SEO - Regionally Targeting Your Traffic
Posted by reviews on Apr 7, 2008
SEO - Regional Targeting for Geographically Specific Traffic (geotargeting)
How does one target a specific geographic region/country/city?
There are a few areas of SEO and marketing that you can do to improve your site ranking within a particular region, known as ‘geotargeting’. The biggest challenge would be ranking well in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) across a range of regions. It would probably require several regional campaigns.
- Domain TLD: You can register your domain with a country specific TLD, such as “.co.uk”. This should help you rank better in the UK. The same can be done for other countries.
- Hosting: This is a major factor, if web host server is located in France, then you are likely to rank well in France. Unfortunately, you may not rank well for search engine users in other countries. You should look around for webhosts from that area, for example: you can be hosted on a Maui server, if you are targeting a Maui audience.
- Languages: If your site includes more than one language, you will have a better chance of ranking well within countries where that language is spoken.
- Keywords Usage: If your website has too much content for “German”, as apposed to the “UK”, then the search engines may perceive this as the website is targeting the location mentioned in the content. I do not believe in keyword density as being of any value, but I do believe that including the keywords within the content would be relevant.
- On page/site SEO: Create individual pages or sections of your website for the area you are targeting. Your efforts should then focus the traffic to these pages/areas. This includes link building, advertising, and other means to direct traffic and improve your rank in the SERPs.
- Localized Link Building: Find local bloggers and websites (government city, state, country too!) and see if they’d link to you. Even better, see if they would write an article or two about your site or services.
- Create a network: Buy domains and host them on localized webhosts. Create original, good content and point them to your main site. You may even get some referral traffic from them as well.
- Google Local Business Center: By using the Google Local Business Center, you are also narrowing your site down to local areas.
Use the Local Business Center to create your free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they’ll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even coupons to print out and bring to your shop. It’s easy, free, and you don’t need a website of your own.
- as soon as it happens
- once per day
- once per week
- Slashdot PR9
- Mister-Wong PR7
- Furl PR7
- Bibsonomy PR7
- Spurl PR6
- Unalog PR6 - Registration not currently available (thanks dauclair)
- Jumptags PR6
- Searchles PR6
- Plime PR5
- BlogHop PR5
- MyLinkVault PR5
- A1 Webmarks PR5
- ClipClip PR5
- Diigo PR5
- Listible PR5
- MyVmarks PR5
- Complore PR4
- OnMyList PR4
- Kapely PR3
- info4it PR3
- MyPIP PR3
- SyncOne PR3
- Yattle PR2
- Faves PR0
- UPCHUCKr PR0
Google Alerts: How to Use It to Monitor Link Building
Posted by reviews on Apr 4, 2008
Google Alerts: How to Use it to Track Backlinks
If you’re not using this, it’s worth giving it a try. The purpose for this is to have notification when new links to your site are found by Google. This can be very good for any linkbuilding campaign.
Click Here: Google Alerts
The search terms should be similar to any one or all of the following:
link: http://www.example.com <— notice the space between link: and http?
link:http://www.example.com
link:www.example.com
link:http://example.com
The question has been asked, “what does the space do?” It’s strange, but it does bring up different results of backlinks, so it’s worth using this modification. Why there is a difference, I have no idea.
It’s very handy for watching progress of Google picking up new links to your sites.
You can set the frequency to:
Also, it can be set it for Blogs, news, web, etc.
What is the maximum number of alerts I can create?
You can create up to 1000 alerts. To create more alerts, you can either delete any existing alerts or request alerts to be sent to a different email address. Please remember that you can only have up to 10 unverified Alerts at any given time.
What is linkbait (with examples)?
Posted by reviews on Mar 16, 2008
First, what is linkbait?
Linkbait is simply creating something that sparks peoples’ interest enough that they would create a link to you or use something that you offer, such as an image or a tool. They may knowingly or unknowingly create a backlink to your site.
With Google’s Matt Cutts doing a writeup of linkbait recently and an older one, it made me think more about it. The real thing always serves as the best example, rather than just explaining it. This seems to be an acceptable way of getting links, according to Google.
