SEO Competition - Blog 2.0 vs. The Website

Inside AdWords: Top 10 AdWords Blogs of 2007

2008-01-03T09:36:00.000-08:00

10 AdWords Blogs You Should Read
This post is for all the PPC lovers out there. This is a list of Google's Inside AdWords: Marketing Blog's Top 10 blog posts of 2007. If you were riding the PPC/AdWords roller coster this year, then some of these blog post might bring back some memories...

Bye 2007, we'll miss you!

Blogger Buzz: 2007 Roundup

2007-12-30T15:22:00.000-08:00

Check out the best of 2007 according to Blogger Buzz. SEO Blogger Buzz: '07 Roundup

Blogger Buzz: I Link, Therefore I am

2007-12-30T15:21:00.000-08:00

I wrote an article on my New Wordpress Blog about a post I found on Blogger Buzz about how blogging could help your career. Well, while reading through Blogger Buzz I came across this interesting article title; I Link, Therefore I am. Being a SEO, I had to read. And yes, I found it to be very good. (even though it is old)

Knowing Search Engine Robots' Names - Beneficial to SEO's?

2007-11-20T15:38:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about creating separate optimized webpages for each search engine robot to crawl. Creating meta tags to direct each robot to only pages that are specially optimized for that bot seems like it can be a very benificial optimization technique.

Then I wondered if it's worth researching each search engine's algorithm and creating pages specially created for each of their robots. Not to mention that some of these engines probably don't get the traffic worth aiming for.

Seems like a lot of work... (or maybe not)

Does anyone know how else a SEO can benefit from knowing each robot's names?

Here's a nice list of the Search Engine Robots from Search Engine Dictionary.

Strange Google Placement - How to Rank in Local Business?

2007-11-19T20:10:00.000-08:00

Hey,

I understand what is needed for a site to rank well organically and I also know how much money PPC can cost to get high rankings in the sponsored results.

But my question is; does anyone know how to get your site to rank number well in the local business results section?

I created local business ads in Google, but that seems like it just shows your PPC ads in the Google local business directory. I see sites that I work on ranking well in the local business section in some towns, but I could never understand what steps I actually have to take to get sites to rank in the local business results at the top of the page.

What brought this question to mind is I was checking out the Google Analytics keyword performance reports and noticed I was getting traffic for "land and home san diego". How the heck did this happen???????????

Image of Google Local Business Result Ranking

As long as the site stays there, I will off-page optimize the San Diego Resources page of LLL Christian Preschool or create a local real estate content page within the site that could actually become a great resource for parents moving to San Diego looking for preschools and other San Diego city info.

Valid HTML for Better Search Engine Rankings - No Secret

2007-11-19T17:38:00.001-08:00

Not too long ago I wrote about how Little Lamb Land Preschool is falling short of Yahoo Locals & Citysearch on the SERP's.

I been asking around on what to do when you have a site with 12 pages competing against websites with well over 100,000 pages.

Well, I have a secret admirer that has been sending me tips on what I can do to improve the rankings. The funny thing is, this guy/girl wont give me another tip until I've completed the task he/she sent me prior.

And I know for certain my secret admirer checks out my site to make sure I completing this task.

The latest tip he sent me was to go to validator.w3.org and fix all my errors.

Just when I thought all I needed was to know some more seo secrets or search engine optimization tips to optimize my site, I realized I have a homepage with 52 errors and still haven't even completed the first major steps.

I'm still a rookie...

Go to W3's HTML Validator and make sure your website is clean and bug free!!!

Measuring the Worth of Your Blog - Analytics Blog

2007-11-19T09:30:00.000-08:00

Lately, I been paying close attention to how much time I invest into the Internet. All the time I spend on the Internet could be substituted with fitness activities, time with my girlfriend and friends, a paying pt-gig, etc. Currently, I am setting up routine tasks, measuring my profits and time and analyzing other variables to help me decide if pursuing personal Internet profits is worth my time.

This morning I decided that I was going to post a blog at least once a day. Didn't matter to me what I wrote about, just as long as I stayed consistent with my posting.

