When reminiscing back to 2011, I get excited for two reasons (1) I still had my dreadlocks which I later cut in 2012 (big mistake after 21 years of committment) and (2) the sinister advanced SEO brain storm sessions with Matt plotting market-domination over some highly-caffeinated coffee hit truly unchartered depths.

For the record, we could spend the next 10 years building out the tip of the iceberg for some of the automated tools we discussed, but I digress.

Looking back in hindsight reminds me that it’s a good idea to evaluate and assess your old strategies, progress and lessons learned along the way (essentially knowing where you have been, to define where you’re going).

While many of the proposed modules we discussed on the video then have changed (such is life), other ideas have evolved and taken their place in existing features in either their software or ours.

Speaking of modules, we have some great updates underway for SEO Ultimate’s Opengraph Integrator module and are looking forward to updating other SEO Ultimate features for the sake of enhanced usability… But what about our WP Ultimate theme?

Update on The WP Ultimate Theme Release

In all truthfulness, you’ll never have a second chance to make a first impression, which is why we’ve been so stringent about not releasing our beta version of WP Ultimate Theme until each feature is checked, double checked and triple checked under a diverse array of use-case scenarios.

To whet your beak in anticipation of the release, we’ve provided a few sneak-peak screen caps below for you to peruse.

The Layout settings feature allows fixed, fluid or responsive layout options and customizable sidebar and/or content width.

The Typography and Style Settings allow granularly CSS / Design control w/ color picker and straight-forward controls.

The Ad Manager Module allows you to add HTML scripts or upload banners with ease and ads can also be used as short codes.

The Short Code Generator Module allows you to create and use your own short codes (maps, contact forms, HTML or text) or, you can select from our built-in short codes from content boxes to columns (it’s in there).

In closing, affiliates and small business owners seeking a visually stunning SEO equalizer will soon have some new SEO and Design tools to play with.

However, in the meantime, we are currently stress-testing and refining the last batch of newly integrated features in the front-end (e.g. Twitter Bootstrap, Google Fonts, Slider Revolution, a Timed Lightbox Feature, Content Columns, Font Awesome, the quick silo builder and an ever-increasing library of shortcodes).

Once Beta Testers are Done, It’s a Wrap

Our beta testers are now in their final review, so, once all bugs are crushed, we’ll broadcast the announcement to those of you reading this blog via the proper social channels and you’ll be able to download your copy and put it to the test. As always, we look forward to your feedback and suggestions on how we can make our tools the best they can be.

The jury on price point is still hung as we have poured our heart, soul and most coveted tactics and tools into this framework, but we’ll be sure to entice early adopters with a special promotion coupon code for the launch before settling at the final single user license fee and extended / unlimited site user license rates.

In the meantime, thank you for your patience during the scope-creep cycles we’re emerging from. We truly look forward to building a dynamic community and providing useful resources that you can deploy powered by our battle-tested SEO strategies and tools to generate more revenue for your business.

If you haven’t already, feel free to download SEO Ultimate our All-In-One WordPress SEO Plugin and take a peak at the video tutorial explaining how to use its various features. Thanks again and stay tuned for more SEO goodies.

Have questions or have something to say? Speak up! Share your thoughts below.

-Jeffrey

Why Internal Links Matter More than Backlinks

To start with a mental image and analogy, think of internal links like veins in your website analogous SEO circulatory system.  Their role and function are equally as important to the health of your website as the veins are to your body.

The Value of Link Weight

Think of each page as an island in itself, the page essentially has 3 attributes and/or characteristics (1) the links to it from other pages (2) the content or topic of the page and (3) the links leaving the page.

Based on those three characteristics each page serves a very specific function in the website. That function is either  (1) to rank as a champion page  / preferred landing page or (2) to serve as a hub page / supporting page (to create enough topical relevance) to rank preferred landing pages.

Continue reading >>> Why Internal Links are More Important than Backlinks Here!

-Jeffrey

Block segment analysis dictates the value of weight / ranking  factors a web page is given for a set portion of the page. For example, text in the header and footer of a document are treated differently than the text in the body section of a page.

The header is given more weight than the footer and typically the body text is given more value than both (since that is where the page has the ability to distinguish itself from borrowed elements, i.e. navigation, etc.).

The reason for this is simple, page composition dictates that proximity and distinction (the more unique one document is from another) by distinguishing your content, the better. Search engines can easily discern duplication (through shingle analysis, singular value decomposition (SVD), etc.) in areas such as navigation, sidebars/blogrolls with the same links and footers all using the same text. This has the tendency of diffuse a pages ranking potential.

Click Here to Read the Complete Post – “Block Segmentation, Duplicate Content, SEO and IR” or simply click the image above. As always, comments are welcomed and encouraged!

