Successful SEO Tips for 2013

With users' behaviors and Google's algorithms rapidly and constantly changing, measuring SEO success by your ranking position for your favorite keywords means falling behind the curve. Here are the most meaningful metrics for SEO for 2013.

Focus on Your Keyword Portfolio
Search engine users are getting smarter and more specific. Today, over 70 percent of searches online contain three or more words in the search query. Furthermore, Google reported that over 20 percent of search queries are completely new queries that had never been searched before! The long tail is where the growth is happening, and your strategy needs to be built around this growth. Focusing on "fat head" keywords is an unbalanced strategy with diminishing returns. Marketers need to focus on increasing the number of keywords sending search traffic rather than improving a specific keyword position. This is known as your keyword portfolio.

Create Problem-Solving Content

Creating great content isn't rocket science. If you have trouble coming up with ideas, or you think your industry is too boring, focus instead on solving a customer's problem. This can be done easily by utilizing your organization's intellectual property to create how-to guides, white papers, or research studies. If you're in business, then you're solving problems! Combine people, processes, and software to scale content marketing.

Publish Content on Quality Sources

Last year's Penguin update eliminated the value of content published on untrusted websites. This includes low-quality websites, content farms and many "free" PR websites. Showing up in Google search is a lot like getting a job--it's your references that make the difference. Concentrate on earning references from high quality and trusted industry websites. Industry organizations and online communities are where you should be publishing content on a regular basis.

Distribute and Promote Content through Social Media

Social media is an extremely efficient channel for distributing and promoting your content. This includes content that you publish on your website, as well as content that you publish on highly trusted third-party websites. Social media channels enable you to reach millions instantly, as well as stay on the radar of search engine algorithms for topics related to your content. Google and Bing have both admitted to using social signals in their ranking algorithms, so social media engagement is a must-do for digital marketers.

Do's of SEO

1. Target the most relevant keywords- Make sure you are writing about something people actually care about and use words and phrases people use.
2. Keep creative titles- You should try to use titles and subtitles that will catch a readers attention and draw them into the rest of your content.
3. Dont focus only on Google- Google isnt the only search engine that you should be focusing on. Make sure to run your analytics across multiple search browsers and make adjustments accordingly.
4. Create great content that is well optimized- When writing content, you need to place keywords in the titles and subtitles to make it scannable for a reader and by search engines. This will help give them a chance to quickly find out if they have found what they are looking for and if they want to continue reading.
5. Update your content frequently- New content is loved by search engines and is also great for your readers. It will make sure that you are up to date and help increase your return traffic from visitors.



Don'ts of SEO

1. Don't wait too long to implement SEO- Putting off your optimization strategy can only hurt you with missed opportunities and lack of online presence.

2. Don't make your web site uncrawlable- Make sure you have a site map on your site. Without one search engine spiders cant index your pages and rank their importance.
3. Don't target overly general keywords- Make sure you use specific words that people will be using to find what they want. This will also help cut down on your bounce rate and decrease the chances of high competition for a keyword.
4. Don't have the same title element on every page- One of the biggest mistakes people make is placing every single keyword within their content. Search engines dont like this and your visitors wont like reading it either. Place your words logically throughout your site for it to be effective.
5. Don't have the same title element on every page- Create appropriate title tags and descriptions for each individual page so that it is easier for search engine spiders to understand your sites hierarchy.




How to Recover from Google Panda & Penguin

Over the past two years, Google has stepped up its efforts to battle link spam, affiliate sites, and poor quality content with significant updates known collectively as Panda and Penguin. The series of updates, as recent as Penguin 21 on November 6, 2012, have negatively impacted websites that Google deems in violation of its Webmaster Guidelines and general best practices. A minority of those sites may be legitimate, but a majority of those impacted were consciously in violation, and the penalization is the equivalent of death: a precipitous drop in rankings. This article can help you how to fight Google panda and penguin.

Diversify Your Links
Are guest posts the one true answer to all of lifes questions or are they a scourge on our fragile earth? To read the SEO blogosphere in 2012, its hard to tell. Any link-building tactic can be low quality, if you abuse it. The problem is that someone reads a tip about how guest posts make good links and then they run off and publish the same slapped-together junk on 15,000 sites. Then they wonder why their rankings dropped. Nothing screams manual link-building like a profile thats built with only one tactic, especially if that tactic is too easy. At best, youre eventually going to be doomed to diminishing returns. So, take a hard look at where your links came from in 2012 and consider trying something new next year. Diversify your profile, and youll diversify your risk.

