Website SEO Tips and Tricks

I’m not an I.T. guy really when it comes to fixing computers, but I do know from experience how to maintain my own PCs since the 1980’s.  Normally I don’t talk about I.T. related computer problems but thought this is a good one to share with everyone who uses Windows.

What Normally Happens to Us All…

I have several computers in my two offices – all running various versions of Windows – and one of them hasn’t been updated in a while. I purposely turned off Microsoft Windows Automatic Updates at one time on this PC because it was annoying me; however I forgot to turn it back on. Well needless to say, that was a big mistake.

Bogus Antivirus Software Scam

Those updates are important to repair security vulnerabilities in Windows and sometimes for the popular browser Internet Explorer, and I know this, but neglected it anyway. Well it cost me about half a day researching and removing a serious and stubborn virus called “AV Security Suite”. It’s a pop-up on your desktop that says “Warning: A virus has been detected, blah, blah, blah… and begins to run a fake scan of your PC. Actually, this virus has been around for a long time. It just keeps getting a face lift and is harder to remove each time. It’s actually harmless to your PC’s security and files unless you get suckered into buying it to try and stop the warnings. It’s just a phishing scam to get you to purchase some bogus software just to get rid of the relentless virus warning messages,  pop-ups and porn images that keep coming one after the other until it freezes your PC. Long story short, after hours of research, I found a way to remove it here in case you run into it. I had to use the manual removal procedure but it worked like a champ.

To avoid this kind of stuff or fix your slow PC now:

1. Turn off Norton Anti-Virus or McAffe Anti-Virus programs and see if your PC is already faster – I bet it is too. Believe me when I say they are completely useless and do nothing more than take up a huge amount of system resources AND SLOW DOWN YOUR PC! These programs are a virus in themselves. I’ve used them for many years and had nothing but problems and slow computers and got more viruses with them than without them. The funniest thing is when you get a virus, neither could ever remove it! Just go to Control Panel >Add/Remove Programs and do a complete uninstall and save your money.
2. Run Windows Live One Scanner (free) to check your PC’s registry files, temporary files, disc defragment, clear the cache files and check system files for infections and malware/spyware. Note: you need to use Internet Explorer to do it. It may take an hour or more to run so be warned! If the scan produces a virus or something it cannot remove, write it down and research it. More than likely someone has an article on how to remove it. Search for the virus name and “manual removal” with it. The worst case scenario is you may need to do a system restore to bring the PC back to its original state but its worth it.
3. After your system is all cleaned up, avoid using Internet Explorer all together when browsing the internet! Download and use Mozilla Firefox instead. It’s free and a much safer and secure browser than IE and less likely to bring in those nasty virus and spyware bugs. It gets updated far more often than IE too just to keep ahead of the curve.
4. Make sure your PC is updated by running Windows Updates regularly. It’s best to set it to run on an automatic schedule like late at night.

These steps are tried and true and are no real secret. More information about each step can be found anywhere too in case you are skeptical. If you still have issues, leave a comment here and I can recommend a few website clients who professionally fix PCs for a living and may be able to do it remotely for you too.

I’ll make this article real short for some of you by answering the big question: buying multiple domain names will not help with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or drive more traffic to your website. But there are some other big benefits and that’s what we’ll explore here.

There are some out there who believe buying up multiple domain names will somehow send more people to their websites. Simply not true. In fact, the only thing you can really do is “forward” those new domain names to an existing website. Forwarding a domain is also technically known in geek-speak as a 301 Permanent Redirect of a URL.  Here’s what forwarding does.  Let’s say you buy abc-xyz.com and forward (redirect) it to your main website at yourwebsiteexample.com.  If or when someone types in the EXACT domain name of  abc-xyz.com, the user will be taken to yourwebsiteexample.com. That’s it. That’s all there is. Exciting, huh? (yawn)

Okay, now for the benefits I mentioned. Here are the reasons why you should buy up multiple domain names:

1. Brand Yourself. You have a brand and people know it by name. Someone is likely going to type your brand name thinking it’s a web address. Anyone who owns a business should at least try to get their business name in a domain name. This also offers protection. Your competitor could buy it too!
2. Virtual Real Estate. You want to buy up the common domain names others may try to use to compete against you. If you have a salon in Pleasanton, you should own every domain name with the words “salon” and “Pleasanton” in it. After all, what’s to keep a salon opening up across the street from you and buying that domain name?
3. Misspellings. Get domain names related to your business, services or products that are commonly misspelled and forward them to your website. For example, my domain is 6×6design.com. I also own (and have forwarded) 6by6design.com, sixbysixdesign.com, etc.

Alright, you have a bunch of domain names and now you want them forwarded to your main website. I made a video tutorial on just how to do this, assuming you are using GoDaddy.com.  Even if you’re using someone else to get domain name from, the procedure is pretty much the same from my experience.

By the way, if you are considering buying more domain names from Godaddy.com and don’t already have an account with them, I’d appreciate it if you’d use my affiliate link here. I get credit for your purchases. All you have to do is click on the Godaddy.com logo.

I keep getting the same question over and over again so it’s time to put it to bed. It goes something like this: “I have a business, I have a blog, what should I blog about?” The anxiety that plays into this questions is what causes the mental block in the first place. You already know writing content helps your website and gradually helps your site’s visibility. So let’s talk about some relief and how to do some self-discovery using these 5 tips.

1. What can you teach me? If you’re going to share with the world, make it worthwhile to everyone. Seriously, I don’t want to read what you like. I don’t care about your personal interests unless I can learn something from it. I just want to know what you can give me.  I know it sounds selfish but its true. I want to know your secrets. You know, things that make you an expert with something. Remember, you have to give to get so cough it up!
2. Help your neighbor. You probably have a neighboring business or two you’re already friendly with so why not pull together and help each other?  Perhaps you can cross-promote events or simply write about the benefits of each others business. An easy way to do this is to do a “review” of their business, services, people, whatever, as long as it’s truthful and positive. If they don’t have a website or they’re not blogging – and they probably are not, don’t worry.  Write about them anyway and tell them you’re doing so for approval. The idea is to get more content containing searchable keywords and phrases related to your town, plaza, city, services, etc. that not only make your site content more searchable, but also really add value to your content by sharing information useful to your readers. For example, If you are a salon and your neighboring business is a pizza shop, give a review of their food or employees while relating it to a personal experience related to your salon. Tell your readers how good it was when you had that pizza party during the holidays and what was taking place at the time.
3. Write about local news and events in town. Local topics can drive traffic to your site very quickly. News events are often searched and indexed by search engines within minutes. The idea here is to take interest in happenings that may impact your business or someone else’s or maybe you just have valuable opinions or info to add to it.
4. What should readers be warned about? Again, do you know something other may not or have a different spin on it? Great. Let others know as I mentioned in #1. However, to add spice and interest to it, talk about what potential problems could erupt unless they fully understand or do something. Warnings are looked at by everyone. That’s the idea: get attention. The word “warning” or “what not to do” are powerful headlines.
5. Self-Promotion. Promoting your services or products in a blog are only valid blog posts if you already have a following. Basically, if you’re starting out, don’t do this. You can however create a compelling post that promotes by leveraging testimonials and stories from a third person’s point of view. Get someone else to write a guest article for you and make it into a blog post. This is a very common technique used by some of the biggest bloggers out there.

This should keep you busy for a little while. Also, be sure you’ve read my prior post on Blogging 101 – Starting from Scratch. Remember the moral of this post: adding blog posts to your blog is the same as adding fresh content to your website. The more often you do this, the more often search engines come back to get your updates. This help your website grow and build higher search results. So you see, it is a natural SEO tactic.

Like anything else in life and business, you have to invest your time and sometimes a little cash to reap financial and personal rewards. Of course for many, nothing feels better than self-accomplishment, and that’s where I come in — helping you learn about blogging for business. 

