Category Archives: SEO

How my newsletter saved my SEO optimization with Google

February 4, 2016 by 123outsource
Categories: SEO | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Those of us who are smart are concerned with our SEO for our site. A handful of us evey obsess about it. The main thing is that our site will show up well on Google. I recently had a problem where some bad review sites were coming up on the first page of Google when you Google one of my company names. I tried many ways to solve the problem. Posting other high ranking content using Twitter and Google+ had some effect on what showed up on the Google search results. But, the one thing that I did which got powerful results was using my newsletter to link to interesting pages about us and our various new social media accounts. I have a dozen social media accounts for my main site. I am not active on all of them, but I do have a presence.

Keep in mind that my success with the newsletter is not something that came overnight. It took me three years to build my newsletter to having 4300 followers. Additionally, the SEO success from posting links to great content on my newsletter took about a month to show results on Google’s search results. Google doesn’t always like to give instant gratification. They prefer to keep you guessing about what worked and why.

So, if you want to keep your clients close, and get some increased site traffic and have more control over what happens on Google, consider a newsletter. It is a huge investment of time, but it is one of my most powerful marketing channel after Facebook. Facebook is currently giving me 6000 visitors per month to my blog while my newsletter is not far behind at around 4000. Of course these numbers could vary depending on how actively I use them, but for use that I consider to be “moderate” those are the numbers!

All I can say is, “wow,” SEO strength doesn’t come easily, but thank god I have what I call SEO muscle!

SEO Optimization is like Acupuncture: So many channels!

March 22, 2014 by 123outsource
Categories: SEO | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

What SEO specialists and acupuncturists don’t realize, is that their two professions have more in common than may meet the eye, or at least the eye of the needle! SEO is a profession where every thing you touch influences everything else in some unknown or unpredictable way. There are uncharted fluctuations in traffic that overlap your fine-tuned adjustments.

There are so many ways to increase the flow of traffic to a site too. There is the Facebook meridian, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Google+, page optimization, and link building meridian strengthening techniques to name just a few more common ways. Blogging is yet another way to boost traffic to your site since blogging is all about fresh content which is something Google respects. Nothing is worse than a site that just sits there, so your blog that gets a new piece every few hours or once a day is highly appreciated by the Google gods.

But, if you add a link to a page, you strengthen the page you are linking to, but you might also be strengthening or weakening the page you linked from. It is not so easy to say. Additionally, if you increase the flow of “Qi” or traffic from your Facebook meridian to your Blog meridian, that also is likely to increase the flow of “Qi” from Google as well. Interesting.

In acupuncture, if you strengthen one energy channel, that can enhance other related channels as well. But, if there is too much energy, or too much of a discrepency in energy strengths, that can lead to weakening or a clash of qi energy. Acupuncture is complicated. So, is SEO.

I am just left with one lingering question.
Can you use Moxa to boost your Twitter PPC campaign?

Tweets:
(1) SEO is a profession where every thing you touch influences everything else in some unknown or unpredictable way.
(2) Connecting your traffic pathways on the internet is good SEO, but can it hurt you sometimes?

You might also like:

Google+ is delivering already
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/01/20/google-is-delivering-already/

Active vs. dormant followers on Twitter
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/09/27/active-vs-dormant-followers-on-twitter/

Google+ is delivering already!

January 20, 2014 by 123outsource
Categories: SEO, Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

We talked to many people in the web business. Word on the street was that Google+ is good. What I have learned is that there is no such thing as a good or bad social media venue. What counts is if it is working for your particular campaign. I run several websites and Facebook works miracles for one, and was a dud for another. Hmmm.

On my Google analytics it shows up as plus.url.google.com / referral. I was excited because we finally started getting detectable clicks from our network of less than a dozen people. We just started Google+ only a month or so ago and put very little effort into it so far.

One of the clicks was from the city of Gwangmyeong-si. I’ll put it on my bucket list to go there one day. I have no idea where that is. Sounds like Nepal, Laos, or China. I bet they have good dumplings there regardless. Ooops… Just looked it up. It is in Korea — wrong again! Korean dumplings just don’t measure up to Chinese. It is the one thing that Koreans aren’t good at! We got another one of our clicks from Khulna which is in Bangladesh. Not only do I get optimization from Google+, but I also get a geography lesson!

The reality of the situation is that it takes a long time to grow a social media network. Some grow like weeds with very little maintenance. Others take endless maintenance only to grow at the speed of a snail. It will take a few years to grow our Google+ really large, but it is nice to know that it just began to sprout in fertile Asian soils! Experts say that Google+ is great for your optimization, and it makes sense. A click from within one of Google’s networks will get preferential treatment, and for good reason.

So, what do I think about having Google+? It’s a definite plus!