Diversify Traffic Sources

Theres an 800-lb. Gorilla in the room, and we're all writing more SEO blog posts to avoid talking about it. Most of us are far too dependent on Google for traffic. What would you do if something changed overnight? I know some of you will object But ALL my tactics are white-hat and I follow the rules! Assuming that you understood the rules 100% accurately and really followed them to the letter, what if they changed? The more I follow the Algorithm, the more I realize that the changing search UI and feature landscape may be even more important than the core algorithm itself. What happens if your competitor suddenly gets site-links, or youre #8 on a SERP that drops to only 7 results, or everyone gets video snippets and you have no videos, or your niche shifts to paid inclusion and you cant afford to pay? Even if youve followed the rules, your traffic could drop on a moments notice. You need to think beyond Google. I know its tough, and its going to take time and money, but if youre dependent on Google for your livelihood, then your livelihood is at serious risk.

Diversify Your Marketing

Theres been a very positive trend this year toward thinking about marketing much more broadly not as a tactic to trick people into liking you, but as the natural extension of building a better mousetrap. I think this is at the heart of RCS (not to put words in Wils mouth) if you do something amazing and you believe in it, everything you do is marketing. If you build crap and you know its crap, then marketing is sleight of hand that you hope to pull on the unsuspecting. You might score twenty bucks by stealing my wallet, but youre not going to gain a customer for life. Stop taking shortcuts and make a real resolution in 2013 to think hard about what you do and why it has value. If you understand your value proposition, content and marketing naturally flow out of that. Talk to people outside of the SEO and marketing teams. Find out what your company does thats unique, exciting, and resonates with customers.

Diversify Your Point Of View

I recently had the pleasure to finally see Michael Dorausch (a chiropractor and well-known figure in the local SEO community) speak. Dr. Mike arrived in Tampa for BlueGlassX and built his presentation from the ground up, using photography to tell stories about the neighborhood and local history. It's hard to explain in a few sentences, but what amazed me was just how many ideas for unique and original content he was able to find in less than 48 hours, just by having a fresh perspective and passion for the subject. I'd like to say I was inspired by the presentation, but to be totally honest, I think the emotion was embarrassment. I was embarrassed that he was able to generate so many ideas so quickly, just by coming at the problem with the right attitude. In 2013, if you tell me your industry is "boring," be warned - I'm going to smack you. If you're bored by what you do, how do you think your prospects and customers will feel? Step out - have someone give you a tour of your office like you've never been there. Visit your home city like you're a tourist coming there for the first time. Get five regular people to walk through your website and try to buy something (if you don't have five normal friends, use a service like UserTesting.com).

How to Become Successful With Google Adwords

Nowadays Google AdWords program has turn into a major instrument for online business. It is most popular than any other pay per click marketing campaigns. This marketing program is a proven method for increasing traffic and enhancing your knowledge about niche market, and about your prospective clients. Conversely inability to manage it suitably can sometimes bring about shocking expenditures. A number of advertisers are afraid of using this powerful tool because they are simply ignorant about its uses and tricks. The following strategies can be helpful to take your marketing campaign to a high level that can result in more traffic and better conversion rates.

Use the Right Keywords for Content Network Ads
While starting, switch off the "content network" choice in your campaign settings. Usually it causes a lot of expenditure generating very small amount of traffic. If you would like it to turn on, then use the search network to know what your most successful keywords/ad groups are. Thereafter, you can create a different campaign for them with only content network ads. Also pay attention to sites that will match with your niche market. Test and track if it can produce best conversions.

Consider Using 2 Ads Simultaneously
It can be wise option to run two ads at a time. As a result, you can check which ad does better and stick to that. Wait for at least getting 30 clicks before taking a decision that which ads perform well.

Use Related Keywords
Sometimes related keywords can also bring much success to your adword campaign. Employ blend of pricey keywords and less pricy keywords to get more CTR. Make some research to find such keywords.

Set a Budget
Many people don’t know that the budget can also be set in the campaign settings. It is essential to set daily or monthly budget if you want to get rid of excess expenses. Also set your highest price per click and adjust according to conversion rates.

Create Separate Ad Groups
Use separate ad groups for related keywords. Thus, you can use unique ads based on keywords in that ad group. It is helpful in increasing CTR. Also, make sure to use distinctive landing pages for each ad group.

Track All Results
Tracking your keywords is vital to identify which keywords performed well and produced the best conversion rate. There is option to view the results for your ad campaign. Tracking is also useful to eradicate keywords that do not perform well, and adjust your ads consequently.

Analyze your Ad Campaign
Finally analyze your ad campaign for conversion rates and bring necessary adjustment to your keywords to get better CTR and conversions. Before you spend money on Google adwords, make sure to know how it works.