-Jeffrey

Ready, Fire, Aim!

Do yourself a favor and its time to go back before you move forward. Here is a post from the past written over 4 years ago, that still rings true today. Aside from the fact that the turtle with a jet pack is just plain snazzy, there are some worthwhile gems to extract.

Topics covered:

• The Ping Phase
• The Gap
• Link Insurance
• The Authority Ranking and more…
  

Click Here to read “SEO and the Cycles of Optimization“… After you’ve read it, let me know what you think.

-Jeffrey

How to Block Bots for Optimal SEO

In this post, we cover simple solutions to prevent redundant pages (pages with duplicate or minimal content) from getting indexed from the roving tarsus of search engine spiders.

Search engines use a bag of words model to deduce market-focus (what each page is about) and topicality and relevancy are often lost when boilerplate templates, category pages, tags or archives pages are left wide-open for spiders to crawl.

By eliminating digital stragglers (thin pages), you’ll bolster your websites relevancy by having a higher percentage of unique indexed content.

While users might observe a tag page, a search engine is programmed to view that page as redundant content with very few classifiers to distinguish itself from the boilerplate template.

In fact, this is one of the prime directives of the Google Panda algorithm (to eliminate low quality content through normalization within a body of documents) hence, pages like these often get ignored or suppressed.

Avoid Rookie SEO Blunders

Websites with a high percentage of duplicate or minimal content on pages (such as category, archives or tag pages) can trigger algorithmic suppression.

If your an avid SEO and understand HTML then you could simply implement a meta-robots command such as nofollow or noindex, but unless you want to do that painstakingly page by page, you’ll need a plugin such as SEO Ultimate (The Premiere All-In-One WordPress SEO Plugin) from SEO Design Solutions that allows you to quickly and easily implement control over robots (search engine spiders) and canonicalization on the fly.

If you are already using SEO Ultimate, chances are you have already implemented these changes. If not, then let’s get started by making your website canonical and segmenting any potential duplicate content penalties. This is particularly important to new websites so they can make a great first impression (by preventing non-canonical taxonomies or duplicate content from being indexed).

With Google constantly updating their algorithms (Penguin, Panda and the other zoo animals running amuck) you’ll need to avoid tripping any algorithmic filters. Sharing content across multiple pages or thin content on boilerplate templates can devalue the integrity of your website architecture and spring these booby traps into action.

A splintering effect occurs dynamically by default when using WordPress. For example, when you create a post, that post also gets added to a category archive and if you use tags, then each tag also becomes a page with a link “via the excerpt” to the original post.

While implementing canonicalization helps, selective indexation via the Meta Robot Editor module is an ideal countermeasure to prevent multiple pages from being indexed and potentially creating penalties. Keep in mind, if its not indexed, there is no penalty (which is the basis of the Meta Robot Editor).

Example of Category Archive Page with Cyclical Posts Under Category

From an end-user’s perspective, tag pages are not ideal landing pages, which is why canonicalization is important. You want the search engines to show them the original page or post (not some tag or category archive).

Search engines have been known to suppress websites which allow tag pages and category archives to leach through into their index by relegating them to the supplemental results.

Taming the Search Engine Spiders

First proceed to the SEO Ultimate module manager and make sure the Canonicalizer, Meta Robot Tags Editor module, Miscellaneous module and Nofollow Manager module are all enabled >>> then click the save changes button.

If you are wondering about what canonicalization is or why it matters, here’s a brief synopsis in layman’s terms.

What it does: Canonicalizer will point Google to the correct URL for your homepage and each of your posts, Pages, categories, tags, date archives, and author archives.

Why it helps: If Google comes across an alternate URL by which one of those items can be accessed, it will be able to find the correct URL and won’t penalize you for having two identical pages on your site.

Next, click the Canonicalizer Module and under the Canonical URL Generation setting tick the first two boxes:

• Generate <link rel=”canonical”/> meta tags and
• Send rel=”canonical” HTTP headers

This will ensure that any potential splintering of pages or posts are redirected to the primary page (helping Google avoid any potential confusion about your website architecture or data hierarchy).

Also, make sure you tick the redirect requests for nonexistent pagination checkbox to add an automated 301 redirect for categories or archives that have recently changed due to adding or deleting content within the category or archive.

Please Note: Canonicalizer improves on two WordPress features to minimize possible exact-content duplication penalties. The <link rel="canonical" /> tags setting improves on the canonical tags feature of WordPress 2.9 and above by encompassing much more of your site than just your posts and Pages.

