nearly a decade of serious SEO experience, Malicoat brings a lot to the table in terms of traffic generation. He’s a specialist in how to get visitors to websites and a popular speaker at Search Engine Strategies and Pubcon who’s been featured in Inc. Magazine and the New York Post.

Andy Beal – With a specialization in online reputation management, Beal is an SEO expert who’s serviced commercial powerhouses like Motorola, GlaxoSmithKline and NBC. He’s also a forefront expert on SEM, sharing his wisdom through his popular blogs Marketing Pilgrim and SEM Vendor.

Michael Arrington – You’ve probably heard of TechCrunch, the company Arrington founded after an already successful career as a corporate securities lawyer and serial entrepreneur. He’s shaped the SEO landscape in a great many ways and continues to be a major player in the SEM world.

John Battelle – You may know of Battelle’s book ‘The Search’, a landmark in the SEO world. He’s a journalist and entrepreneur who blogs from a very stripped down site about the high gloss world of Web 2.0 and other topics. His major aim is helping SEO marketers develop towards the future of the web.

Brett Tabke – With more than three decades in the computer industry, Tabke brought his experience to bear and accomplishes great things in the SEO industry. He’s noted for for coining some major basics in the Web world SEO Themes, link farms and SERP.

Rae Hoffman – Along with viral marketing, Rae ‘Sugarrae’ Hoffman took her endless hours of time spent online and turned herself into an SEO consultant. With a flashy yet effective sense of design, her blog offers the SEO crowd a solid source of effective advice for pulling traffic.

Matt McGee – In addition to moderating for Sphinn and editing for Search Engine Land, McGee has carved a niche for himself in local search marketing. Helping companies like Target.com got the Wall Street Journal interested in what he has to say.

Rene LeMerle – Having been in the industry for over a decade, LeMerle focuses on global search engine marketing. He’s also interested in Web 2.0 helping digital marketers get their marketing efforts to pay off.

Benjamin Pfeiffer – Known as Phoenix, Pfeiffer is the owner of Rank Smart Search Marketing renowned as an business consultant and search optimizer. A veteran in SEO, he’s overseen teams of SEO pro’s and knows how to achieve massive success with a campaign.

Carolyn Shelby – Way back in 1994, Shelby was already building websites professionally. Today, she focuses on SEO for sites that are old and outdated, taking them to the next level of performance with a complete re-launch. She’s also well known in the blog radio circuit and many SEO forums.

Patrick Altoft – With the UK’s largest Internet marketing blog, Altoft has a lot of credibility on both sides of the pond. His Blogstorm has gained him so much clout that he’s been quoted by the likes of BBC News, Wired, TechCrunch and Mashable.

Michael Gray – Having started out in the online retail market over a decade ago, Gray knows his way around the net. He blogs about loads of excellent information for SEO and it’s easy to see why he gets invited to so many conferences as a guest speaker.

Bruce Clay – One of the strongest voices for ethics in SEO, Clay has established a large company that offers SEO training among many other services. His blog hosts many excellent SEO and SEM writers.

David Naylor – Not only a digital radio host, Naylor got his start doing SEO work for major corporations. He’s focused on useability in site design and getting Number 1 rankings in the search engines and teaching others how to do that, too.

Jill Whalen – As the founder of High Rankings back in 1995, Whalen is a regular speaker at SEO conferences. As a moderator at Sphinn who’s quoted by Inc. Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, she brings a wealth of experience with her.

Eric Enge – With three decades worth of tech industry experience, Enge keep his focus on total search engine compliance, never cutting corners for solid results. He’s the author of a book called The Art of SEO and a career entrepreneur.

Andrew Shotland – After starting with a site that he SEO’d to three million visitors per month, Shotland sold his start-up to CitySearch. Now he’s an expert in the area of local search, an emerging niche within the SEM industry.

John Andrews – Describing himself as a Competitive Webmaster, Andrews began as an IT professional for a non-profit that needed to spread the word. He now shares his SEO knowledge that he’s gained working for large companies and professionals on his blog.

Vanessa Fox – A prominent speaker at search industry events, Fox not only writes about search engine optimisation, she’s also got incredible experience. She helped design the Google Webmaster Central and was a spokesperson for Google.

Eric Lander – From his woodland outpost, Lander blogs about all things SEO. He’s a specialist in both local search and truly organic search engine optimization. He’s also not afraid to be controversial in his posts.