Coincidentally, I ran into Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik a analytics blog. Author Avinash Kaushik writes about Blog Metric: Six Recommendations for Measuring Your Success.

His 1st recommendation; "Raw Author Contribution" talks about your blogging consistency & how to measure the worth of your efforts.

For me, time is money.

I haven't spent much time on this blog so I don't expect anything in return. I'm going to test out this blog by putting in some consistent time. Let's see what this blog is worth to me.

Negative Google Adsense Keywords | Preschool PPC

2007-11-17T00:43:00.000-08:00

I just started advertising my parent's preschool website; Little Lamb Land Preschool on adwords and thought I should post my negative keywords because I found some of them interesting and just incase any other preschool ppc advertiser needed some ideas.

I'm a frim believer in keeping the competition tough and up to par and competitive so I can become better at what I(we) do.

SAN DIEGO PRESCHOOL NEGATIVE KEYWORDS

keyword
book
candy
coloring book
field trips
free
ideas
information
magazine
resources
toys
teacher
why
chops
supply
supplies
teachers
job
jobs
assistant
photo
photos
activity
activities
pictures
link exchange
carlsbad
ascondido
chula vista
el cajon
oceanside
san ysidro
ramona
julian
mary
had
software
graphics
international
farm
feed
raise
murrieta
temecula
gallery
art
crafts
universal
homeschool
lesson plans
books
games
online
printable
disney
internet
worksheet
workbook
jewish
dinosaur
theme
print
negative

You can Google anything related to preschool in san diego and find Little Lamb Land Preschool on the first page SEO & PPC.

Google Tells All | Everything You Need to Know to Rank High on Google

2007-08-12T20:06:00.001-07:00

I think that it's great Google actually tells everyone what your site needs to rank well in search engines. If you went through each of these topics one by one(with SEO in mind), you'll find your website on the first page of Google search. FOR REAL! SEO Blog San Diego - Google it!

read more | digg story

Fixing the Bouce Rate & Average Time on Site

2007-08-12T18:08:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I created a website for my parents; Little Lamb Land Christian Preschool. It was a 5 page website with almost everything you needed to know on the homepage. A few months ago the site was a strong #2 behing local.yahoo.com childcare page for the term "Preschool in San Diego" or any variation thereof. Over the past 2 months LittleLambLand.org slowly fell to the 2nd page. Keep in mind, I didn't perform any seo techniques this whole time. I have recentlt heard that in order to rank well on Google, you have to start looking at other dynamics such as average time a visitor is your on site and the bounce rate.

So I went into my Google Analytics account and checked up on the site stats. The bounce rate during the fall of the site was at a whooping 81.66% with an average visitor time on site of 3 minutes and 33 seconds.
I reviewed my other sites and found most of them had a bounce rate of under 50% and and a average vistor time on site of over 10 minutes.

I spent one night analyzing why the site was doing so poorly. I thought, I am mentioning everything the visitor needs to know about the preschool on the homepage. Everything from a map of the school, program rates, preschool's goals and more. Their was really no need for the visitor to surf the site, unless the visitor was extremely interested or bored.

So I decided that I should break the homepage out into several different pages. This would give the visitor more reason to navigate to other pages resulting in a longer vistor time on this site. Then my girlfriend brought up a good point about my extremely high bounce rate. She said "maybe when peole come visit your site, they immediately leave because the preschool isn't in their area. Therefore, I decided to not make it so obvious where the preschool in located.

I added a Google interactive map to a new locations page. I gave the founders their own pages. I added an attractive link on the homepage to the website's new photo gallery. I even made a separate page for the days the school will be closed. It's almost neccessary to visit more pages throughout the site to find out if Little Lamb Land if the right preschool for the visitor.

After making these changes, LittleLambLand.org's bounce rate dropped down to 37.50% and the average time on site went up to 9:35. This was only a few days ago, but take that Google.