(1) So, what do I think about having Google+? It’s a definite plus!
(2) It takes a long time to grow a social media network. With Google+, it is growing with you!

You might also like:

Active vs. dormant followers on Twitter!
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/09/27/active-vs-dormant-followers-on-twitter/

Social media, the analytics are deceiving
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/05/27/social-media-the-analytics-are-deceiving/

Google’s Algorithm for Blogs is Harder Now

January 10, 2014 by 123outsource
Categories: SEO, Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

I wrote another article about how Google changed its algorithm regarding how blogs place in search results. Please keep in mind that this change happened in September 2013 and it was very pronounced. I do not do SEO for a living. I just noticed because I track my statistics for my notary blog and outsource blog regularly and train myself to notice things. The first relationship is between how good your blogs are and how you place on Google. The trick here is that a good article is not enough. You need to have incoming links and a way to get seen as well.

Blog tags are a wonderful invention, but are they all they are cut out to be? Using blog tags you can link up lots of blogs to each other in all types of ways based on keyword frequency. You choose tags based on whatever keyword you are trying to accentuate. The problem is that an incoming link is only given credit if several conditions are met:

(1) The link needs to come from a page with similar keywords. If you have tagged certain keywords, then we will assume you have the keyword relevancy. That is easy.

(2) The page that you link from needs to be indexed by Google. If a page gets low traffic, Google might not index it, which means you might get zero credit for an incoming link from that page. What I found is that Google will ignore a page which gets less than about 25-35 clicks per month. This problem wouldn’t affect a larger blog, but for small blogs getting less than 40,000 visits per month, your tags will only do you any good if they are for unusual keywords, or for particular entries which for some reason get lots of traffic. Newer posts that have been recently promoted might get a few hundred visits right away, but your older blog entries might get very little traffic even if your newer posts link to them. My outsource blog is tiny and my tags will not get me much play until I grow. A sad fact of life.

(3) If people actually click on a particular link, the value of the link becomes tremendously bigger. Very few people click on tags, but people would be more likely to click on a link in the body of an article, especially if it were dressed up in such a way that they would be encouraged to click on it. I often put suggested reading links at the bottom of articles and they get clicked on a fair amount, especially if they are highly relevant.

The value of a visit from Google
I noticed that despite how much harder it is to get blog traffic, for each additional click to my blog, I get many additional clicks to my site. Roughly 8 site visits per 1 blog visit. What an amazing correlation! I also learned that visits directly from Google give you much more reward in site visits. How does this work? I think that Google tracks how much traffic it gives you and then rewards you by giving your site higher placement as a result. It is a very helpful cycle, but you need skill to manage this relationship.

What is the solution?
Honestly, I am so overworked, that I make this mistake often — I do not put enough links on my posts until after the fact. Since blog entries on my blogs are generally only popular when they are initially promoted, putting the links on after the fact doesn’t help much. The solution is to pre-publish your blog articles and put as many quality outgoing links to other content as possible BEFORE you promote it. Put lots of good tags, and optimize the content so that you can put more tags as well. You can find creative ways to insert more of your essential keywords into the article to gain relevancy for your keywords.

Google is a wonderful tool. Try hard to master the art of blog promotion with Google. Facebook and Twitter have done miracles for me as well and should ideally be used to promote articles with good tags and outgoing links.

Tweets:
(1) #googleanalytics Google’s algorithm for blogs is harder now. It’s harder to get traffic period!

You might also like:

Social Media: The analytics are deceiving
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/05/27/social-media-the-analytics-are-deceiving/

The Google algorithm has some serious issues
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/08/04/the-google-algorithm-has-some-serous-issues/

SEO Strategies — Revolving content & 2nd generation linked content

September 28, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: SEO | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Is SEO complicated?
People think that SEO is complicated. I don’t know enough about it to understand its complications. Google’s algorithms change unpredictably, but certain principles hold steady. Content is king, and good content draws in traffic. Google can tell if people like your content. Different IP addresses will come and spend time reading if it is good, plus people will tweet it, link to it and more. But, what is the secret?

Obviously, each page has to have some keyword focus with pre-planned keyword variations. But, there is a lot more to my style of simplistic SEO strategy. Keeping the content changing is critical. Busy pages should change their content every 10 days or so, while less traficked pages, perhaps every few months. You don’t have to change the entire content — just a link or two, or perhaps a paragraph. You need to schedule time to change your pages, and pre-plan what content you are going to put in at set intervals.

But, what about 2nd generation links? (not a real term by the way) What should my home page link to? Google likes it if a home page or big page links to pages that themselves link to good content. You link to pages that link to other good pages. Let’s say you have an informational site. Let’s say that you have a separate page for various types of sports. One main page for rafting, one for rock climbing, and another for skiing. Let’s say there are many more pages like this. The page could be purely paragraph style and have a few links embedded in the text. However, you could have another format for informational pages which would be link oriented pages that might look a bit like search results.