Bill Hartzer – Having been a professional writer for the tech industry and TV, Hartzer understands how search plays a role in popularity. He’s also the administrator for SearchEngineForums.com and a consultant for large companies.

Shimon Sandler – After starting as a marketing manager for a detergent company, Sandler decided to set out to master SEO. He’s come a long ways and is now a popular guest on Good Karma podcast who brings his major corporate SEO experience along with him.

Jaan Kanellis – As an expert in both PPC and organic SEM, Kanellis has worked with big companies like Google, Yahoo and MSN. He’s a moderator at WebProWorld.com and a real asset to the SEM industry as a whole.

Dev Basu – Starting out as a teen at Microsoft Canada, Basu brings an internationalist slant to his work. He’s experienced working for businesses at all levels, helping them establish and promote their online presence.

Kalena Jordan – The founder of Search Engine College, Jordan has put her history of SEO to work for others by teaching both SEO and SEM. She now does consulting with the aim of helping customers achieve the highest ROI for their online sites.

Kyle Bunch – Formerly a contributor to AOL’s Fanhouse, Bunch went on to run Blogebrity to cover the A-list of bloggers. He’s helped develop the SEOi toolset for users at his company SEOintelligence and also runs a sports media conference.

Jeremy Hermanns – Having worked with over 50 Fortune 500 top search engine companies, Hermanns comes from a background of working at Overture/Goto. He’s currently focused on providing the finest SEO toolset available.

Karl Ribas – Coming from a background as a graphic artist, Ribas works in many areas of website marketing with a strong focus on SEM. He mixes a strong desire to create visually appealing sites with a determination to get them high in search engine rankings.

Edward Cowell – A UK native, Cowell focuses on the latest news in the organic SEO and pay per click markets. He created Search Engine War to offer a unique UK approach to marketing online and offers lots of global search information on his blog.

Erik Dafforn – The creator of the SEO Speedwagon blog, Dafforn strives to provide ‘beneath the hood’ coverage in the world of SEO and SEM. His blog regularly delves deep into technical issues that help both advanced and beginning SEO experts alike.

Kim Krause Berg – Known as Cre8pc online, Krause Berg worked for a tech magazine’s website back in the 90’s. She’s used her experience in Quality Assurance to carve a niche for herself in SEO world where she focuses on the visitor side of quality SEO results.

Lee Odden – One of 25 stars featured in the book Online Marketing Heroes, Odden has proven himself to the level that U.S. News and Fortune have taken the time to write about him. He’s focused on the combination of good public relations and SEO.

Roger Dooley – As the consultant and entrepreneur behind Neuro Science Marketing, Dooley blends his offline marketing experience with an understanding of “big picture” SEO issues. He strives to sharpen the skills of those in emerging SEM markets.

Roger Montti – As a site auditor and reviewer, Montti focuses on commentary about the search engine industry in general. He regularly helps those who need assistance building quality links to improve their SEO strategies.

David Brown – A popular podcast speaker at SEO 101, Brown formed the Top SEO Consulting firm to work almost exclusively with large scale corporate clients. His focus is providing high ROI for those he offers SEO advice to.

James Harrison – Coming from a background in Pay Per Click and Internet marketing, Harrison freelances his SEO work using his skills as a writer. On his blog he shares his successes as he works up the rankings in the SEO world.

Jeremy Morgan – With over a decade’s worth of experience developing websites, Morgan brings his history to work for him on his blog. There he offers tips for those just starting in the SEO game and covers topics like using Bing and Twitter instead of Google only.

Roy Sencio – Coming from a background in advertising and marketing, Sencio blogs about topics to help others in SEO and SEM. His primary focus is on getting solid conversions in the pay per click marketing environment.

Steve Wiideman – As a veteran specialist in both organic SEO and pay per click campaigns, Wiideman provides several blogs to offer tips and trips to aspiring SEO and SEM marketers.

Michael Guy – As the CEO of 1SEOExperts, Guy focuses on helping webmasters fine tune their sites and raise their profiles in the search engines.

Brad Fallon – As a specialist expert in SEO, Fallon’s blog offers many tactics and tips to help those who want great search engine ranks and the traffic that comes with it.

