Blogging is an amazing way for any business, large or small, to start to generate some visibility online. Take SEOmoz for example, although the roots of the company go way back to 1981 when Rand’s mother started a marketing business, SEOmoz got it’s start in 2004 when Rand started blogging about his “thoughts, struggles, and discoveries” in SEO. From there they started doing SEO consulting, then eventually transitioned into one of the greatest SEO toolsets you can find online. You too can get your start online just by starting a blog and writing/publishing great content on a regular basis. The whole process starts with picking a domain name, so let’s jump in.

Picking Your Domain Name

Picking your domain name should be pretty easy if you have already decided on your business name. I say “should” because if you are picking a domain name that is in line with your business name, you have pretty good chances that it is going to be available. I”m often asked the question, should I purchase a domain name that is rich with my target keywords? To be completely honest, three years ago, I would have answered heck yes! Today, not so much. I would pick a domain name that is one, easy to remember, and two, is brandable. So what’s the cost of a domain name? About $11.00 per year. Not too shabby.

Monthly Cost: $0.89

Finding A Web Host

Picking your web host is a little more difficult than picking a domain name, at least I think so. There are so many web hosts our there to choose from that it is hard to know which one is the best. I’m really scared to start listing web hosts in this post because there’s always going to be someone who has had a bad experience and will most likely comment negatively. Personally, I really like Host Monster, but it is a little more expensive if you are on a budget. If you are looking for a cheap web host, I would go with Name Cheap hosting. I’ve use them before, and they are pretty good for the price. Regardless of price, you will want to find a host that uses cPanel and has one click install for WordPress to keep things as simple as possible. Hosting through Name Cheap will cost you about $48.00 per year. Also, not to shabby.

Monthly Cost: $3.95

Installing WordPress

As I mentioned above, you will want to find a web host that offers a one click install for WordPress. I’m not the most technical person in the world and I’ll bet that most small business owners are not either, so this makes it really easy. The beautiful thing about using WordPress to run your blog is that is is FREE! No cost to you whatsoever! They also offer a huge support community to help you with any problems you might encounter along the way.

Monthly Cost: Free

Installing Your SEO & Social Plugins

WordPress out of the box is pretty SEO friendly, but there is always more you can do to make it more friendly to the search engines, especially for small businesses trying to do SEO. I’m not going to go into great detail about what plugins you should be installing to help you SEO or to make your blog more social because some of my colleagues have already written about it in previous posts. So, check out the linked posts below to get a better idea of which plugins you can install to get you going. One thing to keep in mind is that not all WordPress plugins are free, but most are. All of the plugins recommended in the posts below are free to the end user.

The Top Three SEO Plugins

The Top Eight SEO Plugins Used By SEO.com

Monthly Cost: Free

Picking A Theme

Just like plugins, there are many themes out there on the internet that are free. Honestly, a lot of the themes out there are pure crap, which is why I always purchase themes or have them built for me, but if you are on a budget, you can find a good theme or two by doing some research. If you don’t want to go the free route, you can check out WooThemes.com or StudioPress.com. I’ve used both and like them a lot. If you are going to go the free route, here are a few resources to help you get started.

Free Themes From WordPress.org

WordPress Theme Gallery

Free WP Themes

Monthly Cost: Free

Writing Your Content

Now that you have your domain, have a functioning blog that is pretty and optimized for the search engines, you need to start writing content. Obviously, the cost of writing your content is free, but it does take some time. When writing, make sure that you are including keywords that are being searched on by your potential customers. You can do some quick keyword research by heading over to The Google and simply start typing your target keywords in the search bar, for this example, I used they keyword wedding dresses.

As you can see in the image below, Google’s auto complete feature gives me some related searches to my keyword. If I sold wedding dresses online, I could blog about modest wedding dresses and make sure to use that keyword in the title of the post and throughout the content.

In my next image below, we are going to be looking at Google’s related searches feature. This can be accessed by clicking on related searches in the left sidebar. This gives me even more topic/keyword ideas to write about than auto complete. I could also write about designer wedding dresses, wedding dresses perfect for beach weddings, and many others also making sure to include the target keywords in the appropriate places mentioned above.

Monthly Cost: Free

As you can see, it is really easy (and affordable) to start building your online business through starting a blog. In my next post (probably next month), I’m going to talk about easy and affordable ways to start building links and driving traffic to your blog once you start pounding out some content. If you have any other additional resources that relate to this post, please feel free to share them in the comments section below.

Link building is a critical part of most SEO campaigns. If you have a solid strategy to obtain legitimate links from relevant websites, you’re adding value to the web and typically, raising your rankings within the search engines in the process. On the other hand, if you’re link building to sketchy websites for the sheer purpose of manipulating the search engines without providing any value, it’s easy for the search engines to see your shady tactics and adjust your rankings accordingly.

However, what happens when you’re a legitimate business that unknowingly hires a spammy SEO company? Or, what if your competitors decide to sabotage your rankings by throwing some money and/or resources at a smear campaign, filled with massive amounts of unnatural links? Does a business owner’s website deserve the“Google slap” when they had no intention of violating Google’s policies?

Personally, I have received an over-optimization penalty from the search engines because of my own stupidity. It was one of those “life lessons” that I deserved because I knew better, but applying the same consequences to all webmasters is borderline unfair.

