Why do you get backlinks?

I was reminded this past week why backlinks are so important in the seo game while doing research for a prospective client. I came upon several blog posts regarding webmasters complaining that they are suddenly seeing a massive drop in traffic from the organic serps and other webmasters saying how they are seeing a drop in traffic from their Google Place Pages and how their businesses are being ruined because of this.

As has been stated countless times from Matt Cutts and the Google Webmaster Guidelines, the fundamental reason for backlinks is not to game the Google algorithm to achieve higher rankings in the SERPS but to advertise and or to brand your business on the web and although a nice side effect of gaining backlinks is (sometimes) higher rankings, the key here is to open up as many marketing channels as you can possibly find to drive traffic to your website for leads or newsletter signups or for buying of "blue widgets in city".

I have seen it happen too many times to not state it here, you do NOT want to rely solely on Google referrals for all of your traffic and sales. Just like in investing you would not want to put all of your retirement funds into a single equity or stock, the same applies to website sales and lead generation. Do not count on a single source of traffic!

If your current SEO Agency is not advising you to diversify your portfolio of traffic generating sources, they are doing you a giant disservice. Ask them what would happen if Google suddenly tweaked their algorithm that moves your website deep past page 1? Do you have the financial backing to withstand a major SERP change?

Several years ago this exact scenario played out in what became known as the "Florida" update. Google made a tweak to their algorithm and entire swaths of search engine results changed on a massive scale and thousands of webmasters literally went out of business within weeks.

So the question again is "why do you get backlinks"? If your answer is higher rankings you are doing it wrong!

That's All For Now,
The Boca Raton SEO Guy

Technorati Claim JP3PQVUJ3X3S

First Annual SEO Pay It Forward Campaign

At SEOBocaRaton.com we believe in giving back to the community and to help show our gratitude SEOBocaRaton.com is offering free seo services to 1 lucky small business.

SEOBocaRaton.com is a small company and we know how hard it can be to get things going especially in this economy, which is why we are announcing our first annual seo pay it forward campaign.

Each and every year from now on SEOBocaRaton.com will give away an SEO package to a small company in need of help in search engine optimzation.

Sound Good?

To qualify simply do the following very easy steps:

1. Add a post or article on your domain or blog with your story and  the reasons that you would like us to consider your small business for our free seo services package.
2. Make sure to add a link back to us in the post or article so that we can verify your post.
3. When you have completed steps #1 and #2 come back to our seo forum and leave a post at the SEO Pay It Forward Campaign to let us know that you are ready for us to read your story.
4. When there are sufficient requests a random drawing will be held to announce the winner.
5. To qualify; your business must have annual sales less than $250,000.00 US
6. If you do not yet have a domain, please see our How to start a business for $274.05 blog post to get started.

What the package includes:

1. Local SEO Campaign: We will get your site listed in and optimized for Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Local and at least a dozen other local directories.
2. Organic SEO Campaign: We will get your site listed in and optimzed for Google, Yahoo and Bing organic results.
3. On Page Optimization: We will provide a complete on page optimization suggestion report, that at your direction will make the necessary changes to the code of your site to increase it's chances of ranking higher.

What if my business does not qualify?:

If your business does not qualify and would like to be considered for our small business discounted services, please use our contact us form for more information and we will get back to you with how you can participate.

That's All For Now,
The Boca Raton SEO Guy

How to add discreet links in google places page and google maps seo tricks

Google Places formerly Google Maps Local Business Center or LBC as some know it has made a small but very interesting addition / update that allows you to add discreet links to the additional details area of your Google Places page.

Here is the original post by Brianna a Google Employee,
Did you know you can add discreet links to menus and reservations?

Here is what she said in the post:

Are you a restaurant owner? If yes, did you know you can add discreet links to a reservations or menu page? Here's how: In the Additional Details section of your Places account, simply add two columns labeled: Menu Reservations And then just add the URL of where you host your menu or reservations! Make sure you spell Menu and Reservations correctly!

Further reading of the Google Places discussion thread reveals that you can do this for ANY business.

Here are some screenshots of the Google Places Page for SEOBocaRaton.com

It took less than 20 minutes for Google Maps to go live with it.

Google Maps discreet links main page screen shot and link

Google Maps discreet links more details page screen shot and link

Summary:

Adding links in google places is a great way to differentiate yourself from other google maps places and may just be the thing you need to move you up in the results.

Discuss this and more in our new seo forum

Post your comments, thoughts and ideas below.

That's all for now,
The Boca Raton SEO Guy

Yahoo! Local SEO Tips

Gaining a top ranking in Yahoo! local is slightly easier than a top ranking at Google Maps, as, Yahoo! local is just a tiny bit less stringent about what you can and cannot do.

For instance on Yahoo Local you can submit a full domain name as the name of your business, not so on Google Maps, as they do not allow you to format it as something like mydomain.com or mydomain.net even if that is the actual name of your DBA, LLC or corporation.

