Dear readers,

My good friend Jack Spirko wrote an awesome blog post today about how to do search engine optimization for wordpress blogs.  He talks about plugins to use. He gives you some tips on how to get links, and also some tips on how to turn your blog posts into cash.

If you are a blogger or podcaster or are thinking about setting up a home business you’ll want to read Jack’s post.  He gives a lot of solid advice on why you need a blog and how to make money from that blog.

I’d also like to recommend another article on SEO for WordPress by Yoast (Joost de Valk). Yoast is a WordPress plugin developer who has a lot of expertise in SEO.

Do I practice what I preach? I wrote my book Nichework Marketing  about the importance of blogging for your business. I also recently converted my Custom Greeting Card Guy web site from a traditional web site to a WordPress powered site. I’m using many of the same plugins Jack and Yoast talk about in their articles on WordPress SEO and my site ranks very well (top 3) for a bunch of keywords on Google.

Check out the articles above on Search Engine Optimization for WordPress (SEO) and let me know if you have any questions. I’m happy to help!

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > search engine optimization

Dear readers,

Would you like to make your websites search engine friendly?

Have you heard about the Google “Panda” update?

In case you aren’t a search engine nut like me let me give you a quick explanation.

Every so often Google updates their algorithm that evaluates your web site and chooses what keywords your web sites rank for.

The last major update was called “Panda” and it caused a lot of stir.  Many web sites lost their rankings including some from major brands like Overstock.com, JCPenney, and even Forbes.  A lot of smaller companies lost their rankings as well.

One of the major changes Google made in Panda was to place a greater emphasis on quality.

I’m not going to go into details on Panda.  Instead let’s talk about things you can do to make your websites search engine friendly and hopefully improve that “quality” score so you don’t end up getting penalized by Google. (This especially applies if you’re doing niche marketing with me over at Nichework Marketing.)

Today there was a great article from Wordtracker.  The article discussed 3 smart ways to make your content more valuable and sharable.

One of the things discussed was to add multimedia to your content.  If you saw my new Custom Greeting Card Guy web site I announced earlier this week… You saw that I added both Animoto video and YouTube video as well as static images to “spice” up the content.  This was a simple way to add value and quality to my web site.

Little things you do like adding multimedia can make your content stand out.  Instead of making your web site look like an article farm or content farm multimedia shows you put in some extra effort.  A little multimedia can instantly make your websites search engine friendly.

For more tips on how to improve the quality of your content (in the eyes of Google) make sure to read the excellent wordtracker article.

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > search engine optimization

Dear readers,

Are you a blogger? Do you want do SEO? Do you want to get better search engine rankings?

There is a new plugin for WordPress blogs which takes a lot of the SEO burden off your shoulders.  This plugin replaces a half dozen other plugins.   The plugin is simply enough called WordPress SEO.  It is written by Joost De Valk who is a well known plugin writer as well as the host of a popular WordPress podcast.

WordPress SEO is a great new plugin.  It replaces the need for separate plugins. Before you’d need plugins for:

• Titles
• XML sitemaps
• Breadcrumbs
• Google Analytics
• Meta Headers
• robots.txt
• RSS footers

WordPress SEO attempts to put all these tasks into one plugin.  It can even look at your configuration and popup some basic warning messages for SEO optimization.

Congrats Joost. You did a great job with this plugin!

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > search engine optimization

Dear readers,

Yesterday I wrote about SEO Basics (Search Engine Optimization). In my article I began to talk about building quality links and specifically building relevant links to your web site.

Today I want to talk about 1 way links instead of 2 way links.

To recap, yesterday I spoke of 2 way links.  You and I swap links to each other’s web sites. These are 2 way links as illustrated below:

The search engines realized that wasn’t a very effective way to measure the popularity of a web site.  They then decided to give weight to what we call 1 way links.

A 1 way link is when someone links in to your web site but you have NO links out to them. Here is an illustration of a 1 way link:

In this scenario you give me a link.  I do not give you a link back.  You simply link to me because you like my web site. You like the information I provide, you like my article, you like my video, or whatever.