Now, if only I could think of a way to up local.yahoo...
This will be much tougher, with Yahoo being a site with almost every preschool listing in San Diego with reviews, maps, and more. And I'm sure the visitor time on site is killing 9:35. I visited, it deserves 1st place. But can a preschool website ever rank number one for the term preschool in san diego over Yahoo's preschool directory?

If you know any seo tips for little sites competing with large directories, please comment this post.

Using Images For Local SEO

2007-07-25T17:27:00.001-07:00

Great tips for SEO's looking for a way to optimize their sites through Image Optimization. Also, a good business promotion article.Go to my profile; JameSEO and Digg my articles.

read more | digg story

I Finally Joined Stumble Upon

2007-07-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

I been hearing a lot lately about StumbleUpon.com. It's a web 2.0 site where users are allowed to make friends like with myspace and bookmark websites like in Digg. It's good for traffic because you can get a ton of friends to check out your bookmarked pages. And it's good for SEO's because if you you can bookmark your site and get links from a major web 2.0 site.

Stumble Upon has a Google Page Rank of 8 and is ranked 293 in Alexa. The site gets tons of traffic with over 5,000 links on the net pointing to it. Try StumbleUpon out!

Video About Facebook's Worth

2007-07-20T16:32:00.000-07:00

Rumor has it that Google is bidding against Yahoo & other major internet companies to purchase facebook
$2 billion is the where the bids are now.

I'm not a Web Designer; I'm a SEO: Keyword Architecture

2007-07-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

I'm an SEO, but I recently got offered a job to rebuild a site for my client Miller's Carpet Care. I'm not a designer, nor do I fully understand HTML & CSS. But Bill was my SEO client and everyone knows content is key to great search engine rankings.

My job is to place Miller's Carpet Care on the top of Google for various keyword queries, such as "carpet care riverside". "san diego carpet care", "carpet cleaning san bernardino". This was my chance to build a very SEO friendly website.

I made sure I mentioned all the words through out the Title, Tags, Description & Content. Then I made sure every page had links pointing back to the home page with the keywords in the anchor text. Then I gave all the other pages some love by getting every other page to link to them with that page's keywords in those links.

By making sure your keywords are throughout the page, each page is getting a link with the keywords back to them & no broken links are in your domain, your site is ready for offpage optimization.

Just doing this got Miller's Website to the top 30 of anything relating to carpet in southern california.

Stalk a phone number with the Phone Number Geolocator

2007-07-19T11:01:00.001-07:00

Google Maps mashup Phone Number Geolocator takes the first six digits of a phone number (the area code plus 3) and gives you a close approximation of that number's origin on a Google map. Google has been helping us locate area codes for a while now, but some area codes cover pretty large areas. The Phone Number Geolocator goes one step further.

read more | digg story

Current Client Search Engine Rankings

2007-07-18T23:20:00.000-07:00

Ashley LaVelle - Horse Property Specialist - www.ashleylavelle.com
rankings are based on the avegage rank of each of these search engines... (Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL Quintura)

Keyword: horse properties in murrieta and Website: ashleylavelle.com
3 Horse Properties for Sale in California | Murrieta Real Estate http://www.ashleylavelle.com
4 Horse Properties for Sale | Murrieta California Homes http://www.ashleylavelle.com/personalinfo.html

Keyword: murrieta homes and Website: ashleylavelle.com
21 Horse Properties for Sale in California | Murrieta Real Estate http://www.ashleylavelle.com/

Keyword: horse properties for sale and Website: ashleylavelle.com
27 Horse Properties for Sale in California | Murrieta Real Estate http://www.ashleylavelle.com/

I started on this client May 24th 2007. She never had a page rank nor was she even in the top 100 for any of her keywords. Heck, she wasn't even ranked for her name!

Gettin' There!

Ranking High on Yahoo | Rank #1 Google

2007-04-21T00:10:00.000-07:00

Before, the problem was Google. You could get your site to rank number #1 on Yahoo & MSn without effort, but you could never find your site anywhere on Google. Well, that was because when we first optmized you site, you did the mete-tag, keywords, title, decription & content. THEN you started the link exchange. It takes time for Google to find you links on the web, but once they find them, you'll find yourself on top of Google.