Understand what this is all about – monetizing on your current business investment; your website. And of course if your website has a blog, then this article is truly for you. I’ll cover this blogging 101 tutorial as simply as I can and try to keep the geek talk to an absolute minimum. Grab some coffee and something to eat and get comfy because this is a long one.

Know Thy Self… 

Just so many questions come to me about blogging. But you know what? They all have something in common: anxiety and fear of something new and unknown! Once beyond that, your mind is free and this is no longer a chore. Here’s a list of the most common questions/roadblocks I hear: 

1. Who is my target audience?
2. What should I write about?
3. When will people find my blog posts?
4. Where will my readers come from?
5. Why would anyone bother with what I have to say?
6. How does all of this come together and help my business?

Do you see a trend? Ah yes! The classic “WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY and HOW” scenario! The hidden beauty behind this scenario is the ability to answer them all in succession, and that’s just what I’m going to do for you. In other words, once we know Step#1, then Step#2 starts to become obvious, and so forth! So get a pen and make your list of those six questions now before I answer them.

#1 Who is my target audience?

This may seem obvious, but often it’s not. Right now, you’re thinking “my customers or clients are my target audience”. If you’re just starting out with blogging, then this is DEAD WRONG!  You see, you have to build an audience first by making content that people want to learn about, know about, talk about, or email/text/tweet to others (covered more in Step #2 next). Your current clients already know you and are not likely very interested in what you have to say at first. You are blogging to try to attract new customers/clients as well as serve your current ones so people you do not know should be your readers. To recap, your target reader is someone who will find your writing interesting and/or entertaining.  

#2 OK, I have my target audience. What should I write about?

For example, let’s say you’re a dry cleaner. Take a simple inventory of your professional knowledge and see what may be interesting to someone:

• I can clean clothes professionally. (Yep, obvious but boring. Ironically, this is what a beginner would likely blog about)
• I could tell you what clothing to buy that’s most cost effective and durable when it comes to laundering. (Hmmm…)
• I know how and why you should clean certain stains yourself without using a dry cleaner!  (Huh? Why do that!)

Hey dry cleaners! Did I just get your attention? Make you mad? Make you think? That’s the whole point — attraction. Two things I listed above may seem like I’m giving the farm away, and that’s exactly right! And no, I’m not drawing business away from myself either, trust me. You need to learn to look beyond that now. Instead, I’m attracting readership and creating trust and investing in my future. Think about it: what am I doing right now with you? Yep, you guessed it, giving away my knowledge to bring you back for more and maybe even tell others. And guess what? It worked. I now have an audience because I gave the farm away.  Get it?  Napoleon Hill, an early personal success author and advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, once said: “Give more value than you are being paid for and soon you will be paid more than the value you have given.”

Lack confidence in your writing ability? That’s very common, and a good point to consider. If I can’t make sense of what you’re saying, you will never gain me as a follower. But how will you truly know unless you try? Here are two options: write something first and have someone read it before publishing it in your blog. You will know the answer to this question real fast. Another solution: get someone to write it for you, like hire me for example, or a family member or friend who can write well and offer some sort of trade-off.

#3 When will people find my blog posts?

By now, you found something to write about and who to direct it to. Now for the golden question: how do people find my blog articles? By far, this is the biggest question I receive — and the most important one to explain carefully. The answer comes in many forms but I will mention two of the easiest ways here.

Instant Search Engine Notification: If you are using WordPress for your blog and/or website, then you may or may not know that WordPress can be set to automatically notify a well known blogging resource called Ping-O-Matic each and every time you create and click “Publish” a blog post (your article). In layman’s terms, Ping-O-Matic notifies search engines of your new content immediately!

Before blogs were around, website owners created articles and had to wait for search engines to come and find their new content before the world could search for it. But this could take weeks if your site wasn’t real popular and proved quite frustrating. Blogging revolutionized this whole process and is the single-most important reason why I use WordPress for websites and blogs.