Nima Asrar Haghighi – Coming from a background of professional SEO and SEM, Haghighi provides excellent info on his blog for SEM tips and tricks that improve your search engine rankings.

Blackhat SEO: Never a Long-Term Strategy

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In the world of Internet business, just as in life offline, there are those who are looking to make a fast buck and there are those who want to earn their way to the top in order to create a lasting business venture. When it comes to SEO, these two approaches to the search engine marketing game are known as blackhat and whitehat, respectively. If you’re looking to be a serious player in the Web business game then you’re going to want to know the difference between both of these approaches and why a person or company would choose one over the other.

A quick definition of blackhat SEO is that it tends to be geared towards scoring big amounts quick, short term money. The methods used are intended to trick the search engines by using deceptive techniques and fool Web surfers into clicking links to visit sites that they otherwise might never think about clicking. While it’s not always true, blackhat techniques sometimes go hand in hand with malware, viruses, spam and other criminal or borderline illegal techniques. While the methods and tactics employed vary, the key point to remember about blackhat methods for making money online is that all of them involve some level of trickery for either man or machine and are designed almost exclusively to make cash as quickly as possible.

Many people are attracted to blackhat SEO because it’s said to be easier than whitehat. This can be true, but many times you first need to buy expensive software to perform the methods. These software programs may work for a limited time, but it’s not uncommon to find out that the program you paid a good deal of cash for only ends up working for a few months or maybe even just a few weeks. If you’re looking to pull in massive traffic, a blackhat program may at first look to be the ideal solution to yank visitors into your site and crank them through your Pay Per Click or affiliate sales pages. If we’re completely honest (which is a core component of the whitehat approach) then we have to admit that yes, blackhat can earn big money. However, the method must be changed constantly and using blackhat to turn a website into a cash cow is absolutely a short term venture. Once you’ve earned some money you’ll end up having to shut the site down and build a whole new site to keep your income stream up and even then it’s unlikely you’ll be able to pull this off with any level of consistency. Blackhat SEO ends up being very similar to treading water, it’s a lot of work to keep yourself afloat and you still won’t go far.

While whitehat SEO appears to take more work, in reality it pays off better over a longer period of time and your earnings rise, they don’t plummet due to penalties from the same search engines that you need to make a living from. The people who develop and maintain search engines have entire divisions of their companies dedicated to eliminating websites and marketers who pollute the Internet with garbage links and spam style websites. You’ll be going up against an army of folks who are paid to lock blackhat sites out of the upper echelons of Internet commerce and if you’re publicly exposed for your actions you’ll most in the industry completely unwilling to work with you, much less cut lucrative deals that the Web business is famous for.

Besides, let’s face it, having to crank out lame website after lame website ends up getting old, especially after you figure out that you’re doing more work than the whitehat guys in the long run. This and the fact that the future holds more challenges for blackhat, rather than less, makes whitehat appear to be not only more ethical, but a more attractive choice for earning money all around. As the search engines increase in sophistication they will come to resemble the human mind more closely and that’s bad news for those who have build miniature empires based on the ease with which we can trick computer programs right now. It’s an uphill battle for smaller and smaller profits while over on the whitehat side profits continue to rise for everyone rather than only the major players.

If you can provide a genuinely good product or service that people want they’re going to want to see what you have to offer, they’re going to want to do business with you or your company, and most importantly, they’re going to want to repeat that business over and over again. Repeat business is how individuals and companies thrive at the commercial level. A solid reputation continues to become increasingly more crucial for those doing serious business on the web. It’s no longer about bold, colorful text and ‘click here now!’ style advertising. Internet users are becoming more savvy and the more they experience the negative types of marketing thrown at them, the more wary they’re going to become. Building trust online has become the absolute must for anyone seeking to build a business with a Web presence. There’s no real future in scamming, especially since legally, it’s becoming much riskier to trick people online no matter how insignificant that deception may seem to the person hoping to score some easy money.

As you can see, the future is definitely going to be whitehat all the way, not just because it’s the nice guy approach, but because it makes sense. No one wants to feel cheated and everyone wants a great deal. Those who can offer a quality experience are going to thrive as the global Internet population keeps on rising. Make sure you consider which path you want to take before you set out to earn a living from the Internet and keep in mind, you get what you pay for and reap what you sow. If you keep your business clean, valuable to the consumer and run honestly you’ll get the fruits of that labor. Black Hat