For example, I currently have a client who has had prior SEO campaigns from illegitimate, overseas companies that did more harm than good. Those companies got him 340,000 external links over the span of 18 months in the footer and sidebar of 90 different domains using their main keywords. They also had keywords with Chinese and other Asian characters. Oh, I almost forgot, there were porn sites in there too. Did this trusting website owner deserve a penalty from Google because his SEO company is engaging in wrongful strategies?

If you had an established company and you saw a competitor quickly coming up in the SERPs, how far would you go to stop them? After all, you want to stay at the top and dominate your niche. If you were experienced enough to understand that building an unnatural link profile to a website could result in penalties, would you? I wouldn’t, but that’s because I’m an honest person. I’m willing to bet, however, that most people would try and destroy their competitor’s rankings given the chance.

Google: Help us, Help you

This isn’t the first time somebody has suggested Google allow us to disassociate our websites with another linking website. Dr. Pete from SEOmoz already gave his modest proposal in an excellent blog post on 6 ways to recover from bad links. I’m sure others have covered it as well.

There are a few ways Google could allow us to help them combat webspam. One excellent way is to create a robots-only file on your website similar to a robots.txt, where you can specify what websites you want to disallow.

If that method doesn’t work, it could always be built into Google Webmaster Tools. This concept isn’t complex and I can’t imagine it being difficult for the search engines to execute, but it definitely would protect business owners from shady SEO firms and prevent unethical competitors from sabotaging your website.

Dr. Pete already did an excellent job with his suggestion, but if this blog post has any purpose, it’s to raise awareness of this problem. Being able to disassociate incoming links at the very least, would raise the standards and practices of SEO companies and prevent oblivious business owners from getting screwed.

To me, it would make sense for Google to allow webmasters to do this. At the very minimum, it would allow inexperienced site owners to quickly recover their losses after being duped by an illegitimate SEO firm. It would also protect new websites from being sabotaged by big competitors. However, what reasons do you think Google has for not doing this?

Topic Generation

There’s all sorts of talk in the SEO/SEM space about ways to generate blog post ideas. Most of them revolve around doing competitive research to help guide your efforts. Most recently, at Pubcon Las Vegas, Arnie Kuenn, President of link building agency Vertical Measures spoke about using Open Site Explorer to find which pieces of content your competitors have that have attracted the most links. Once you know this, you can build a similar piece of content for your own site in hopes that it will attract some interest and links as well. He also suggested that you do some manual outreach to the sites that linked to your competitors content asking them to link to yours as well. Brilliant, huh?

There are lots of different ways to come up with blog post topics, online and offline. I wanted to write this post because I've been doing a lot of offline research that has helped me grow my blog content and I wanted to share with everyone what I’ve been up to.

Offline Blog Research

As I mentioned above, there's a lot of talk about ways to research blog topics online, however, there isn’t a lot of talk about researching blog ideas offline. A few months ago, I was sitting around the house flipping through one of my wife’s magazines (I don’t want to say which one in fear that I will be ridiculed by my co-workers and peers), but as I was scanning some of the content, I thought to myself, some of this content would be interesting to my readers and if I got it up quick enough, would probably attract some natural backlinks as well.

The more I thought about it, it really made a lot of sense to build a blogging strategy around content published offline. When you think about it, most of the content found in popular magazines is content that is well researched by a professional journalist and is most likely content that people are very interested in right now. Take Kim Kardashian’s divorce, bloggers are all over that and getting loads of traffic and links because of it. Most of the work is done for you. All you have to do is come up with some unique content and a different take on the story and you have a rocking blog post.

Scalability

My next thought was, how do I get a lot of ideas without having to subscribe to dozens of magazines each month. It just doesn’t make sense to spend $2-3 per issue just to get blogging ideas. Well, maybe it does if you are a hard-core blogger, but for someone who blogs in his/her spare time, it doesn’t.  A few days after my idea of using magazine content for blog ideas, I was at Target with my daughter looking at some children’s books. While there, I saw the big magazine rack and I realized that by spending 30 minutes a week in a store like Target, Wal-Mart, Barns and Noble, or even the library, that I could get a months worth of blogging ideas without paying anything at all. So I decided to build a process to help me be as efficient as possible.

Process

Identification: I first had to identify which type of magazines related to my business or blog. If you sell wedding dresses online, then you might consider all of the bridal magazines. You might also consider magazines like People which talk about celebrities getting engaged or married. I typically like to do this before I arrive at the magazine stand.

Pulling: Once I get to the magazine stand, I find the targeted magazines, pull all of them, and head to a table or nice clean spot on the floor. Whatever you do, don't sit on the floor at Wal-Mart… they aren't that clean.

Scanning: After I have my stack, I glance at the cover and the table of contents to see if anything sounds interesting to me. If so, I flip to the page, whip out my iPhone and start snapping pictures of headlines. I don’t want to use the content, but I do want to use the topic.

Organization: Once I have all my pictures taken, I put the magazines back, and head home to dump the pictures on my computer and organize them. What I am looking for here is level of interest. If something is time sensitive, I will typically move it closer to the top of my list. If something is more interesting, I move it up. If it is less interesting, I move it down. You get the idea.