You already know why you have a website (hopefully!): to get people to find you when they search for what you do and where you do it. So each time you write in your blog and publish it, you are telling the WORLD about your new information immediately! This way, you don’t have to wait for search engines to come to you. They are already notified and quite capable of using your information right away. Don’t belive me? Well try it for yourself. Have a Google Account yet? Then try this free Google tool: Google Alerts. Google Alerts can notify you almost immediately about any topic, anywhere, anytime as soon as it goes online just by typing in a topic of choice. Be careful though, it could potentially flood your inbox so play around with it first. Hmm… maybe that’s why CNN and others large communication networks all use blogs!

Social Media: Once you publish your blog post, notify people via Twitter and Facebook with a link to it. You will be amazed just how fast this can bring comments to your blog post and create links from other websites. Also, use newsletter services like I do. I use Constant Contact but there are several other services out there two. In fact, if you really want to get a jump on using these avenues, I’d suggest learning more about Twitter. This training resource on using Twitter is a guide I feel accomplishes this quite well. It’s a small investment of about $47 bucks I think but it’s well worth getting and taking the time to apply it.

#4 Where will me readers come from?

My first reaction to this question was “who cares!” But really, it is important to know. First of all, you aren’t creating a fan club here. You are making content to be found in search engines! Remember, every blog post you write has keywords people use to find your article. However, as you gain readership, even one person at a time, you develop a personal relationship with them and become a trusted resource, which in turn, also makes you a reliable search engine resource!

Patience! Work at it an you will reap rewards but YOU HAVE TO BE DILLIGENT AND PATIENT at the same time! Commonly, bloggers get frustrated and feel like they are talking to nobody because they aren’t getting comments. Trust me, just keep writing. Search engine focus on good, quality content. The more you write, the better you will get at it, and the more you will represent your website to search engines as an important resource to send its searchers to. 

#5 Why would anybody bother with what I have to say?

Simple answer: for the same reasons you are reading this blog post! I’m sure you will figure it out.

#6 How does all of this come together and help my business?

You may know the answers by now:

1. You want more new customers
2. You’d like to retain your existing customers
3. You want your website to make money for you somehow or pay for itself at least
4. You want a low-to-no cost marketing solution
5. You would like to be known as the town expert with what you do and grow by word-of-mouth
6. Your blog creates a personal relationship with new clients or customers
7. Everyone on the planet is recycling their phone book so where else will they look for what you do?

8. …you fill in the rest…

Final Lessons

Here’s what this blog post did for me:

1. Who is my target audience? Owners of websites and blogs.
2. What should I write about? The most common questions they want answers to.
3. When will people find my blog posts? Via my newsletter, Twitter, MySpace and searches for this topic.
4. Where will my readers come from? Search engines, blog subscribers, people who had this post sent to them to check out.
5. Why would anyone bother with what I have to say? Seriously? Just kidding.
6. How does all of this come together and help my business?  I help you and you help me by either using my services or telling others to use my services.

Make sure you share the love and give me your feedback. I’d love to hear from you and your experience with this lesson.

To get Google Analytics, you must first have a Google Account set up first. Once you have an account, sign up for Google Analytics.

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This video is a step-by-step demonstration on just how to get it done.

IMPORTANT!  If 6×6 Design manages your website and performs all technical changes for you, simply copy and paste the tracking code you get on sign-up and email it to support@6×6design.com.  Once installed, it takes about 24 hours before tracking results begin. To view your stats, just log back into Google Analytics.

All others: If you have admin access to your website code (or admin priviledges for WordPress), then you can edit the HTML or PHP files on your website to install the tracking code yourself. Make sure it is placed just before the closing BODY tag. For WordPress admin’s, install the tracking code serial number only in the Analytics plug-in and enable. This will insert the code on every page for you.