Imagine a page with 20 links. There could be two lines of commentary about each link under each link, and then a line of space. Imagine a home page that links to a dozen or so of these info-link pages. Great. But, it gets better. Imagine that these info-link pages are rotated every month. Each month you get a different dozen. Perhaps each month you cut one link to an info-link page and add another. You drop the page about rock climbing in June and add a page about baseball in its place. That way, your home page will be connected to 240 super content pages. Each of your 12 info-link pages that are linked to the home page link to 20 pages related to their theme content (a particular sport), and then the content is rotated so there is always something new.

What is the next step? Those info-link pages could also evolve and revolve as new links could be added to the list of 20 and others could be removed. Google likes live sites, so if yours is always having little changes happen, that counts in your favor.

My story is that my directory site 123notary has good rankings for city search results pages simply because the content is always revolving. However, our home page doesn’t change much and Google doesn’t give it a good ranking. We will change the programming soon to include revolving content. But, it is not a big deal, because our site is about search results and giving great information to the public — and we do this well.

How to optimize your Stumbleupon PPC and Organic campaign

September 13, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: SEO, Social Media | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

How to optimize your Stumbleupon PPC and Organic campaign

Stumbleupon is tricky. You have to do lots of stumbling to have the right to add pages to the organic search which respresents 95% of what is shown on their network. So, stumble away, and add lots of content. That is what I do. I add my best content, and some of it gets clicked on. It seems that entries with really good pictures do best. Remember, on Stumbleupon people are browsing hundreds of pages, and you will only get 5 seconds of attention unless you grab someone’s interest with good graphics. If people like your content, it will get shown more. Good luck.

Be cautious setting up your account — quirks & bugs
The Stumbleupon Pay-per-click program is tricky. Be careful how many views you authorize per day. My bank account was given a ride around the block a few times. I agreed to 100 clicks, but was billed $100 and given 600 clicks. I’m not sure what went wrong. At least I finally got some fast traffic for my blog. In any case, start by bidding on 1 click per day at a low level. Start with 1 click per day, and then adjust up later. Then use the manage function to adjust your daily budget for each campaign.

40 clicks per blog entry
I would get about 40 clicks per campaign and then use your Google analytics to see how long the average person spent reading. Many Stumblers have ADD and spend only 10 seconds on your site which is not worth paying for. But, if you attract some serious readers who spend some time and perhaps visit other pages of your site or blog, then you are in business.

See which blog gets folks who spend more than a minute on your site
I would try lots of different blog entries in your paid Stumbling campaign. Try them each for 40 clicks and keep the ones that perform well with high number of pages visited, and the highest amount of seconds or minutes on your site. Most of your campaigns will probably need to be discontinued — optimization is that way if you do it right! Identify the winners, and work with them.

Optimization is 20% strategy and the rest is trial, error, watching, and noticing. Interpreting the results can be daunting.

Good luck!

You might also like:

Active vs. Dormant Followers on Twitter
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/09/27/active-vs-dormant-followers-on-twitter/

The Google Algorithm has some serious issues
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/08/04/the-google-algorithm-has-some-serous-issues/

The 20 day rule for Twitter & Google

September 2, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: SEO, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I love seeing how the mechanics of web optimization works. My life depends on it, and I am passionately interested in it. Basically, I have reduced SEO strategy down to a three simple rules.

(1) Keep your content correct, informative, well organized, and up to date. Find out what type of content people like to read, and keep giving it to them.
(2) Keep traffic constantly flowing to your site from adwords, blogs, and social media campaigns.
(3) If there is a spike in Google traffic on your blog, or Twitter activity, that peak will manifest itself on your main site’s web stats exactly 20 days later.

We had tried accelerating our Twitter interactions eight months earlier from zero to about 8 per day.. I noticed a spike in site traffic that started a few weeks after the beginning of our campaign. I wanted to try it again, because our site traffic increased by about 14%. Yes, we got about 16,000 extra followers per month. That translates into more long term income which is the final statistic in the long train of events.

So, I decided to do it again. But, I didn’t communicate clearly enough to my social media manager. She thought I wanted two interactions per day with followers. I wanted ten. So, we agreed upon seven interactions per day. Our traffic went from 28,000 per week to 30,000 on the week that had its mid-day 20 days after. Shortly after it climbed to around 31,000. Once again, about a 11% increase in a very short amount of time after we went from 2 interactions per day to 7.

I wonder what would happen if we did 30 interactions per day for a two month period. Maybe we should try!

Remember the golden rule of Twitter:
Although the top line total number of followers doesn’t mean anything, you can USE those followers who are relevant and interact with them to boost your web stats. So, the top line number actually does have a value, and a very significant value too!