The nonexistent pagination redirect feature fills a gap in WordPress’s built-in canonicalization functionality: for example, if a URL request is made for page 6 of a category archive, and that category doesn’t have a page 6, then by default, depending on the context, WordPress will display a blank page, or it will display the content of the closest page number available, without issuing a 404 error or a 301 redirect (thus creating two or more identical webpages).

This duplicate-content situation can happen when you, for example, remove many posts from a category, thus reducing the amount of pagination needed in the category’s archive. The Canonicalizer’s feature fixes that behavior by issuing 301 redirects to page 1 of the paginated section in question.

Implementing the Nofollow and Meta Robot Tags Editor

Since you are already in the Miscellaneous Module scroll down until you see the Nofollow Manager module>>> Click All the Boxes and save changes and your done with this step.

What is the Nofollow Manager?

The “Nofollow Manager” module lets you set the nofollow attribute on entire swaths of links on your site. Although Google has deprecated the use of nofollow for PageRank Sculpting in 2008, if you’re transitioning from another SEO plugin to SEO Ultimate, Nofollow Manager can help you maintain your existing settings if you’d rather take an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” approach.

Regardless of whether or not you elect to use the Nofollow Manager module as an on page SEO tactic, you can implement the Meta Robot Tags Editor as a catch-all solution.

Control default settings, pages, posts, media or term archives with the Meta Robot Tags Editor

Once complete simply save your changes and that will discourage bots from crawling the directories, pages, posts, categories, etc. listed above.

To take it a step further, you have the ability to granularly assign index or noindex or nofollow status to pages, posts, media, tags and post format archives (through either using the default settings or individually). Once default values are assigned, they will carry through to the other sections e.g. categories, tags, etc. unless you specify and overwrite the option by visiting the tabs specific to each type.

For a more detailed explaination of all the SEO Ultimate modules feel free to watch the video  here.

In closing, there is one more thing we suggest in the Settings>>>Permalinks>>> and changing from the default parameter to custom and using /%category%/%postname%/ to create keyword-rich URL structure instead of the default URL output. This will give you more bang for your buck by creating keyword rich URL structures instead of the default P=ID# setting that WordPress generates by default.

Later in the week, we’ll discuss how to use the SEO Ultimate Siloed Categories Widget in tandem with the Deeplink Juggernaut Module to quickly implement website silo architecture quickly and easily on your blog.

Make sure to check back for more SEO tips and tactics to distinguish your website in Search Engines from the SEO Design Solutions Blog.

-Jeffrey

SEO Ultimate Reaches 1,000,000 Downloads

As critical milestones go, this represents a crucial turning point for our firm as we move away from the SEO service model into an SEO software business model allowing us to provide access and training to our most coveted WordPress tactics and tools.

The latest addition to the SDS family (scheduled to unveil later this year in mid February) is our SEO Design Framework for WordPress dubbed WP Ultimate.

If SEO Ultimate is the Swiss army knife of SEO, then WP Ultimate is the “Adobe Photoshop” of WordPress Framework’s boasting a dynamic range of unparalleled design flexibility(able to accomplish stunning visual design feats via multiple mediums) depending on the strategy or tact required.

The plugin (SEO Ultimate) was originally designed as part of an advanced SEO toolset for our own sites and our clients’ websites – and over the years we’ve steadily enhanced its scope to replace the functionality of dozens of other SEO plugins from autolinking, optimizing slugs, removing the category base, integrating social sharing, micro formats, rich-snippets, link masking, mass meta editing capabilities, theming / content siloing and more.

We genuinely hope you’ve enjoyed using SEO Ultimate as much as we’ve enjoyed sharing it and look forward to adding new and exciting features for you to dominate search engines with push-button ease.

If you haven’t already, feel free to watch the comprehensive SEO Ultimate Video tutorial to learn more about each feature in detail.

If are one of the 60% of active users who currently have the two most recent versions of the plugin installed, make sure to either leave a comment, testimonial or log in to WordPress and vote to share your appreciation.

Have a comment? Let us know or pass this along to others so they can enjoy the pure on page power of SEO Ultimate.

-Jeffrey

SEO Ultimate 7.6.1 Introduces Autolink Dampening Feature

Why You Should Cap Internal Links!

Without going into wild-eyed speculation about Google Penguin and Panda algorithms and / or how other search engines determine what is considered “natural” or “unnatural”, the correlation between excessive link quantities and spam (for either inbound links from other websites or even internal links within websites) is a sensitive, yet serious issue for SEO.

As SEO’s, we do know that if you push it too far with either excessive inbound or internal links that your hard earned SERP (search engine result page) position could potentially trigger a penalty and recede (either partially or entirely from the index).

As a result, we previously implemented a site cap feature for Deeplink juggernaut module which allowed you to prescribe a link cap for internal links to prevent potential over optimization penalties.