If you’d like to have Google Analytics on your website, first get yourself a free Google Account. I’ve whipped together a quick video on just how to do it – as of this date anyway! Once you have it, go to the next post about getting a Google Analytics account.

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Blogging

In Part 3, we wrapped up how the meta data can be edited on each and every blog post and pages of the website. By now you should understand the point of doing all of this work: to broaden the search efforts of your website and allow the opportunity to have more than one landing page appear in the search results for many different ket terms of your website. You see, most people have websites that only focus on the home page. The home page is important, but not tweaking the other pages is a missed opportunity. You can have this edge over some of your online competitors!

This last tutorial addresses taking the knowledge you’ve gained so far and applying it to the blog on your website. Blogs are very popular in search results, often because their content is updated and linked to often. You should seriously take advantage of the blog’s power to help your website edge over your online competitors. I’ve already made a You Tube video tutorial on blogging for an automotive website group so I suggest visiting it before watching this video. Regardless of the industry you’re in, the blogging concepts in the video are universal.

To finalize this tutorial, you might be feeling a little overwhelmed by all of this information and hesitant when it comes to applying it. I understand. This is my business it it has taken years to learn what I know. If you feel that your time is better spent elsewhere BUT feel doing this stuff is important, you may want to consider my consultation services to manage your SEO for you. I’d be happy to offer you an estimate. You can contact me here or call 877-504-7483.

DON’T FORGET!! Share the love and and leave me your feedback below!

More on Meta Data

In Part 2, we introduced you to the SEO plug-in. Now we’ll put it into action and see how it affects the page content, and more importantly, how search engines and people will view your changes.

We’ll also talk about Heading tags. Heading tags are meta data you control to show the hierarchy of the page’s content. In fact, the title of this page is an H1 title, the “More on Meta Data” is an H2 title. Most people have learned to use it for formatting the size of the font – not what it’s for at all!  Title tages like H1, H2, H3 etc. provide information on the structural hierarchy of a document. It facilitates accessibility as well as web code standards. In most cases, using this order of heading identification will make your document easier for not only your readers, but also search engine spiders browsing your content as well. Go to Part 4 here.

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Meta Data in the Source Code

In Part 1 of this tutorial, we did some searches on our example website using key phrases to see how Google ranked the website for that search phrase. We also saw how the title meta tag and meta description are used in the actual search results and how they influence how the page was indexed in the first place.

In Part 2, we’ll see how you can make the needed meta adjustments to each and every pages of your website, including blog posts, using a plug-in installed to do just that very thing. It is called the All-In-One SEO Pack plug-in created by Semper Fi Web Design for WordPress. There are several SEO plug-ins for WordPress but I find this one works best for controlling individual page meta content. This tutorial does not cover every aspect of this plug-in, just what is required for on-page optimization by the page editor.

Understand that meta data, or as I like to refer to it, “content in the source code for search engines”, is not the only solution or technique to help your page ranking in the search results. It is merely one way to help search engine identify what may be on your web pages – that’s it! It IS NOT a guaranteed way to get your pages listed. But as I said, this is just one brick of dozens in the building of our wall, but every brick is as important as the other when combined to complete the construction.

The next video will show you an introduction to the All-In-One SEO Pack plug-in. We’ll get into more detail on this too in Part 3.

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How Do Search Engines See Your Website?

This article series is broken into 4 parts, all with videos, and dedicated to all of you who have a website built in WordPress. Why? It’s not just any website. It’s the world’s leading (and open source) blogging platform. The best-of-the-best in this world use and trust WordPress; and now so do you.

Getting down to business: you have the ability to enhance the search effort of your website, whether you know it or not! This first video is an introductory to some basic search concepts. I’ll take you through a tour of the resources available to you as well as use a live website to demonstrate search results and how it is seen in the eyes of a search engine.

After watching the video and completing Part 1, be sure to give me your feedback! I’d like to know what you and other want to know in the future so be sure to leave a comment on this page. Go to Part 2 here.

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