Here’s his definition: “On a meta-level, I think of “linkbait” as something interesting enough to catch people’s attention, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There are a lot of ways to do that, including putting in sweat-of-the-brow work to generate data or insights, or it can be as simple as being creative. You can also say something controversial to generate discussion (this last one gets tired if you overuse it, though). Sometimes even a little bit of work can generate a reason for people to link to you.”
Examples of Linkbait
www.stclaire.com - PR4 - Links 2,630
Matt Cutts used this “Technical Communications” site that had a clever sign making section.
24 DoFollow Social Bookmarking Sites
Posted by reviews on Mar 13, 2008
DoFollow Social Bookmarking Sites
The following are Social Bookmarking Sites that provide dofollow backlinks to your site. As always, it is important to provide good content to these sites, as well as being relevant content to yours. Most importantly, we should not abuse or misuse these Social Bookmarking sites.
Are these really “DoFollow”? Read this to see other ways of blocking the spiders.
Ok, as I add new ones (or take away bad ones), then the number changes.
NoFollow - How the attribute is being interpreted differs between the search engines. While some take it literally and do not follow the link to the page being linked to, others still “follow” the link to find new web pages for indexing. In the latter case rel=”nofollow” actually tells a search engine “Don’t score this link” rather than “Don’t follow this link.” This differs from the meaning of nofollow as used within a robots meta tag, which does tell a search engine: “Do not follow any of the hyperlinks in the body of this document”.
What is a good way to check if a link is Nofollow? Download Firefox
Install the Firefox SEOQuake Plugin from the tools page.
You may also like the DoFollow Forums List
*If you notice any changes or possible additions, please post a comment.
DoFollow Forums
Posted by reviews on Mar 8, 2008
As you may know, Google implemented the nofollow tag a few years ago, but a short time later, others chose to create what is known as Dofollow, which is really nothing more than purposely allowing the “link juice” to pass from one site to another or, at least, not hindering it.
The definition of nofollow:
nofollow is a non-standard HTML attribute value used to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place.
As a possible incentive or through a lack of desire to block links in forums, some forum owners and moderators have decided to allow backlinks within a forum post or within the signature (aka sig). One reason for having nofollow links and/or not allowing sigs in a forum is to prevent spam.
For this reason, I do not encourage or condone the abuse of these forums. I see it as a perk for actively taking part in the forum. Along with possibly getting some “link juice”, you may get some traffic from readers of your posts, especially from forums related to your links.
What is a good way to check if a link is Nofollow? Download Firefox
Install the Firefox SEOQuake Plugin from the tools page.
I have organized a list of dofollow forums into categories and alphabetized it. It is a permanent page within this site and will continue to be updated.
List of DoFollow Forums
Google Analytics for Tracking Google Base (Froogle) Visitors
Posted by reviews on Dec 3, 2007
For those of us that sell products via an ecommerce site, you probably are familiar with Google Base (formerly Froogle) where you can list your products on Google Product Search. You may wonder if you are getting many visitors from Google Base. You will likely get visitors if your pages are fairly well designed in Google Base and the pricing and attributes are good. The question would be; how does one track Google Base visitors using Google Analytics?
Google has an answer on their Official Google Base Blog, however their advice is odd and a pain in the arse at best, and very bad advice at worst. Their answer is to create another page just for the Google Base visitors, thus creating duplicate content, which contradicts Google’s own webmaster guidelines. Nice.
Regular landing page: http://example.com/page1.html
Unique Base landing page: http://example.com/page2.htmlBy creating two versions of the same page on your website and submitting the unique landing page URLs to Base, Google Analytics can show you exactly how much traffic is being sent to your website from Base. Just make sure to include the unique landing page URL in the link attribute of your bulk upload file.
A much, much better answer was supplied by Scott Horne over at WebProNews. They even provide great graphics to help you. He suggests adding a query string to the end of the url link in Google Base, such as ?ref=base.
It would look like this: http://www.example.com/nifty-product.html?ref=base
You would then log into Google Analytics, go to the specific domain, go to Content, Top Landing Page, and do a search for ref=base.
Very simple!
Leftover Stuff from Airports Security - How to Buy!
