The Minneapolis SEO Standard

One frustration for many is the signal to noise ratio when trying to learn SEO.  There is a very good reason for this, one which I and a few others disagree with, but understand.  Some of the very best SEO’s are not in the business of sharing information, they are in the business of making money with their sites.  If they were to share SEO secrets their niches would quickly become filled with competitors or the SE’s would make changes to their algorithms and the “secrets” would no longer be viable.

So the next best option is to find someone who is interested in sharing some knowledge.  However, many sites require membership ($) boasting promises of SEO success and certificates.  While others offer a limited free section with mostly useless information and maybe the use of a couple tools.  One of marketing pitches these sites use is to boast being Google Certified.  This basically means they handed over $50 to Google and get a shinny new logo to place on the sidebar of their site.

So just to prove a point, I took the “Google Analytics Certification” today to see what the barrier for entry really is.  Typically I would suggest avoiding these types of tests but I actually learned a couple things today in the Conversion University.   Nothing worth bragging about, but I could understand why Google is offering this.  So when I see a site boasting Google Certifiaction this basically means they handed over $50 to Google and get a shinny new logo to place on the sidebar of their site.  A far cry from being an expert IMO.

That said, in the past 6 years I have only found a handful of sites providing good information on a regular basis.  Out of every site I can honestly only recommend one that has truly made a difference in my SEO knowledge on a daily basis – SEO Book -

Just as a disclaimer, I am not using an affiliate link to SEO Book, I just really like it.  The information on the site to non-paying members is invaluable.  However, the paid membership (currently not available) is well worth the money.  It gives you access to a forum similar to mine but with thousands of posts covering many more topics.  If you have a question, it usually gets answered by multiple experts in a short period of time.  For the mean time feel free to ask your SEO questions here and I will respond very quickly with good information.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Problem:

My site is ranking, I did my keyword research but nothing is happening, what now?  More often that not, website owners focus so much on getting a site to rank they may forget the original purpose of the site.  If it is to make money, gain notoriety or simply to share ideas you need to focus on what your visitors will do once they arrive at the site.  Ranking for the term(s) will be short lived if you don’t give your visitors something to stick around for.

Just building great content is worthless without considering visitor intent.  Did they arrive on a informational search, are they looking to buy something or are they just having fun?  Whatever the reason you have to optimize your site for that visitor.

Solution:

When finding out what can help there are a number of options available.  First I would look to others in your niche that are successful, what are they doing that is so much better than you?  Could be as simple as the placement of a button or the wording of a call to action or you aren’t using the right keywords.

If you are already ranking for keywords that means the search engines have some level of trust for your site.  Keeping this in mind, try doing some PPC ads with the keywords your competitors are either ranking organically or paying for.  Watch the conversions and this should give you a good idea of what terms you may want to re-optimize for.  Ideally you would do this prior to spending to much time building off page SEO, but getting to your goals should be the focus at this point.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

For the past few months I have been talking about starting a forum for those interested in SEO.  So finally, after finding a platform I believe will work the Minneapolis SEO Forum is here.  Since this is a completely new forum I am open to any and all suggestions, but I think you’ll find quite a few relevant categories to ask your questions in.

I hope you enjoy the format and I look forward to answering your questions (and even asking a few).

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I see a lot questions just like this and my best advice would be to purchase the “exact match” .com, .net or .org for the keyword(s) you are going for.  Ideally the .com TLD would be best.  This in combination with good content, a bit of luck and all the good links you can get will give you an excellent shot at success. Now this is not an option for most people, especially if they are late into the market, because domains like this are already taken or are simply too expensive.  Another option would be to create a killer link strategy and make sure there is some great on site content people want to link to.  If you have the time and money is an object this will be you best bet.

You can start a good link strategy by finding competing sites (for your keywords) that are in the first few pages of the search results.  If the site has very few links but is ranking that is a signal, find out which of those links have the most weight and go for them.  Now getting links is not always an easy task, and many get frustrated when progress is slow.  The good news for those people is linking should not be a one shot deal.  Build your links slowly over time, for example: Week one – 2 links, Week two – 4 links, Week three – 8 links and so on.  If you build links in this manner it not only becomes much more feasible, it is signal to search engines your site is important.

On another note I would recommend before you go through all the effort, using paid search initially to see if the keyword even converts is a must.  Make sure you aren’t putting the cart before the horse.  You could end up ranking for a phrase that is highly informational but does not convert well.

Good luck and feel free to make a comment if you have more questions

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Just a quick tip for my readers -

Here is a $125 free credit from yahoo search marketing for new accounts.
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/tdct

If you haven’t already set up an account it is fairly easy to do.  You will have to deposit $30 into your account and set up your billing information to get the credit.  Just be sure to watch your daily budget if you are not interested in spending any more than the intial amount on SEM with Yahoo.  I actually set this up for a few of my clients and had to call Yahoo (866-YAHOO-SM) to get the credit intialized but there was no issues.  Just have the link above for reference should they ask.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites