WordPress and Google – Social Network Marketing Meets SEO

By now you all know that I am a strong proponent of WordPress, and using it along with quality content, is a recipe for success. The only problem that I have with WordPress is its self titled moniker, “just another WordPress weblog”. They are selling themselves short by sticking to the label: blogging platform. In reality WordPress is a very powerful content management system with powerful social network marketing tools and a solid SEO foundation, all things that Google loves. The key to success in Google is three-fold: quality content, inbound links and discussion. WordPress does all of those things, and does them well.

If you already have a website, the best game plan is to add a WordPress system as a directory using a quality keyword and having the directory as close to the root as possible. An example would be companyname.com/keyword/. If your domain already has your main keyword in it, don’t make the mistake of using it again as the name of your WordPress directory. In the unlikely event that you don’t already have a website for your business, then WordPress is a great stand-alone system to get going online. If you have a website, but it is under performing, flipping your site to a WordPress system will give you an incredible boost in the SERPS without taking forever for you to see results. Be clear about this one point though, if you choose WordPress as your content management system, you will have to create quality content on a regular basis.

Social Network Marketing as an SEO Tool

The concept of social network marketing as a powerful SEO tool died before it could become a reality when social networks bowed to Google and nofollowed their users outbound links. The fact is social networks that are related to business can still benefit a website through backlinks, but mainstream sites like Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Delicious, etc. do not pass on link juice. This is an attempt by Google and other search engines to weed out spammers who use social networks to raise their inbound links through spam. On one hand I applaud this, but on the other I find it annoying since I have useful content, but can’t promote it on social networks. The bottom line is that the only way to succeed is to create content that your users will link to. You also need to open discussion on your site through comments. We offer plans that kick start commenting. Even though commenting is pretty anonymous, people still feel weird about being the first person to leave a comment or ask what they feel to be a stupid question. Get Found Now researches your content and asks the right questions that you answer promptly. Once the comments start flowing they snowball into a lot of organic activity that will naturally increase your rankings. It’s like your first high school dance,no one wants to be the first one to be on the dance floor. That is why we have come up with a service that gets the discussion going on your WordPress system. Owning The Discussion and Branding Through SEO is an article I wrote a while back that was inspired by Google’s CEO calling the Internet a cesspool. The thing is, he is right, there is so much spam and weak user generated content out there that it is hard for legitimate websites to compete. Again, it is all about content!

If you have any questions about how to go about writing engaging content, getting discussion rolling on your website, WordPress blog design, or social network marketing give me a call at 866-418-3843 or post a comment below.

WordPress comes equipped with a powerful toolset for social network marketing and SEO. By using specific plugins as well as features already inherent to WordPress, you can set your system up to dominate the SERPS. The first place to start is deciding on which content you want to display to the search engines. There are two place to start with that:

1. Robots.txt File for WordPress SEO – the robots.txt file is where you notify the search engines where your sitemaps are as well as which pages, posts or directories that you don’t want the search engines to go. this holds true for all websites, not just WordPress sites. Leave a comment below if you have questions about robots.txt files.
2. On Page Meta Robots Tags- there are meta tags available that will control spiders and how they INDEX and FOLLOW both the content on the page as well as the links that are on the page. The truth is this subject warrants an entire post, but for now I will give you a quick overview. I use a plugin called All In One SEO Pack that will control on page Meta Robots Tags for category page, tag pages, archives and all posts and pages. All of those things lead down a dangerous path of duplicate content. You have to choose which content you are going to show the spiders. I am running 2 tests right now. One that is excluding everything but the original post and tag pages, and another one that is showing just categories and the post. The key here is to limit the amount of content shown on tag pages or category pages to just the tile and the first 300 or so characters. Even though that is not how my site is set up, you can see it in action at dtidata.com/resourcecenter where the category test is taking place. I am launching a new site called seobyyou.com where I will be testing the tag theory. I will keep everyone up to date on how the test goes. The initial results are leaning to the tag pages being opened up because there is more potential for keyword benefits because there are so many more tags.The basic game plan for pages that you don’t want spidered is to use the NOINDEX FOLLOW argument in on page meta tags. All In One SEO Pack does that, but you also have to coordinate that activity with your sitemap tool. In other words you don’t want to put archive and category pages in your sitemap and then tell spiders not to index them. This also holds true for all types of websites, you just have to do it manually. Leave a comment below if you have any questions.