Posted by reviews on Nov 1, 2007
Looking for a great way to find inventory to resell or just some nice gifts for yourself or others? Here’s some great possibilities!
Since 9/11, the TSA has collected tons of items at airport security checkpoints. What happens to all that stuff? Here’s how to buy TSA contraband.
Since 9/11, the Transportation Security Administration has collected tons of items at security checkpoints; in 2006 alone, screeners took in more than 13 million items. What happens to all that stuff? The TSA turns it over to state surplus property agencies, which tend to sell it online or at retail stores. (Sometimes the contraband is sold in bulk.)The agencies say they’ll reunite you with your prized pocketknife, if they can locate it. But they would much prefer that travelers figure out the rules and abide by them. “Our goal is for passengers not to bring this stuff on anymore, so we won’t have to deal with it,” says Steve Ekin, Georgia’s surplus property division director. Here’s where to look, and what you might find.
Quote from Yahoo! News
Here’s some contact info:
Alabama
Airports: 14 in Florida and Alabama, including Miami, Orlando, Huntsville, and Birmingham
Where to buy: eBay (seller ID: alstatesurplus)
Typical deal: Golf driver $100
Craziest items? “There are always lots of plastic fake swords that people buy at Walt Disney World, so there are probably lots of mad kids.”
Info: adeca.state.al.us/surplus%20property
Georgia
Airports: Atlanta, Savannah/Hilton Head
Where to buy: Stores in Tucker (Atlanta Surplus Center, 770/414-6468); Swainsboro (Swainsboro Surplus Center, 478/289-2623); and Americus (Americus Surplus Center, 229/931-2407)
Typical deal: Hammers $3, cordless drills $10
Craziest items? “We get flatware and kitchen knives stolen from restaurants, and we’ve received a bowling pin, a chain saw, and a few circular saws.”
Info: surplusproperty.doas.georgia.gov
Illinois
Airports: Chicago O’Hare, Chicago Midway, and occasionally four more in Illinois and Michigan
Where to buy: Auctions held at ibid.illinois.gov
Typical deal: 25 pounds of Swiss Army knives for $250
Craziest items? “On occasion, we’ll see big bowie knives and ninja swords. And nunchucks–a lot of those come through.”
Kentucky
Airports: Eight in various states, including Orlando and Miami (Alabama shares the loot), and Louisville
Where to buy: eBay (seller ID: kysurplus)
Typical deal: 50 Swiss Army knives for $250
Craziest items? “We’ve collected about 500 mini Louisville Slugger bats bought at the Louisville Slugger Museum.”
Info: finance.ky.gov/internal/surplus
Oregon
Airports: Portland and Eugene
Where to buy: eBay (seller ID: oregontrail2000)
Typical deal: 10 Leatherman multitools for $75
Craziest items? “Golf clubs and machetes.”
Info: oregonsurplus.com
Pennsylvania
Airports: 13 from various states, including New York JFK, Newark, Philadelphia, and Cleveland
Where to buy: eBay (seller ID: pastatesurplus)
Typical deal: Deer-hunting kit (gut-slitting knife, multitool, pocketknife, large safety pins, rope, flashlight) for $50
Craziest items? “We’ve received hundreds of pairs of fuzzy handcuffs and other … paraphernalia–I wanted to create funny Valentine’s Day kits, but folks here thought taxpayers wouldn’t like it.”
Info: dgs.state.pa.us/surp_prop
Texas
Airports: Seven across the state, including Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin
Where to buy: Austin Storefront in Austin, 512/463-1990
Typical deal: Scissors and corkscrews 25¢, knives 50¢, multitools $2.50
Craziest items? “Brass knuckles, crutches, and piñata sticks. And we once got a cane with a knife inside it.”
Info: tfc.state.tx.us/communities/supportserv/prog/statesurplus
Washington State
Airports: Seattle-Tacoma, Spokane, and Tri-Cities
Where to buy: Auburn Retail Store in Auburn, 253/333-4912
Typical deal: Corkscrews for 25¢
Craziest items? “Lots of ulus–round Eskimo chopping blades. Also, a Sit’n Putt. It’s a short-handled putter designed to be used while you’re on the potty.”
Info: ga.wa.gov/surplus