In my experience, the tips that I have personally found to work the best for a Yahoo! local business listing are:

1. Area code matches the target demographic. e.g. 561 area code for Boca Raton Florida
2. Removal of the address to show just the city and state. This makes for a cleaner looking listing and also forces the Yahoo! local algorithm to sort your listing towards the top.
3. Yahoo! local reviews, the more the better, same as Google Maps.
4. DBA as your keyword, e.g. town blue widgets or townbluewidgets.com. In Florida a DBA is only $50.00 per year, highly worth it if in return you are rewarded with a #1 local spot.

Join us in the seo forum for further discussion on this and other seo tips

That's all for now,
The Boca Raton SEO Guy

Yahoo discontinuing Local Featured Listings

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/ysmsunset/ysmsunset-02.html

As part of Yahoo!'s ongoing effort to build products and services that deliver the best possible experiences for advertisers and consumers, we are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others.  After careful consideration, Yahoo! will no longer directly sell Featured Listings to merchants on Yahoo! Local.  Beginning on May 17, 2010, these ad slots will be sold by a number of our trusted partners who will continue to offer premium placement on Yahoo! Local search results pages to local merchants.  Note: Basic and Enhanced Listings are still available on Yahoo! Local and will not be affected by this change.

That's All For Now,
The Boca Raton SEO Guy

A short video from Google Search Story Creator about a local Boca Raton business owner learning about search engine optimization and internet marketing. Here is a link to the video on YouTube if you cannot see the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2OhlvDPYgU

Leave your rating in the comment section below.

That's All For Now,
The Boca Raton SEO Guy

Search Engine Optimization Tools fall into several main categories of which two I will speak about today as part of our seo basics series.

Competitive Analysis:

I consider competitive analysis an essential part of my daily activities, in large part due to the fact that seo is such a competitve industry and I want to keep track of who my competition is and what they are doing so that my business does not get blind sided by an up and comer. So here in no particular order is my list of free competative analysis tools.

• Google: Google is by far the best way to find out what your competition is doing, and the best way to search is by viewing each of your competitors by their latest activity. How: do a Google search for your keyword and then click on the show options link at the top left and finally click on the latest link, by doing so you can view your competitors most recent activity and take appropriate action.
• Newspapers: If you are competing on a local level (which everybody should be these days), it is important for you to also watch what your competition is doing offline to gain traction. How: Read your local newspaper.
• KeywordSpy.com: Keywordspy.com and other PPC spy engines as I like to call them track PPC ads on Google and show alot of information regarding what your competitors are doing. Note that thier service is not free, but they do give you a free preview of the top 10 or so in each category.
• Yahoo! Site Explorer: Yahoo site explorer gives you a more comprehensive view of your competitions backlinks. Please note that although Yahoo shows more links than Google it should not be considered the end all be all of backlinks. How: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

Keyword Research:

Keyword research is also an important part of my arsenal of free seo tools, namely because I do not want to miss out on any traffic that I could be getting or losing to my competition. It is also important to note here that as time goes by, keywords and keyphrases may shift slightly or may change entirely as industries grow, slow or get technologically shifted out of existance. Take for instance the business that sold horse shoes in the early 1900's, when the automobile came along their entire industry collapsed from underneath them. They did not have the technology back then to anticipate or even see a rapid change coming, but in today's world with instant communication we can be alerted in real time to what is happening to our industry. That being said, here is a list of the free tools that I use for keyword analysis and research.

• Keywordspy.com
• SpyFu.com
• Google Trends
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• Google Adwords Keyword Explorer
• freekeywords.wordtracker.com
• Google Search Based Keyword Tool

Join us in the seo forum for more discussion about this and more seo tips

That's All For Now,
The Boca Raton SEO Guy

SEO Basics or SEO 101

So just what are the basics of search engine optimization?

In order to answer this question successfully, we need to first break down just what seo is.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization can best be defined as "on page and off page techniques that reside within the rules set forth by the search engines".

Fortunately for us Google has supplied us with such a document entitled Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, within this document, Google gives us an easy to follow and straight forward guide on exactly what they are looking for in a web page to rank highly.

Here is the basic top 8 elements of on page seo with full descriptions and my thoughts to follow:

1. Unique, Accurate Page Titles
2. Description Meta Tag
3. Friendly URL Structure
4. Friendly Site Navigation
5. Quality Content and Services
6. Good Anchor Text
7. Appropriate use of heading tags
8. Image Alt Text Optimization

Unique, Accurate Page Title:

• Google uses (in most cases) the title of the page in its search results as the anchor text to the page in question. The title of your page should be a very short sentence of exaclty what the page is about and what the visitor should expect to learn more about on that page.

Description Meta Tag:

• Google use (in some cases) the meta description tag of your page as the snippet of page text underneath the link in the results page. I say in some cases because it has been documented that Google can, will and usually does generate snippets on the fly from various portions of your page and even sometimes from pages that link to the document from that documents context.