How to Make Money from Your Blog

A blog gives you a platform to share your ideas, information, and experiences with others. But now it is possible to make money from your blog site. You can earn your livelihood from it while making blogging a fun. Try the following techniques for making your blog or website lucrative.

Google AdSense
Google AdSense is the most well-liked way for making money with your blog site. By creating an account with adsense, you get payment for every click that people make on the ads placed in your blog or website. Register for Google ASsense and place ads on your blog site. You can place ads anywhere you prefer.

Affiliate Programs
Another most effective method for making money with your blog or website is using of affiliate programs. In affiliate programs, you are required to register to place ad on your site. Payment is made for each purchase of an article through your site. Here you don’t get payment for any click on the ad but get paid for each purchase. Several affiliate programs are accessible including Amazon, Ebay, and Yahoo.

Advertising your Services
Promote your services through your blog. If you have proficiency in writing, scrap booking, photography, or anything else that can be provided online, publicize it! As a result, you and your service will get more exposure to people. Consequently, you can enjoy a good customer base and your business will grow. You may also want to publish blog about your company and the goods or services provided by it. Thus, it is possible to make money by providing your services to others through your blog.

Consulting
Usually recognized consultants publish blogs to promote their businesses. But now bloggers who have no consulting background are also making money by consulting scenarios owing to their proficiency in a specific topic. By blogging, you can establish yourself as professionals on niche topics. Thus, you can make handsome money for consulting work you are expert in.

Adding Tweet My Blog
Also, it is possible to earn your living from your blog by signing up Tweet My Blog which is a Twitter plug-in. You get payment for promoting this plug-in by adding it to your blog site thus allowing others to click and view. You can also referr it to friends.

Digital Assets
Many bloggers are now taking help of digital assets to support and earn profits from their blogs. They are now running their courses, e-books, and tele-seminars. By doing these works, they are creating more opportunities to earn.

How To Do Successful Guest Posts

One of the best ways to promote a new blog is to do guest posts. Guest posts are articles that you write and give to another blogger to publish on their blog. Usually there will be some kind of introduction with a link to your site along with a couple of links in the guest post itself. If the guest post is successful it should be able to drive some traffic to your site and hopefully you can gain a few new readers. Another big benefit of guest posts is to get more links to your blog. This will give you some SEO benefit which might help certain posts rank higher with the search engines.

This post is mainly focused on how to write a guest post to gain new readers.
There are a number of different criteria to measure the “success” of a guest post. Having it accepted and published is one criteria. The amount of traffic it creates is another. New readers as measured by RSS count is another one. Comments on the guest post could be another.