Research: As I mentioned above, I generally don’t want to use the content found in these magazine articles. I like to do some research on my own (or outsource it) to build my content. This ensures that I am not blatantly copying the content and that it’s a fresh take on the topic.

Creation & Publishing: If you are a blogger, both of these steps are pretty straightforward. You can either write the content yourself, or job it out to someone on Elance or oDesk. Once you have the content, you optimize and publish it.

Results

The first time I put my process to the test, I spent twenty minutes at Barnes and Noble and found 42 different blog topic ideas. I spent an additional fifteen minutes organizing the topics and another twenty getting them all jobbed out to one of my writers for research and creation. If I publish one piece every business day, I have approximately eight and a half weeks of content ideas in just under an hour. Pretty decent if you ask me.

One thing that you need to remember is, as with anything we do in SEO, these numbers can and will fluctuate depending on the person, niche of the site, number of magazine you need/want to go through, and other factors. Don't get discouraged if you come out with just a dozen ideas the first time. It was still a worth while activity!

So, how do you come up with blogging ideas? If you have processes outside the norm, please add to the conversation by commenting below.

While “man-scaping” may be a painful experience, “seo-scaping” certainly is not.

Here are a few simple guidelines to keep in mind when trying to SEO-groom your site. Whether the site is in its infancy or well seasoned, the items we will cover here will remain applicable.

Website Technicality

Usability — Your website’s purpose makes no difference if visitors cannot find it, view it correctly, or if the site takes any longer than a few seconds to load. Here are a few tips:

• See what the search engines see. Use a text browser like Lynx and examine your website. What you find will likely be similar to what the majority of search engine spiders do, too.
• Utilize the robots.txt file on your server. This will communicate to crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. As long as this is current with your preferences, you will be in control with what will be crawled and indexed.
• Test each Web page in the various Web browsers for both visibility and functionality.
• Pay attention to your website performance and optimize load times. The goal of every search engine is not only relevancy, but also a great user experience.

Navigation and Content

Site Navigation — While nearly every website will approach their navigation with slight differences, one thing should always remain: keep it simple and straight forward. Here are a few tips:

• Link Structure — Every top level page should have at least one link directing to it from each of your pages.
• Site Map — This is a great way to show the search engines the extent of your website and also help your users find what they are looking for when all else fails. A combination of both a plain html formatted map for users and an XML sitemap will do the trick. For a clear walk through on the standards for your XML sitemap visit the protocol.
• Overall Linking — A commonly held idea is to stay below 100 links per page. Anything more than this typically will not be crawled.

Content — The content placed on the page will be a main driving factor in who arrives and how they will interact once landing there. The first question that should come to mind when creating content is “does the page clearly communicate the subject and goal at hand?” This is often achieved by keeping your subject matter down to one topic per page. Here are a few tips:

• Make sure the page is actually useful and provides quality information.
• Check for broken links and correct the HTML.
• As much as possible use text over images to display prominent content such as headings, addresses, names and links.
• Brainstorm words people would commonly use when searching for your website, and make certain the website actually includes those words. (Go here for a more in depth walk through on choosing keywords wisely)
• Keep your URL structure simple. Remember when using URLs that are dynamic (for instance if it has a “?” character in it), not all spiders crawl dynamic pages. It helps to keep the dynamic parameters to a minimum or to write them completely out where possible. The following format is ideal for a URL:

Quality Assurance

With competition always on the increase, now is the time to show your true colors. And just this once, it does matter if you are black or white, otherwise you might experience what JCPenny did. Keep your website on the search engine good graces with these tips:

• Keep your links in the right neck of the woods: avoid links to Web spammers, which commonly have an adverse effect on the website.
• The best page is a natural page. Search Engine Optimization does not have to be forced. Make sure your pages are created primarily for users, not for search engines. Refrain from “cloaking,” or displaying content different to search engines than visitors.
• Avoid tricks solely dedicated to manipulating search engines. A test is to ask is, “Does this help my users?” SEO and website usability can play nicely together.

I feel confident in saying the best Search Engine Optimization is found in natural processes. Make sure the content you create is unique and worth sharing and then create lots of it. Do this and follow the above guidelines and you will end up with one handsome website.

A special thanks to my amazing wife, Tiana,—the SEO.com hair removal specialist and Doc for his amazing video production. The experience was an inspiration to us all.

Here’s the video:

To make sure your site is built for the search engines, be sure to balance these elements in your Web design.

URL Structure:

Don’t bother using page IDs for your URLs. Changing your URLs to a worded structure will not only help with SEO, but it will also help your users know what the page is about. http://www.example.com/services is much better than http://www.example.com/?page_id=41. If you’re using WordPress for your website, you can simply go to Settings > Permalinks > and enter /%postname%/ as a Custom Structure. Also, make sure to have your site go to the www or the non-www version, but not both. That can potentially create duplicate content problems.

Use Flash in Moderation:

Incorporating Flash into your website is not bad, but too much of it is. The search engines are limited by what they can read within the Flash file, so do not put any text or important information within it that you may want the search engines to index.  Also, do not build the entire website using Flash. It will basically shield all your site’s content from the search engines deeming you irrelevant for the majority of keywords you’re going for.

In addition, Google has the new instant preview feature. If you use Flash, it can turn out blank or empty:

Here is a good use of Flash, and a bad use of Flash. Photographers everywhere are notorious for using all Flash websites.