Once you have identified what content you want to show the search engines and you have set up your road maps (sitemaps) and stop signs (robots.txt), you have given Google what it wants, an easy way to spider your site!

The next step is to incorporate into your sidebars links out to your recent comments, most popular posts and latest posts. You will have to tweak your files to insure that WordPress is not nofollowing your links from the sidebars into the recent comments, latest posts and most popular posts. The goal here is to show Google that there is discussion going on within your site. By answering comments quickly and giving good information, you will get inbound links, that is a fact.

If you have any questions or would like to set up a FREE no obligation report on your WordPress SEO, call 866-418-3843 or leave a comment below.

Think Big Sites

As an Internet marketer, I’m always looking to see how other Internet marketing professionals offering search engine optimization services go about getting more website traffic to their clients’ sites. All Internet driven businesses want more qualified traffic generation and their are specific ways in which SEO experts are able to achieve it.

Think Big Sites is a progressive web marketing company that specializes in website design as well as web traffic generation. In today’s highly competitive Internet marketplace, businesses must think about SEO as well as have a professional looking website. You need a diversified and well thought out marketing strategy to power your website or you might as well not have a website at all. Because without a competitive and comprehensive marketing plan behind your site, you’ll be nowhere in the search engines.

Think Big Sites is comprised of highly skilled professionals, including top website designers, SEO specialists, PHP database programmers, Internet business consultants, website hosting technicians and more.

They are considered by many as the premier search engine optimization company as well as offering the following services:

• Top website design
• Logo design
• Web Hosting
• Comprehensive marketing plans
• Blog marketing techniques
• Content generation
• Pay-per-click campaigns
• Linking strategies
• E-commerce
• Qualified traffic & Lead generation
• Photography
• And More!

Think BIG Sites‘ uniquely diversified marketing strategies will increase your search engine rankings faster and for less money out of your pocket than 98% of their competitors.

So, if you want to get found on the Internet – thinkbigsites.com!

Google Page Rank Updates Toolbar

Last month Google updated Page Rank on sites throughout the Internet. On Matt Cutt’s blog he stated that Google is updating the Toolbar Page Rank. The question is how does the update reflect search engine rankings and is the update valid with all types of Page Rank, or is it just as related to the Google Toolbar?

There are a few tools that webmasters can use to track their Page Rank other than the Google Toolbar. I personally prefer the FireFox extension: SEO For FireFox Extension by SEO Book. Not only does it have important info like PR and Google cache date, but also everything from compete.com rankings to Yahoo backlinks. There are also services out there that will tell you what your Page Rank is and even allow you to put an icon on your site showing off your page rank. The problem with them is that they also get their information from the same source which is the toolbar.

Even if you set up an API or a PHP script that pulls info from Google’s servers it is still calling the results from the toolbar so we have no way of knowing if the Page Rank was only updated for the toolbar or has Google updated the Page Rank where it really matters – in their index? Is this something that you really need to care about? To answer these questions we first need to look at Page Rank, what it is and how it works.

Page Rank Explained

Page Rank is a Google proprietary and patented algorythm that is based upon a pages inbound link count. It not only counts links, but gives those links credit based upon the Page Rank of the linking page, how many other links are on the page and the overall authority of the domain. Now I am sure I am going to get a bunch of negative comments from experts that will say, the domain doesn’t factor in Page Rank. Well anybody that thinks that is an idiot. The domain, length of time at the existing IP, amount of time the domain has been purchased and other factors absolutely factor into Page Rank on both sides of the equation. Both the destination page and the link originating page factor into the overall rank of the page. How this relates to a pages rankings in the index is another matter altogether.

Page Rank itself is used as a guideline by many webmasters as link value for link exchanges, popularity of a page in the search engines and importance of certain keywords to the overall domain. By using the backlinks feature of the Page Rank in the Google Toolbar you can see the links coming into a page of any site. This is a huge value when doing a competitive analysis.