Friendly URL Structure:

• The search engines do not crawl sites in the same way that users navigate sites and therefore do not require or want things such as session id's as they can confuse the search engines parsers when they try and figure out if the page at /page.php?id=123123123132131313212 is the same thing as /page.php?q=blue+widget&id=23839499239283420, therefore if you use Apache's MOD_REWRITE or an alternative for IIS and rewrite your url structure as /page/search/blue-widget not only is this better for users to navigate and remember but the search engines have what is known as a canonical url. Try it for yourself, ask a friend to remember the first url structure and then ask them to remember the 2nd. The second url structure is defintely much more use friendly which is one of the major things that Google is trying to impress upon us. Build sites for users not search engines.

Quality Content and Services:

• Without quality content and services what are you doing sending visitors to your site for?

Good Anchor Text:

• Anchor Text is the content that you use to point users to a new page. For instance instead of structuring your sentence as "Click here to contact us" you would re-write it as "Find out more about what we have to offer at our contact us page". This gives users and the search engines context regarding what the page is about. Does the word "here" or does the word "contact us" more accurately reflect what the linked to document is about?

Appropriate Use Of Heading Tags:

• Heading tags are H1, H2 through H5 tags and should reflect what the next paragraph(s) are about. I Consider them mini title tags for each sub-section of the page and help define to the user and to the search engines what each section of the page is about. An analog here might be the chapter titles of a book.

Image Optimization:

• The reason for Google including this in their document is to help them give context of what the image is about. As far as I know Google cannot parse context from the image itself, which is why it relies upon the alt text attribute of the image to ascertain what the author thinks the image is conveying.

Join us in our seo forum for further discussion on this and other great topics.

That's All For Now,
The Boca Raton SEO Guy

How to start a business for $274.05

Being the frugal guy that I am I was wondering the other day what is the bare minimum I could spend to start a business. Through some quick internet research I found the answer is $274.05. Below I will break down what you will need and why. Please note that some of this information pertains to Florida and your mileage may vary depending on your state. Tip: left clicking while holding down the left ctrl button will open the below links in a new window or tab so that you can stay on this page while opening new windows or tabs in the background for bookmarking etc.

Fictitious Name Registration

• Why: Even though I recommend registering an LLC or an S Corp AKA Inc. for your business we are going to forgo the usual business and legal reasons on why to incorporate your business. A Fictitious Name AKA DBA legally allows you to do business as any name you choose. Usually you can set the DBA as your domain name, depending on your states DBA restrictions.
• Cost: $50.00
• Where: https://efile.sunbiz.org/ficregintro.html -- State of Florida only, search your favorite search engine for "state of <mystate> DBA form"

UPS Store MailBox / PO Box

• Why: You probably do not want customers showing up at your home from a Google or Internet Yellow Pages search, so the next best thing with a local address is a UPS Store MailBox AKA PO Box. In my area it is a little bit expensive, if you can find a local vendor for cheap; even better, remember do your research, if you can save even $50.00 a year on this, that is $50.00 more that you can spend on advertising.
• Cost: $200
• Where: http://www.theupsstore.com
  

Cell Phone

• Why: I am quite certain that your spouse or loved ones do not want potential clients calling you up out of the blue at home. Get a cell phone, they are very cheap and virginmobile has an excellent track record. Again if you can find anything cheaper in your area go for it and remember do your research.
• Cost: $10.59 with tax and shipping - recharge the phone when you need it; about $25.00 every 90 days or so, depending on usage.
• Where: http://www.virginmobileusa.com/ Use Coupon Code 0JUw0wNI for free 60 minutes of bonus airtime.

Domain

• Why: In order to attract new customers you will need an online presence, owning a domain name is the fastest most inexpensive way to do so.
• Cost: $7.49 Per Year
• Where: http://www.godaddy.com/

Hosting

• Why: If you own a domain name you will need to host it somewhere, the best and most inexpensive in the industry right now is godaddy.
• Cost: $5.97 Per Month, Cheaper if you purchase by the year.
• Where: http://www.godaddy.com/

PayPal Business Account

• Why: At some point (hopefully quickly) you are going to need to accept online payments, the defacto standard in web payments by far is PayPal.
• Cost: Free signup, they take a small percentage when people pay you.
• Where: http://www.paypal.com/

A service or product to sell

• Why: In order to have a business you need something to sell, whether it is a service or a product, everybody has some kind of knowledge that other people are willing to pay for.
• Cost: Free for services just a little time and hard work, if you have a skill even better.
• Where: Left as an excercise for the reader.

Update:
GoDaddy is giving away $75.00 in free Google Adwords credits on new accounts with hosting and a domain purchase.
I do not know how long this will last so get yours today.

Part 2 will discuss exactly how to get your new business in the search engines and dominate your competition.

Stay Tuned, and be sure to post your ideas, comments and suggestions below and join us in the new seo forum for further discussion.