Heading Tags:

Heading tags range from H1 to H6 and are great ways of separating out topics and giving a title to each page of content. When creating content for each page, remember to have only one H1 tag. If it sounds natural, use your keywords within this H1 to maximize its potential.

Here is a good use of H1 tags. A bad example would be any page with more than one H1 tag.

One Topic per Page:

If you have a variety of services or products, do not put them all on one page. Have your homepage be the broad focus of your business and create menus that go over your categories. Only have one product/service per page. It looks better, it’s simpler for the user to find what they need and you’ll thank yourself once you start targeting pages with keywords.

Don’t Use iFrames:

1998 called and they’d like their Web development methods back. Rarely is there a reason to implement iFrames for your website. An iFrame is basically a portal or window into another page within your website. The search engines cannot read the information within that window and that is why they’re useless. For the most part, iFrames have fizzled out but some major sites like Amazon.com and weather information sites will use them to enable users to display their content on their personal website effortlessly.

Here’s a site that uses iFrames. View the source page and search for some of the content you see on the site. You can’t find it and neither can the search engines.

Call to Action:

It doesn’t matter how much traffic your website receives, if it doesn’t convert, it’s useless. Many people don’t understand or value conversion optimization but it can significantly improve your bounce and conversion rate. A simple way of improving your amount of callers, orders, e-mails, leads, subscribers (or whatever you are using to identify a conversion) is to clearly display what you want that visitor to act on. If they should fill out a form or give you a call, make sure that action item is above their face where they cannot miss it.

Here’s an example of a good call to action, and a bad call to action.

Text within Images:

Many webmasters put text within an image because they want a special font to display or they just don’t understand HTML. The search engines cannot read what is inside images, so just don’t do it. Save yourself from doing it twice by doing it right.

Here is an example of a website using text within images. The header, footer and welcome title are all in images.

JavaScript within Navigation:

When you use JavaScript to display your navigation, the drop-down pages and the links that go along with them, it can create a barrier for the search engines because they have a hard time reading it. JavaScript isn’t as cut and dry as HTML and because there are a million ways to produce the same product out of JavaScript, it can really confuse the search engines.

Here’s a site that uses JavaScript with their navigation. If you disable JavaScript in your browser, its functionality goes away.

Navigational Structure:

Keeping your websites navigational structure clean and simple can be somewhat of a challenge for some people. Use categories, use parent pages and don’t exclude key pages from the navigation. If you want a visitor to buy that product or see that service, include it in your menu.

Although I somewhat enjoy this site, it is an example of a website with a confusing navigational structure.

Use of Content:

Each page should have its own unique text and images at the very least. Having other elements like video can help you too. Make sure each page has at least 150 unique words and 1 picture with descriptive alt text. Use that pages keywords in the text and image alt tag but don’t overuse it. SEO is a delicate balance and using your keyword once per 100 words is always safe.

Here is an example of a website with no useful text and lists of keywords.

Using Splash/Doorway/Squeeze Page:

When somebody first comes to your website, they should see your homepage, not a trendy or fun page in between. When the use of a splash page is used, it creates an unnecessary barrier between you and your visitors. This will affect your bounce rate and conversion rate and unlikely for the better.

Here is an example of a website using a Splash page.

Become a Blogger:

Search engines like to serve fresh content and using a blog is a great way to keep your site growing and active. Continually having new content for the search engines to index keeps their bot coming back and can even help you rank for longer tail keywords.

Our SEO blog is a great example of an active blog that posts new content about the industry it’s in.

Pay Attention to Site Speed:

If your website takes too long to load the page, odds are your visitors are going to get impatient and leave. The search engines also don’t like waiting around so site speed should be something to be concerned about. Having too many HTTP requests, large amounts of JavaScript and CSS files and large images to load can all contribute to a slow site speed.

Hopefully these examples will help you in the future if you choose to build a new website. As with everything, there are exceptions to the rule. But for the most part, these recommendations will help your SEO efforts as well as visitors that come to your website.

Do you know of any others? Please comment and add to this list.

Marketing objectives

Seems like a simple thing, but you need to know how SEO will fit into the overall marketing objectives of your company. What will it accomplish? What do you want it to accomplish? Don’t just do SEO because everyone else is doing it. Do it for a specific reason.

Timing is everything

Don’t rush into an SEO campaign because you are feeling pressure to get results. Here are some timing considerations to think about before you move forward:

Seasonality. Does your industry have a high and low season? If so, then you probably want to start your SEO in the low season. This way, you are in prime positions during your high season to capture key traffic.

Website redesign. A new site launch is a big deal, and yes, it DEFINITELY affects SEO. If you want to start an SEO campaign, but you know in your gut (and have known for a while) that your website desperately needs an update, take care of the site FIRST. New site launches during an SEO campaign are a huge hindrance and can delay results significantly.

SEO is not a quick fix

Search engine optimization is a long term marketing strategy. No, let me rephrase, EFFECTIVE SEO is a long term strategy. If you are looking to jump into an SEO campaign in October because you need to finish out Q4 well, you’re a day late and dollar short. There are no “special contacts at Google,” no magic buttons, and no amount of guarantees that can change this. Depending on your situation, SEO can take anywhere from 6-18 months to see top results.