Page Rank Updates On Internal Pages or Posts

The updates on internal pages as opposed to the overall domain are a lot more frequent these days. I did notice that several of my newer systems did get Page Rank, but none of my existing sites (older than 3 moths) had updates on the domain, just on internal pages. All WordPress systems have Page Rank on articles up to July which is pretty damn good. I think I prefer them updating internal pages often more than the domain since all my WordPress systems have a continuous flow of content.

As long as you keep the content flowing, you will get higher Page Rank eventually. I have noted that there are plenty of sites out there that have placement, but no Page Rank. I also noted that there were quite a few sites that lost Page Rank. In fact about half of all the sites bidding on Pay Per Post no longer have Page Rank. My research is limited to technology blogs, but they were pretty much across the board stripped of their Page Rank!

Page Rank Updates At The Domain Level

Did domains get updated as well as internal pages? They used to, but I am seeing more internal updates than domain level updates. There are some sites within my network that are less than 2 months old that have scored Page Rank. In fact if you look at SEO By You, you will be surprised to see that this site which is just an empty WordPress site has a 2 PR! Yep not one lick of content except for the Hello World crap that comes with the system. What does that tell us?

Page Rank Does Not Matter!

Relativity Syndication CO-OP

As Internet marketing experts ourselves, we’re always on the look out for other Internet marketing companies that utilize innovative and cutting edge strategies to successfully drive qualified traffic to business websites.

Relativity Syndication Co-op is one of those companies. They have a smart and progressive model of producing high quality content along with a diligent syndication routine. They understand well that in these tenuous and uncertain economic times, businesses must employ new and sustainable marketing strategies that are competitive on a global scale, which means utilizing the power that only professional Internet marketing can offer.

Relativity Syndication Co-op Works For You!

Relativity Syndication Co-op offers businesses the opportunity to recession proof their business as well as increase their market share globally by connecting with other businesses using their cooperative model. You’ll be able to stretch your marketing dollars with less effort and less time, and for a very small investment for your connection to the marketplace. The reason for the successes that Relativity Syndication CO-OP has garnered is due to their high quality content driven approach as well as their understanding and utilization of syndication and social network marketing. The CO-OP’s  proven traffic driving techniques will drive traffic to your business site(s) from

• Multiple referring sites
• Major search engines
• Blogs and Blogging
• Major Social Networking Sites
• Numerous other Sources

Web Design And SEO

When it comes time to launch a website or re-launch an existing site, often SEO or search engine optimization is an afterthought. SEO must be taken into consideration at all times if you want your website to rank highly in the SERP’s. Get Found Now utilizes a unique and proprietary approach to website design.

SEO and Website Usability

Website design is based upon usability. How will visitors use the site? How will they find what they are looking for? How do you get your products or services in front of your users? These along with basic usability practices are usually in the forefront of web design project meetings. If they aren’t, then you need a new website design company!

Along with those important questions and answers, search engine optimization must be in the mix or your site will get nowhere fast. Of course if your business model is based upon pay per click traffic, then you can ignore this article. If you aren’t made of money, than this outline will help you create a solid design plan that will take into consideration the most important factors in creating an Internet Presence for your company in the 21st century.

A Website Designed In Layers

The way Get Found Now designs and implements websites is through a layer system. We look at a project as having 2 distinct layers:

1. The Usability Layer – this layer of a website is all about users. We make usability the primary focus and give site visitors all the tools they need to find what they are looking for and get the products or information they require quickly, preferably within 2 clicks.
2. The SEO Layer - built for search engines, the SEO Layer is where keyword discovery, URL creation and other search engine optimization tactics are put to use. While deep link navigation is often thought about as a usability function Get Found Now uses it to create tiers of pages that serve as the foundation of the website and the way search engine’s crawl and index the site.

Get Found Now designs two separate websites, one for users, and one for search engines. These two layers are then connected with Web 2.0 applications. Using social network marketing techniques we combine the layers into one cohesive website that will appeal to both visitors and search engines.

This article is the first in a multi-part series that will look at Web Design and SEO. To learn more about Get Found Now and Internet Presence Management, call 727-856-4695 and speak to Victoria or Michael Stankard.

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