Keyword research (Part 1) Advice on getting started

January 31, 2008 | 1 Comment

If you’re a beginner you may be wondering where you start with all this business of SEO. Do you start by writing quality content around your target business, product or niche? Do you start by designing your website and manipulating your code in some magical way? Do you start by building a site and then going about the work of getting people to link to your site?

Let me just say that all of the tasks mentioned above are important, but they’re not the most important first step in an SEO campaign. Your first step should always be research. You may know it as keyword research, keyword discovery, key phrase selection or any number of different titles. What’s important is that you know that it’s the first - and most important step - before you do anything else. Read more


Posted by Christopher Auman | Filed Under SEO Training 

Keywords in your domain name

January 26, 2008 | 5 Comments

Quickstart summary: Should you purchase multiple domain names that contain your most important keywords? I get this question all the time. Well, the answer is “yes” and “no”. Really, I don’t think it benefits you to own multiple domain names that point to the same website unless you’re just trying to secure domain names that the competition might utilize. In general, the search engines are focused on your content and other elements related to your page so you should focus your SEO efforts here. The words in your domain name can figure into your ranking but they should not be your primary focus. Here are a couple things to consider. Read more


Posted by Christopher Auman | Filed Under SEO Training 

Tidbits: Underscores vs. Dashes

January 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment

There has been some discussion recently about how to properly name the files on your website and server. An obvious decision would be to name them something that makes sense to you. This will help you stay sane and organized but the question I’d like to ask you is “Do your file names make sense to the search engines?”.

If you’ve build a website I can guarantee that you’ve made a decision regarding the name of your site, a directory or a file name. The most important thing to remember is to name your files with words that describe the content; you want to do this in as concise manner as posssible. This will certainly help the search engines determine what your content is about. Read more


Posted by Christopher Auman | Filed Under SEO News and Tidbits 

Hosting and SEO

January 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Where you host your website is usually not high on the list of considerations when first addressing the issue of SEO and online marketing. Most people look first for a reliable host that meets their needs and they consider the business of marketing at a later date. This is a mistake. They’re immediate needs might include space, bandwidth, price or special features like free domain name for life. Whahoo!

All of these things are important. (Well, except for the free domain name) I’d rather pay the $10 a year and retain control of my name. Anyway, my point is that most people don’t know what’s important regarding SEO and your hosting. Without further delay, here’s a quick rundown of the important points regarding SEO and your website hosting. Read more


Posted by Christopher Auman | Filed Under SEO Training 

SEO for designers: Goals and consistency

January 21, 2008 | 1 Comment

Continuing our discussion of search engine friendly design considerations I offer you part 6 of a 6 part series on SEO friendly design:

Design your page with your goals in mind.

Part of SEO is allowing for easy feed subscription, encouraging links to your content, easy newsletter sign-up, clear membership information, ease of product navigation and easy access to contact information. Many people might wonder what this has to do with search engine optimization and I’m here to tell you that it’s all very important.

Your job when designing your website is to encourage links back to the content. You do this by providing ways for people to bookmark the site, subscribe via RSS and signup for a newsletter. This will keep your site “top-of-mind” with people that are interested in your content and ideally they’ll be remided to read and continue to link.

One of the most popular and simple ways to encourage linking is to include an RSS feed and to provide a clear way to subscribe to your feed. If you use Wordpress like I do, the feed is generated automatically. Services like Feedburner and Technorati can help you easily distribute your feed and allow easy subscription too.

There are many other ways to encourage linking and to stay top-of-mind and I won’t go into them here. But my point should ring true. When designing your page, make sure you provide ways to encourage linking and repeated visits to your content. Our goal is to encourage linking from high quality sites.

Be consistent and present a sense of legitimacy.

Your design should have a cohesive feel, an appealing and appropriate “vibe” and a high quality, well thought out presentation throughout. This will also provide a strong sense of legitimacy that people need to return, subscribe and link. Obviously with a cohesive, well thoughtout, consistent system, the search engines will be able to easily spider every page of your site too - which is our ultimate goal.