Access to a Web developer

Chances are that if you have a website, you have a developer you work with that manages that website. SEO campaigns require many time sensitive website adjustments. Having a reliable and available Web developer that can implement recommendations made by your SEO firm is vital to success. Make sure you have a developer and he or she is ready and willing to make changes before embarking on your SEO campaign.

Content generation capabilities

It is no secret that content is king. Relevant content on your site is a huge aspect of SEO. Be aware that some sites require more website content then others, depending on your current layout. Assure that you have content creation capabilities, and if not talk about your limitations with your potential agency upfront.

“I only need you for…”

SEO companies can be partners in your marketing efforts. They have the ability to provide expertise in Internet marketing, not just SEO, that can benefit your overall marketing vision. Let them do what they do best. Don’t tie the hands of your SEO company because you only want link building from them. Mostly likely their approach is more holistic, and not allowing them to utilize all the aspects of SEO will underhand their efforts and sabotage success. Listen to the expertise of you SEO firm. Allow them to perform their work, because after all, you hired them for a reason.

The full Monty

Full exposure. Complete transparency. SEO companies cannot be your partner if you treat them like a vendor. Be open, honest and transparent with your goals and the current state of your business. Explain your business model, your industry, past experiences with search marketing, and most importantly what it is you are trying to accomplish with your website. Give your SEO company the data to prove their value to you, in dollars.

If your SEO company only sees a small piece of the pie, they will do their work based on that information. This can cause frustration and a communication breakdown as bits and pieces of information can be taken out of context and misconstrued. Prevent this through open and honest communication. If you don’t feel comfortable exposing yourself just yet, you may want to hold off on an SEO campaign until you can.

ROI

Everyone knows that it’s about the bottom line, so what return are you getting on this investment? Do you know? Can you know? Have you put the appropriate metrics in place that will tell you? Ask these vital questions first. If you don’t know the answer, don’t hesitate to consult a trusted SEO company to find out.

When you do hire a SEO company, make sure you communicate the importance of evaluating ROI, if they don’t already, and your willingness to cooperate in that effort.

It takes two to Tango

If you haven’t noticed already, an underlying theme throughout this post has been cooperation and partnership. To execute and effective and successful SEO campaign you have to be involved. SEO is an active marketing effort, requiring constant communication and adjustment. The best SEO firms will always be in communication, and wanting to work together as an active partner. If you lack the time to attend such an effort, find someone who can.

Try to eliminate red tape as much as possible so things can get done. Again, SEO can be time sensitive. The quicker recommendations are implemented, the quicker you see results. It’s that simple.

Hopefully now, you will be better prepared to ask the right questions before beginning your SEO campaign.

Buckle up – it’s time for a ride on the terror express.

The Invisible Text

Jim had heard stories of hidden text, but he always dismissed them as mere tales meant to scare little children and dogs. One day in the computer lab at school, Tony motioned for Jim to come over.

“My dad told me that in the old days, people used to make text the same color as the background. They didn’t think they were hurting anybody. Turns out, the bot knew about it.”

“The… BOT …knew?” Jim asked, scared stiff.

“That’s right. But my dad told me that it still happens sometimes. He gave me a URL, and I’m going to see if it’s really as bad as they say.” Jim got up to run, but Tony grabbed his sweater and pulled him back. In what seemed like a whirlwind, Tony typed in the URL, highlighted the big empty space at the bottom of the page, and then….

—–

The screams had faded by the time the principle arrived. But the frozen expressions of terror would remain imprinted in his memory for the remaining years of his life.

The Keyword Tag

It was Anne’s first day on the job at GrayishBlack SEO Company. Despite the pleadings of her friends and family, she took the job, knowing what horrors might lay ahead.

“We don’t waste time around here,” her director shouted from his office. “I need you to get on that site optimization double ASAP. Oh, and I don’t want to scare you on your first day, but the site was built in 1997.”

“Come again?” Anne asked as she turned toward the director, her eyelids opening three times as wide as usual.

She nervously turned on her computer, taking as much time as possible. The checklist on her desk glared at her, for she knew what she’d find as the first to-do. She was assigned to check the dreaded meta keyword tag her loved ones had warned her about. Hoping they were wrong, she viewed the source code.

—–

During police questioning, the director of SEO was visibly shaken. “She just kept screaming and screaming. Over and over, she just kept screaming, ‘Five hundred meta keyword variations! Five hundred meta keyword variations!’”

Farmer Stone

Legend has it, that old and decayed Victorian mansion at the end of Dark Oak Street used to belong to a man they called “Farmer Stone.” Tales of this mysterious old hermit haunted the town for at least 30 years before three foolishly curious boys went exploring one October night.

Dark Oak Street wound for two miles before it ended at Farmer Stone’s place. A 10-foot high, rusted gate stood at the entrance to the grounds. The mansion itself was always dark, except on this night. Our young boys would in later years swear they saw a faint greenish light coming out of the bedroom window. Of course, they would make these claims from their padded rooms in the local insane asylum.

There were no farm animals on Farmer Stone’s property, interestingly enough to the boys. According to legend, they crept slowly up to the mansion, dried leaves crackling underfoot. They called inside but received no answer. The front door creaked loudly and the green light became brighter. Trembling with fear, only each other’s taunts kept them moving forward.

