Question: Can my site be penalized for doing everything right?
April 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Answer: Unfortunately there are rumblings around the SEO community that your site can be dinged for doing everything right. There are certain traditional methods that we all use when optimizing a site that are all very important BUT as you can surely believe, Google knows exactly what they use to rank people well. So, if a site hits all of the “traditional” white hat tricks – all within a 500 word page – there may be a good chance that you’ll get penalized for doing everything right because your site reaks of being over SEO’d.
The best advice is to use your tricks and continue to master the techniques of SEO but as a general practice you need to focus on your content and links and keep most of your tricks in their bag. I’m not saying that they’re wrong, just use them sparingly and definitely not all on one page. Get creative and always do what makes sense without blatantly tipping off the search engines.
For more information, take a few minutes and read a bit about the “art” of SEO from a fellow veteran.
So, you want to send a press release?
April 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Don’t ever write a press release for SEO. That’s just shooting yourself in the head. In fact, you deserve to be shot in the head if you ever say “press release for SEO” again. Michael Martinez – Director of Search Strategies for 1st Query
A key element in getting links back to your site and improving your traffic is understand where your target audience and circles of influence get their information and be there.
Obviously our goal with this site is to learn SEO and how to get positioned in the top spots for our target keywords. But the question remains, “What do you do to get people to your site now?” An even more important question is, “What can I do today to get people to come and link to my site?”
The press release can be a powerful tool for people who know how to use it effectively. If you have a gift for communication and you know how to properly distribute a press release, it can help you reach influential people, consumers, bloggers and important minds in your niche. If you can do this, your traffic will grow and your inbound links will increase. Ultimately, (in an indirect way) the press release is another great SEO tool.
That said, a press release is not the ultimate, secret magic trick. Press releases have become a huge source of search spam lately and you have to realize that if you’re going to take the time to write a press release it better be damn good and highly newsworthy. If it’s not, you’re just wasting your time.
Here are 10 tips on how to use a press release to further your SEO efforts. We’ll also look at what you need to do to fully distribute your work so your efforts provide you with the greatest benefit possible.
If you haven’t reviewed my basic intro to writing a press release, please do so now before continuing. Read more