But, recently a lot of SEOd sites have been falling off of Yahoo. But at the same time, keeping the same (if not better) positions on Google & MSN. The reason is very very simple. Yahoo decided to take a different approach at searches. Now, they are looking for content that you can't find on other sites. Also, if you have a lot of ads on your page, Yahoo will much rather give those top rankings to sites with no ads and good content. So if your site rencently fell off yahoo or you just cant get ranked high on Yahoo, it's most likely because you have a lot of ads or not so speciaal content.

Little Lamb Land Christian Preschool in San Diego

2007-04-18T14:56:00.000-07:00

Little Lamb Land Christian Preschool has just imformed me that they now have to start a waiting list or possibly open up a new location. I helped Little Lamb Land with a lot of it's marketing. mainly on the internet. If you go to Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, All the Web......, www.littlelambland.org is #1 or on the first page for any of these terms;
Preschool San Diego
San Diego Preschool
Christian Preschool
Christian Preschool in San Diego
San Diego Child Care
Preschools in San Diego

If you have a website and don't see it on search engines, and you want to be On Top of It, give me a call @ 619-251-2649 or shoot me an email @ sir_jamesharrison@yahoo.com, JAMES

SD Search Engine Optimization | (619) 251-2649

2007-04-18T14:50:00.000-07:00

I do search engine optimization here in San Diego. I find sites (or web owners find me)that get no traffic. I talk to the owners, work a deal, then help them get their site to the top of search engines.

First we schedule an appointment were I give you an inclusive report on what changes should be made to your site
-who’s linking to you
-how site looks to search engines (title, description, Meta tags, alt tags)
-who should be linking to you
-your page rank
-anchor text, link exchange
-search engine rankings for your site on all search engines
-alexa traffic rank
-best keywords for your site
-directories your site can be submitted to

-and I can answer every website/search engine questions you have.

Then, if you realize what needs to be done to your site and like what I can do. We set up a payment plan and I get you site on top of the net.

Wordical Productions | San Diego Youth Ministry

2007-04-18T14:35:00.000-07:00

This week I just picked up a new site for my SEO services, Wordical Productions. We're going to get it to rank number one for the terms "San Diego Youth Ministry" & "Youth Group San Diego". The competition is moderate. I give it 2 months. Also we plan on getting their "sponsor" page to rank number one for "sponsor youth organization".

Today, I will optimize the pages and submit them to search engines. Then I will start a linking campaign getting as many links like this; San Diego Youth Misnistry, as I can on the net.

Then I will study the competition, do what they did, and much more!

Wordical Productions
San Diego Youth Ministry

James 619-251-2649
On Top of ItSearch Engine Optimization San Diego

Blogging & Pinging

2006-05-09T03:11:00.000-07:00

You see, if you set up a separate 'Blog' (which is just another website that is consistently updated) for each of your sites, and then post to each of those blogs on a regular basis, and then let the numerous Blog Directory sites know you just updated your blog each time you post to them (by Pinging them through the special systems they all have set up for that purpose), you'll have links to all your posts on Dozens of high ranking, high traffic, Blog Directory Sites!
And by placing links to your sites on your blogs, the search engines will follow the links on your blogs to your main site, and then start spidering them!

Why blogging with Blogger is best for search engine optimization.

2006-05-09T01:49:00.000-07:00

To search engines, blogs are the most important. The have great articles, lots of traffic, part of a large blog web, many authors and they can be updated very often.

Take for instance this blog. It is part of the big blog called 'Blogger'. Blogger is one of the only sites (the only one I know of) out their with a Google Page Rank of 10. type in 'links:www.blogger.com to see why it's obvious why they got that. Google PR is almost all based on link exhanging.

My title is blogoptimizer.blogspot.com, which is still under blogspot or Blogger. So, every link to me is also a link to blogger as a whole. Blogger has over a million pages with 31, 200,000 links pointing to it according to Yahoo. No site has more links than Blogger.com. Not even Google, Yahoo, MySpace or MSN

Now this is where search engines come in.