What happened next has struck fear in the heart of even the most hardened soul who has heard this tale. The origin of Farmer Stone’s name became horrifyingly apparent to all three boys as they looked into his bedroom. There was the old man, hunched over in his chair, typing furiously on a computer. The boys screamed.

—–

The final pieces of this puzzle can only be found by visiting the asylum where these boys, now old men, are kept in holding. All three of them, with mind-numbing fury, scribble out two words on their cell walls. Over and over again, they write: LINK FARM. LINK FARM. LINK FARM. LINK FARM. LINK FARM.

The Call

Alvin was a valuable asset to the company. His boss told him the 12-hour days were excessive, but Alvin knew he had the corporate ladder to climb. When his SEO company got that big, coveted contract with the hardest charging company in the city, Alvin was the natural choice to take the reins.

“Now Alvin, I know you like to be thorough on your calls, but I’m just warning you that these guys will keep you on the phone all day if you let them.” The boss knew a little something about the client, so he offered this advice for Alvin’s own good.

“Don’t you worry,” Alvin assured his boss. “I’m not scared of an hour long phone call. You just leave these guys to me.” With those words, and the clock striking 4 O’clock, he picked up the phone and dialed the number.

—–

Alvin’s right hand man was slow getting into the office on the day after a holiday. The receptionist wasn’t there yet, so he started the long walk back to his oversized cubicle.

“Sweet mother of the kraken,” he gasped as he looked down the open space toward Alvin’s desk. There lay the man, telephone cord wrapped around his neck.

—–

After the ambulance was gone, Ned looked at Alvin’s phone records, curious to know what could have prompted this awful event. Time of last call: 15 hours.

Spiders

Anthony never intended it to go this far. He had 10 years of experience in SEO, so industry jargon flowed out of his mouth freely like cool spring water out of an artesian well. Nobody knew why he liked to pound the newbies with jargon until they were so frustrated they couldn’t do their work. It was just his thing, and he wasn’t going to change.

Every employee at SearchMyEngine.com knew it was bad news when Sam got hired. He was one of those guys that became startled at anything. You couldn’t walk up behind the guy without him jumping with fear. Anthony saw a victim and smiled a black-toothed grin.

“Hey Sam! You need to optimalize that hypertext preprocessor I gave you for indexability so the spiders can start crawling the http destination accessibility protocol!”

“S-s-spiders?” Sam tremblingly responded.

“Yeah,” Anthony shot back. “If you don’t fix that site for the search spiders, something bad will happen. Really bad.” Anthony walked away smiling. He knew he really nailed that one.

The rest of the week, Sam worked in a cold sweat. Friday arrived, and he began to think he would escape his first week without any sign of spiders or other crawling insects. From a distance, Anthony watched in eager anticipation as Sam turned on his computer. Black screen to blue. Blue screen to Windows login screen. Login screen to……..black widow desktop wallpaper. A piercing scream filled the office.

—–

Anthony never intended to cause Sam to go into cardiogenic shock. Yet as he stood there above Sam’s helpless body, waiting for the paramedics to arrive, he felt that biting sting of regret. Somewhere behind him, an employee’s face went pale.

“Are those … black widows crawling out of Sam’s ears?”

The Sandbox

Timmy’s dad came home with fury in his eyes. “Those sons o’ b****es at Stoogle banned my site! They sent me to the sandbox!”

“What’s the sandbox?” Timmy innocently inquired.

“It’s a bad, bad place where hobgoblins and witches live. They’ll suck your site in and feast on its bones if you’re not careful!” Timmy walked upstairs to his room, visions of haunted sandboxes swimming in his head.

The next day at school, Timmy’s teacher announced that in an effort to get to know more local businesses, they were taking a field trip to Stoogle headquarters. Timmy raised his hand.

“What about the hobgoblins and witches that live in the sandbox?”

Timmy’s teacher grew impatient. “There’s no such thing as the sandbox. It’s an old wives tale, and it’s never been proven to exist. You’re going to Stoogle, and you’re going to like it!”

Stoogle headquarters was a gigantic place, constructed in the old Romanian architectural style of Dracula’s castle. Timmy carried his red bouncy ball, as always. The tour began, and the children followed their teacher down long, cold hallways. Completely by accident, Timmy’s ball fell from his hand, rolling down a hallway to the right as the field trip turned to the left.

“I need that ball,” Timmy told himself. He turned right, breaking into a run. The ball rolled for a half mile before coming to a halt in front of a huge black door. Timmy put his ear up to the door and heard what could only be described as the groanings of the damned.

Startled at the sound, Timmy backed away and got a better view of the door. Inscribed in blood were the words “BANISHED TO THIS HALL BE THE SITES OF THOSE ACCURSED SPAMMERS, DECEIVERS, LIARS, AND REDIRECTERS”

Timmy looked at his feet and saw sand.

The Articles

This was the last straw. SEO director Gray hired outsourced copywriters to save time, but they had been causing him nothing but problems since day one. He needed a better way to generate content, and fast.

Gray had just hired a new assistant director, Boynton, who was failing miserably. Boynton got wind of this outsourcing fiasco and knew he could redeem himself in Gray’s eyes.

“So, I think I have way to really knock our content generation out of the park.”

“Is that right?” Gray doubtfully said.