If you think about a big web site like Youtube.  Youtube gets lots of one way links.  I see a video I like and I link to them. I don’t ask Youtube to link back to me.  Youtube develops a lot of 1 way links organically. They don’t have to ask for links they just get them.

How do you relate that to your own strategy for SEO and getting good rankings in Google?

You want to develop as many 1 way links as possible.  You don’t want to swap links with other people. Instead you want to develop 1 way links. When someone contacts you and asks for a link exchange realize that it may not be the most beneficial way to develop your links.  Maybe you turn them down outright.  Perhaps you say ok but you suggest that you link to two different web sites.  Perhaps you don’t link to the same web sites.  Like this:

Let’s say I contacted you to share links.  I want  a link from your blog.  Normally people would swap links. We’d each put links on each other’s blogs.  That forms the old fashioned link swap from the 1990s.

However if you want to be more effective at swapping links you need to exchange links to separate web sites.

Your web site A links to my web site A.

My web site B links to your web site B.

By doing your link swaps this way it looks a little bit more legitimate to Google. It doesn’t look like a 2 way link swap.

There are still some problems with this method.  You could create a 3 Way link… You could still create a “loop” by doing this.  I don’t want to bore you with all the details.  I just want to provide some basic knowledge.

Do you understand the idea of 1 way links?  Do you understand how they differ from 2 way links? Do you understand why Google and the search engines give more weight to a 1 way link than a 2 way link?

I’ve love your feedback.  Leave me a comment and let me know.

MLM Training > search engine optimization

Dear Readers,

In the last few posts I’ve written about the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization.)  You can find the first post on SEO here and the second post here.

I’ve talked about keywords and about the content of your web page.  Those are both important to the ranking of your web site in the search engines.  However one of the most important aspects has nothing to do with your web page at all. It has to do with all the links coming in to your web page.

I’m talking about building quality links.

Let’s talk about links for a second.  Many of you may be familiar with the old fashioned 1990s way of building links. You would swap links with someone.  I’d send an email to you and ask you if we could swap links.  You’d put a link to my web site and I’d put a link to your web site.  Like this:

This was the old fashioned way. Everyone would swap links.  Entire groups of people formed to swap links with one another. You’d buy a link swapping program and install it on your web site to allow you to automate the process of swapping links.  You’d buy a program that would send out emails to people to ask them to swap links.

Using this method the more links you had coming in to your web site the more important your web site appeared to be to the search engines.  If  all things were equal and I had 2555 links coming in to my web site and my competitor only had 300 my web site would rank better in the search engines than his.

Google and the other search engines caught on to this.

First they said, the link needs to be relevant.

If I run a custom greeting card web site…. Then a link from my friend’s CT mobile detailing web site is irrelevant. (Hi Al, a real friend of mine runs that business.)  It helps towards my total number of links but Google said this link is off topic.  Al has a business on car detailing and I have a business on greeting cards.  They are on totally different topics.

The search engines said that a relevant link… one on a similar or related topic would carry more weight than irrelevant links.  Perhaps one relevant link would be worth several irrelevant links.  If I got links to my greeting card web site from insurance, mortgage, home business, car detailing, etc web sites it would have less importance than if I got a web site with holiday cards to link to my greeting card site.  In Al’s case a link from my greeting card web site would have less relevance than a link from a car dealership would.

Relevant links are now important to the search engines:

Earlier this week my friend Diane “mlmblone” Walker emailed me. She had someone ask her about a link.  They wanted to do a link swap and the web site was on a totally irrelevant topic.  I let her know that was not a good idea.

Second the search engines said that one way links were better than 2 way links…

I’ll talk about 2 way links in tomorrow’s installment of SEO basics.

For now, does the topic of “relevant” vs. “irrelevant” links make sense to you?  Leave me a comment and let me know!

.

PS. If you’re online tonight: Wednesday Sept. 22nd. I’m hosting another “40 ways to grow your business” free webinar.  The webinar is at 9 PM Eastern 6 PM Pacific.  I’d love to have you on as my guest to learn about how to grow your business. Click here to register for the webinar.

MLM Training > search engine optimization