As designers, our goal is to present our content is a way that’s easy and enjoyable to read. But an underlying goal is to present the content in a format that looks like someone actual cares about how the content is presented. A cohesive, well thoughtout navigation scheme, a consistent identity and appropriate color scheme go a long way to encourage repeat visits. After all, as much as people think that content is king, there is a large majority of readers out there that need an enjoyable experience while they’re reading. I personally subscribed to a online networking site the other day over several others because the image of the site was more hip and enjoyable. I knew if I was going to spend any amount of time on the site that I would have to enjoy my time there. I did subscribe to another networking site and I haven’t been back since because it just didn’t present a feeling of quality and fun.

That experience includes color choice, font size, font type, intuitive navigation, simple subscription tools and many others. In a nutshell, a sense of legitimacy and care for your presentation with the goal of appealing to your target audience. It’s the same reason that people choose one book over another based on the cover and why certain people prefer large, hard cover books over smaller, cheaper paperbacks. It’s the same reason why I enjoy reading the PRINT version of “The Week” over a traditional newspaper. (Yes, I do subscribe to some traditional media) It has a very consistent layout and presentation, the type is clearly spaced and readable and it’s presented in a way that allows me to easily scan and get the information that I need each week.

The same is not true for other publications (which I will not mention here) which present their information as large chunks of content that appear differently each week/month. A newspaper is an example of a publication format that I hate. If the same information was presented in a consistent, high quality way I might enjoy going back to it. Reading a newspaper has always been work for me. It’s a clunky format, it feels cheap and low quality, the sections are always laid out differently, articles are broken up within different sections, the photos are low quality and the text is usually smaller and harder to read. I would read the same content and enjoy it much more on a website or in a nice glossy magazine because I enjoy the experience more.

Consider this when you’re building your website and content. An enjoyable experience will encourage repeat visits, links, word-of-mouth exposure, and prestigious awards if it’s done very well. All of this will surely help your SEO campaign and overall rankings in time.


Posted by Christopher Auman | Filed Under SEO Training 

Website traffic development 101

January 18, 2008 | 1 Comment

Creative Commons License photo credit: pbo31

Thanks to webmasterworld.com and poster sugarrae for this useful list of traffic development practices for the new year. Enjoy…

1) Find sites that are about your topic in general but are missing pertinent information that you provide on your site or that you can create an angle to merge with their topic and email the webmaster at one email address with a personal email that notes things about their site only a human visitor would and explain why you think linking to your content would benefit their readers. Read more


Posted by Christopher Auman | Filed Under Internet Marketing 

Sitemap news and FAQs

January 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Sitemaps are an important part of any successful website and SEO campaign for two main reasons: The search engines use sitemaps to index all of your content and pages and it helps human users find their way to all of your content. Read more


Posted by Christopher Auman | Filed Under SEO News and Tidbits 

What is SEO?

January 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment

For those of you inquisitive individuals doing a search on this elusive, confusing term I thought I would offer up my interpretation of what exactly SEO means.

Maybe you’ve heard the term during an office water cooler conversation or maybe you’ve seen a reference to it online. Maybe you even know enough that it has to do with marketing your website in the search engines. For most people, SEO means performing some crazy, juju-voodoo magic on your website with the ambitious goal of ranking your website in the top positions.

Let me just say that it doesn’t have to be that complicated and there is very little voodoo on hand here. Read more


Posted by Christopher Auman | Filed Under SEO Training 

Promote your site locally with online yellow pages

January 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Creative Commons License photo credit: metrostation

So you say you want to advertise your local business but a full online marketing campaign is just too much investment for your small local business. What are your options? Try the Yellow Pages… Online!

Now, I’m not suggesting that you call up the phone company to get listed on their website. Most yellow page sites don’t provide enough traffic to justify any extra expense. If you advertise in the Yellow Pages you know what I’m talking about. So what are your options you ask? Try Google local and Yahoo local. Read more


Posted by Christopher Auman | Filed Under Internet Marketing