“I’ve just been made aware of a piece of content software that will generate 5,000 unique articles from one original. The technology is cutting edge. It practically thinks for itself.” Boynton got Gray’s approval and purchased the software.

—–

Monday morning arrived and Gray parked his Benz in the director’s space. As he came closer to the front door, he thought he heard what sounded like a war movie coming from the SEO floor. A split second later, Boynton came crashing through the front window, shards of glass flying in all directions.“The content generator is self aware! It’s destroying everything in the office!”

Gray ran inside and vomited. Content Generator was chewing on SEO employees. He was heaving computers through windows. All the while, article variations flew out of his printer belly. “Two mmmmillion, nine hundred thousand the thrrrrreee!” Content Generator growled. It was chaos. Pure chaos.

—–

Two weeks later, after the smoke had cleared the the rubble cleaned up, Gray and Boynton sat down at their laptops. Boynton broke the silence.

“Well, I guess the only question now is where are we going to find two-million-three-hundred-thousand directories to submit all this content to?”

Gray lifted his arm and smacked Boynton in the back of the head.

Today, there are really two purposes of website content:

*To communicate with search engines

*To communicate with website visitors

The problem is, search engines and site visitors speak different languages.

And that right there is the paradox. If you write it solely for the search engines, you may get better rankings but visitors will bounce off your site before they can read your second stuffed keyword. If you write just for visitors, it’s likely nobody will find your site to read your beautiful verbiage anyway.

It’s a delicate balance communicating with search engines and people at the same time, or in other words, mix good, persuasive writing with the right SEO keywords. Talented writers can do it seamlessly, however, without sounding like they speak a foreign language. Here are 7 steps to writing good SEO copy that doesn’t suck:

1. Solve Your Audience’s Problem

Whether it’s creative, engaging or whatever, everything written on a website should essentially be a solution to the visitor’s problem. First you must know your prime audience and what problem they want solved, then show how you will solve that problem.

2. Write as if SEO Does Not Exist

Get the message across first. Communicate to humans first. Write it powerfully and simply without the shackles of keywords. This will make a more compelling message that punches the visitor in the face. Afterwards, it’s easy to insert the right keywords and links.

3. Consult SEO Specialist, Do What He/She Says (Mostly)

Keep that guy or girl in the loop. The SEO dude (or dudette) has done the research, knows what keywords will drive the right traffic, what keywords should be linked to what page, etc. You can be creative to fit in most of those suggested keywords. After you write it, make sure the SEO specialist approves.

4. Sacrifice Keywords for the Good of Art

Most SEO now depends on getting the right links. If keywords are making it TOO clunky and awkward, you may be forced to get rid of them. Otherwise the visitor will think you are a robot from the Philippines. If the SEO guy has problems, tell him to build more links.

5. Sacrifice Art for the Good of Keywords

Sometimes there are keywords that must be in the copy or h1 tags. Those big, money making keywords take precedence. This is the delicate balance where a writer and the SEO specialist have to come to terms.

6. Use Right Format, i.e. “h1”

Your main headline should be written using the h1 tag and should include the main keywords you would like your particular page to rank for. If you’re really serious about SEO-ing your page, the keywords in the h1 should essentially match the keywords in the title tag for the page (If you’re curious about what a title tag is go here). Also, here’s a post about other basic on-page optimization tips, which include stuff about h1′s and h2′s.

7. Beware of Spammy, Blackhat

Keyword stuffing, duplicate content, cloaked content – all that stuff is bad news. Despite having the search engines put you in the doghouse for it, users hate it too. That stuff is bad for your image from a marketing and PR standpoint, and I don’t even need to talk about how that stuff negatively affects website conversion.

Do you agree with these steps? Have any other advice for writing SEO website copy? Please comment.

Not only have social media marketers taken up the infographic craze, but SEOs as well. Infographics, done well, can build a large portfolio of quality links. I’ve since noticed many SEO companies who are developing infographics for their clients and pushing them in the social media sphere.

When I discovered that so many SEO infographics already exist, I decided to rate them. David McCandless, at informationisbeautiful.net, revealed four criteria when evaluating information design:

1. Interestingness - Is the content relevant and original, such that the viewer sees value in it?
2. Integrity - Can I trust the content?
3. Form - Is it pleasing to the eye?
4. Function - Is this information useful and useable?

Take a look at his infographic about infographics:

Below, you’ll see some of the best infographics I could find about online marketing. I’ve rated them by giving pluses (+) for each category discussed above.

SEO Infographics

Elliance has, by far, the most search marketing infographics. The infographics cover everything from PDF Optimization to Keyword Clustering. I found most of the infographics contained quality graphics and interesting ideas, but they slightly lacked in functionality — meaning, most of the concepts presented are low-level, basic concepts that most SEOs should already know.

SEO Factors

• Interestingness: +
• Integrity: +
• Form: +
• Function: +

Long Tail SEO

• Interestingness: +
• Integrity: +
• Form: +
• Function: ++

Link Juice

• Interestingness: +
• Integrity:
• Form: +++
• Function: +

Google PageRank Explained

I found this infographic very beneficial in visualizing the Internet in terms of PageRank. PageRank is valued exponentially. While it’s easy to increase PageRank by 1 at the bottom of the mountain (e.g., from 2 to 3), it becomes much harder to increase by 1 (e.g., from 6 to 7) as you move up the mountain.