The truest way to get indexed in a search engine is to get 'spidered' through another site. Site submission is Bs aand can take weeks before your page gets spidered.
The fastest way to get indexed is to get links from high page rank websites. Because how often they get search the spiders will end up at your page. This is getting indexed.

Because of Blogger this is very easy. If you build a blog with about 4 post and a link to your webpage, with in 48 hours you will be indexed by Google. If you get a link from from a PR6 site, it can take about 4-7 days, a PR7 site will get you listed within 72 hours.

Almost everytime any keyword phrase is searched, Blogger is being spidered. Because some site out there (about 31 million ) is linking to blogger and when a spider finds a link to blogger, all pages get checked.

Now, everytime you post a blog, blogger puts you at the top of the 'most recent post' list. So you have a big advantage at being one of the ones on top if a phrase relavent to your site is typed in. But remember theirs over 1million blogs, most of the time you are only on top of the list for 1 minute. Their's also other list like 'Page Rank', 'Keyword Content', 'Amount of Links' and so on.

What I am trying to say is, the more often you write relavent content to keywords you want to rank high in, the better chance you have at getting visitors.

So go post something on your blog now. and again and again ....even if it's just 2 lines or Bs, you can always go back and edit it and be right back at the top again.

This post was originally about the importance of blogs, but I got a little off track. Check out my next post for, why being a blogger could be more better than being a webmaster.

BLOG SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TIP

Proper Keyword Research is Key!

2006-04-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

Today we are going to talk about keywords and how to choose them. No matter what the title of your blog is. Picking the right keywords can get you thousands of visitors. Inside your post try to say keyword phrases that probably get searched a lot.
But before you do that, you need to make sure that you're not picking phrases that another million sites are picking or real competitive sites got on lock.
Follow these steps to picking the best keywords for your blog.
1)Go to inventory.overture.com
2) Pick some keywords and record the amount of visitors type the phrases you picked in.
3)Go to Google.com and download the Google toolbar(make sure you pick advance settings)This will allow you to see the page rank of all the sites you surf.
4)Search the key terms you picked and check out the page ranks of the Top 10 sites.
5)Dont mess with the keywords that have websites with a lot of PR 6's and up. PR 6 and up sites have a ton of links and get a lot of traffic. Don't worry, we'll compete with them, but not just yet.
6)By now you should know what keywords you want to optimize and what sites you will be competing with.

In my next blog, I will talk about how the make your keywords shine through your blog.

If you seriously want to optimize your blog, you will need to put an extra hour into your blog atleast once a week.

Blog Optimizer: Search Engine Optimization Blog

Search Engines | Ask Jeeves Vs. Google

2006-04-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

Ask Jeeves is really still the only search engine on the net that uses human language

For Example:

If you type; "how to change your sparkplugs"

To Google, it's 'change sparkplugs' Most likely the number 1 sites are sites selling sparkplus or sites explaining what spark plugs are. But to Ask Jeeves, the question stands and you will find article relating directly to 'how to change your spark plugs'

Althought Ask Jeeves is the best for surfers with questions, Google is best for webmasters to rank well in. Only because Google counts for 50% of all searches on the net.

If you're #1 in Google for a particukar keyword, chances are you are ranked in the top 5 of all search engines. So Google will still be our main focus.

This is a Search Engine Optimized Blog

Blog Search Engine Optimization Is Back!!!!

2006-04-17T15:06:00.000-07:00

Recently I had a blog title "Blog Search Engine Optimization" (blogoptimizer.blogspot.com) The blog was on its way to becoming a top search engine blog. But due to my post settings, the blog got filled with spam and Blogger deleted my blog.
Anyway, BLOG OPTIMIZER IS BACK!

We will still cover topics such as:
-Blog search engine optimization
-How to get your blog to rank in the top 10 of Google.
-Blogs Vs Websites Pros & Cons Compare & Contrast
-Link Exchanging
-Choosing & optimizing the right keywords
-Google Page Rank Alexa Traffic Rankings
-much, much more...

This is a Search Engine Optimized Blog