Here are a whole pile of suggestions on how to have a successful guest post:
Quality
– Make it top quality – It has to stand out or nobody will check out your site. Try to make it interesting and a bit controversial if possible. You don’t need to hit it out of the park but don’t submit your “B” material. In most cases the host blog will allow you to reprint the post after a certain period of time (ie 30-90 days). This is a great feature because if you can use the post as part of your regular schedule then it won’t be any extra work. Topic
– Make sure the topic fits the host blog. Submitting your “Mixed Martial Arts/Ultimate Fighting” post to a “Mommy” blog is a complete waste of time. The post topic has to fit your blog as well. There is nothing wrong with adapting your style a bit to fit a potential host blog but there has to be a connection between the host blog and your blog. If you do a debt reduction post on a debt reduction blog but your blog is a stock trading blog then you are not likely to get any new readers no matter how much the readers like your guest post.
Technical details
One of the keys to getting your guest posts accepted is to make the post as close as possible to a finished post on the host blog in order to cut down the time necessary for the host blog owner to publish your post. If the blog normally has a picture then find a picture and include the link and attribution info. The idea is to reduce the amount of work necessary for the host author to publish. If someone provides a guest post where the host has to: • Find a picture. • Write an intro with links to your blog. • Edit the post. That’s a lot of work and might not be any easier than just writing the post themselves. If some other blogger has provided a well prepared guest post that requires no extra work then it will be an easy choice as to which post will get published. The less work the host blogger has to do, the more likely they are to accept and quickly publish your guest post. Make it easy for them. Keep in mind that most blogs have some sort of rules regarding intros, outros, links within the post, so try to find out what those rules are and obey them. If there are no rules then I suggest including all of the following:
Introduction
Having a sentence before the post which contains a brief description of your blog, a link to your blog and a call to action to subscribe along with your feed link. Here is an example of an introduction. A little bit of investment knowledge goes a long way.
Links in post
Make sure you put at least 2 links to your blog inside the post (assuming the host blog allows). Getting link juice to your blog is part of the benefit and exposing the readers of your guest post to different articles will increase the odds that they will check out your site. Make sure these links are relevant and don’t be shy about putting more links rather than less. But don’t stuff the post with links. I would say don’t use more than 1 link per 250 words as a very general rule of thumb. Another benefit of links is that they will draw the readers to relevant posts which might be buried deep in your blog. Just sending them to the front page might not work so well if your last post is a contest update or some other announcement. Try to put any relevant keywords in the hypertext of the links to your blog ie rather than have “See my post on budgeting here” it should have the main topic in the link hypertext. “See my post on budgeting.”
Another subscription call at the end
I always duplicate the introduction at the end of the post. This will often get removed by the host blog, but lots of times it doesn’t. I figure having a subscription call at the end of the post is a great way to get people who have actually read your whole post and might be interested in subscribing or visiting your site.
Picture
If the host blog normally include photos, then you have to find one and provide it to them in the same size they normally use. Either give them the file or link plus the attribution info.
Typos/grammar
Take the time to reread your post for errors. Get someone else to read it too – a second set of eyes will ALWAYS find another typo. A post that needs too much editing will not get published. Sometimes a host will barely read the guest post and won’t correct any errors. This doesn’t help you since now you have a guest post that has a lot of spelling/grammatical errors which reduces the effectiveness of the guest post. Every guest post you do is a one time shot – Do it as perfectly as you can or don’t do it at all.
Length
This is highly dependent on the topic and the host blog. Look at some typical posts on the host blog and count the words – I copy and paste the article into Word and then do a word count (tools/word count). If you don’t have any direction as to the proper length then as a general guideline I would suggest not submitting a post less than 400 words or more than 1000 words. This also has to fit your blog style as well. If you write a nice concise 550 word guest post and then the new readers find out that most of your regular posts are 3,000 words then they probably won’t come back.
Welcome post
If you have a guest post on a big blog then it might be worthwhile to create a welcome post on your own site. This will say something like “Welcome XYZ readers” and give a brief outline of your blog – some links to popular posts and a call to action with a subscribe button. Once you create this post you can change it and republish for different guest posts so it doesn’t just have to be for mega-blog posts! I don’t often do the “welcome post” – usually just for the biggest blogs and big media mentions.
How to choose a host blog
I’d say go as big as possible. The more exposure you can get, the better off you will be. However size isn’t the only factor. Here are some other considerations:

Read the blog for a while (or go back and read the last few weeks worth of posts). This will help you determine if the site is a good fit and perhaps give you ideas for topics. Commenting on the blog is a great way to get to know the author if you don’t already know them.
This can also give you clues as to when would be a good time to pitch an article – if they mention they are moving next week or are on a business trip then they will probably be thrilled to get a good guest post to help them out. This will also give you more leverage in terms of getting it published during the week (Tues-Thurs). Several times I have submitted a post on Sunday or Monday to someone who I knew was short of material. This helped ensure that it was published mid-week which will maximize results.


How to pitch
I’ve had a very high success rate with my guest posts. In fact only one blog has ever turned me down out of about 30 guest posts that I’ve done. My suggestion is to email the post to the potential host blogger and ask him/her if they will consider your post as a guest post. It helps a lot if you know the blogger – maybe you have emailed in the past or commented on their blog or Twittered with them. But if you haven’t – no big deal – just send the email and see what happens. It should be said that some bloggers prefer if the potential guest poster ask them for topics or approval of a topic before it gets written. This is fine but I have yet to have anyone turn down any of my topics. The worst case scenario if a blogger asks for a different topic is that you just use the other one on your own blog or as a guest post on a different site.
Repeat posting
If you have good success with guest posting on a certain blog then try to repeat the experience. After a few months or even a year – try submitting another guest post to the same blog.
Patience
Some blogs will accept your post but won’t publish for a long time. There is nothing wrong with asking them for an update but don’t worry about the timing. Once the post is submitted then monitor to make sure it eventually gets published but otherwise just get going on the next guest post.
Guest posts just for link juice
If you are doing it for link juice only then the rules are very different. The goal here is to do the minimum work/quality necessary to get the link(s). A short and simple post is better for your purposes. Pick a topic you are very familiar with so that you don’t have to do any research. Perhaps take an existing post and do a rewrite of it. Don’t go overboard – I get lots of crappy guest post requests that are just offered to get a permanent free link. If they are too short, too basic, too obvious then they are useless and I just ignore them. Try to do something more specific that might help it be more unique and interesting. Again – the bigger the blog the better but it’s not as critical.
Checklist before submitting your guest post