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: +
• Form: +
• Function: +++

Wired Magazine published an interactive infographic about the life of a blog post. With a flash-based, interactive spin, Wired has covered all the avenues of blogging as it moves around the Web, being picked up by search engines, data miners, and social bookmarks. If you haven’t seen it I suggest you check it out.

The Life Cycle of a Blog Post

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: +++
• Function: +

Similar to Wired’s infographic above, The Social Media Effect by Infographicworld.com, shows the travels of content as it makes it’s way through the social media world. My favorite part of this particular infographic is how all the arrows, eventually, point to a Google search engine result for that story. It’s a nice way of showing that great content will bring in lots of quality links.

The Social Media Effect

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: +
• Form: ++
• Function: +

Rank Fishkin, from SEOMoz.org, created some pretty creative infographics. Although they are not the most visually appealing, they share some really creative insights about SEO. Great job, Rand.

Professions at the Intersection of Technology, Marketing & Statistics

This is true that SEOs need to wear many hats.

• Interestingness: +++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: +
• Function: ++

How SEOs Spend Their Time

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: +++! Those of you working directly with clients know how true this infographic is
• Form: +
• Function: +

Scatterplot of SEO Tactics

This is one of my favorite infographics as it is really helpful for SEOs to know how to spend their time.

• Interestingness: +++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: +
• Function: ++

The Size of the Mobile Market

We’ve seen the mobile market skyrocket in the last few years. Astonishingly, there are only 1.4 billion internet users compared with 4 billion mobile phone users. Any business would do well to understand how to tap into the mobile market. With the influx of smart phones, we’re making sure our clients show up on mobile searches.

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: +
• Form: ++
• Function: +

Individuals and Their Online Identities

Flowtown created an interesting infographic about how people utilize the Internet to manage their personal identities. Interesting quote: “Search engines and social media sites now play a central role in building one’s identity online.”

• Interestingness: +++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: ++
• Function: +

Google Facts and Figures

Although Pingdom’s infographic about Google doesn’t entirely pertain to SEO, I thought it was a great visualization of numbers. It is interesting to note how Google’s innovative search technology has made it the leader among search engines.

• Interestingness: +
• Integrity: ++
• Form: ++
• Function: ++

DIYSEO has, by far, some of the most visually creative SEO infographics out there. Most of the infographics show how SEO is a must-have in Internet marketing. While I’m only showing three here, DIYSEO has lots more. Go over to the site to check them out.

The Case of Disappearing Ink

Interesting visual graph displaying search methods by demographic:

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: +++
• Function: +

Value of SEO v. PPC

This quote emphasizes the importance of SEO: “When buying, PPC links produce 25% less conversion than SEO.”

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: +++
• Function: +

SEO ROI is King

It’s nice to know that SEO holds the largest ROI.

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: +++
• Function: +

SEO FAQs – A Guide

Datadial.net created the most comprehensive SEO infographic. While it doesn’t offer much original material, it covers everything from keyword research to SEO tactics. It’s a nice way to sum up the basics of SEO in one graphic.

• Interestingness: +
• Integrity: +
• Form: +
• Function: ++

Well, there you have it — a semi-complete list of the best SEO infographics out there.

Bounce Rate

With a high bounce rate, the visitor is saying, “This site isn’t relevant to me – I’m outta here.” The bounce rate number is just the percentage of single page visits, meaning that all those people left your site without looking past the page they landed on. It’s possible that this means your landing page just isn’t interesting. More likely, it means the people landing on your site were led to believe they would find something different when they clicked on your paid advertisement or organic search listing. If you are getting a high bounce rate, look at what your ads are promising. Make sure your landing page fulfills the promise in the ad.

New vs. Returning Visitors

A high number of returning visitors says, “Your site is engaging enough that I think I’ll come back for more.” New visitors are a good indicator that more people are finding your site, but getting them to return is the part that takes work. Ask yourself what you are putting out there that will bring people back again and again. A really good blog is one great way to do this.

Time on Site

A higher time on site tells you your site keeps visitors from leaving. This could mean you offer plenty of things to explore. But be careful. When I logged into analytics on one of my sites this morning, I found most people were staying for three minutes or so. Then there was this one visit that lasted for three hours. I’m guessing that somebody left their browser open on my site while they left the house for a while. So I obviously didn’t give that visit much attention.

Pages Per Visit

This says, “The first point of contact was interesting enough to make me want to look around.” If you have high average page views, you have done a good job of sending the right people to the site and presenting the information in an interesting way. It might also mean you have created a page structure conducive to further exploration.

Traffic Sources

This is very valuable because it shows you the ways customers come to your site. If they are all coming from Google, then your search engine optimization campaign is working. If you see a huge influx of website traffic from a partner site, you could look into ways to increase your visibility on that partner site.

Content

This is where your visitors tell you which content they like best. You are also able to see how they interact with their favorite content by looking at bounce rate, how many of them left the site from that page, etc. If you notice a certain topic always trends to the top, it should probably be a main focus of your content.

The best companies are those that listen to the customer. Google Analytics provides all this wonderful data to help companies do just that. We just have to be willing to dig in a little.

Image courtesy of BigTallGuy