The History of The Module

This feature (previously known as the per link customization feature) was originally created to provide webmasters with fine-grained control over their automated internal links within their website.

As an example, say you had a large site and assigned an autolink / keyword to a specific URL like linking the word electronics to your electronics category landing page, but you used this phrase egregiously on several thousand instances in your website.

The last thing you would want is for every instance of that keyword (shingle) to link to the target URL and trip a filter for over optimization. Hence, we created two methods to limit this scenario.

Reeling in Autolinks

The first link governor is located in the quantity restrictions region of the content link settings tab of the Deeplink Juggernaut Module that allows you to limit the autolink functionality to one instance per page/post (or you can adjust the number of instances per page/post with this option), but what about the rest of the website and those other potential instances of the keyword / autolink?

Globally, aside from limiting the number of times the keyword was used in the content, what could be done to limit over optimization with autolinking?

This was why we originally implemented a link cap via the per link customization feature for SEO Ultimate (on versions 6.5  to version 7.5.7) which allowed you to cap the links (and prevent additional instances of autolinking for each keyword) with a quantity based limit i.e. 15 times, 25 times, etc.

While this feature worked beautifully on the majority of websites, in some server environments the per link customization site cap feature was rather intensive and created problems due to memory allocation and the inability to turn up the memory within shared hosting environments. So, now the module has evolved and been rewritten using a distinctly different approach we called link dampening.

The Link Dampening feature allows you dampen the number of total links for internal link quantities for keywords assigned in the content link settings module of SEO Ultimate.

How it Works

If the anchor text you specify occurs many times throughout your site’s content, you may wish to reduce the overall frequency with which the anchor text is hyperlinked. You can reduce the autolinking frequency by a percentage with the Dampener field. For example:

• 0% dampening will have no effect.
• 50% dampening means the anchor text will be autolinked approximately half as often as it otherwise would be.
• 90% dampening means the anchor text will be autolinked only 10% as often as it otherwise would be.
• 100% dampening means the anchor text won’t be linked at all.

The “Dampener” column will only appear if you’ve enabled it under the “Content Link Settings” tab.

To set the feature globally, navigate to the Deeplink Juggernaut content links setting tab and click the option [x] globally decrease autolinking frequency by x%, then, add your percentage for global link dampening (using the appropirate ratio above).

Alternatively, you can use the next checkbox down [x] Add a dampener column to the content links editor (which allows you to dampen links on a per link quantity basis).

After activation of this setting, you can dampen link percentages on a keyword / per link basis.

We hope you enjoy and implement this useful SEO feature. This is merely one tactic you can employ using SEO Ultimate for automated internal linking to create optimal on page SEO. Come back soon as we release more informative SEO Ultimate tips and share techniques like how to silo your WordPress blog using the SEO Ultimate Siloed Categories Widget.

If you haven’t already, watch the SEO Ultimate Video Tutorial to learn how to use each module and unleash the pure on page power of this plugin.

-Jeffrey

Click to Watch the Long-Awaited SEO Ultimate Video Tutorial (Opt-In Required)

For the record, SEO Ultimate was NOT designed for the public; it was originally designed as an in-house SEO tool deployed specifically to provide unparalleled on page SEO setup for WordPress. By consolidating these features into modules (that we could simply toggle on or off and configure at will) allowed us to virtually dominate hundreds of markets for our clients (without having to painstakingly customize the code time and time again).

Why All the Secrecy with SEO Ultimate?

Many wondered – if SEO Ultimate is so awesome, then why not show us how to use this thing? Well, frankly,  if you weren’t a client, then we didn’t want to create unnecessary competition in our markets, especially from giving away our most cherished methods free of charge.

We hope this explains the lack of documentation over the years aside from version updates where we briefly informed users about new features, but in all honesty, we kept the real power of SEO Ultimate close to the chest – until now. The time has come to provide detailed documentation of each module, why it’s important and of course, how to use it – courtesy of our lead developer John Lamansky.

Unlike some half-baked SEO plugins, we poured over 15 years of real world advanced SEO principles into this plugin. Prior to releasing this tutorial, the argument of just how powerful SEO Ultimate vs. any other SEO plugin may have been in question. However, after watching the video, this should clear up any confusion about the depth or the real purpose behind each module and the scope of the plugin.

SEO Ultimate has amazing features such as:

• Twitter Cards
• Opengraph Integration
• Rich Snippets (For Local Pages, Reviews and More)
• Automated Internal Linking (with New Link Dampening Feature)
• Affiliate Link Masking
• A Mass/Bulk Editor for Complete Editing for Meta Tags, Titles, Keywords, Categories, Media Attachments, Post Format Archives and much, much more.

The WP Ultimate Framework

While the deliberate suppression of information regarding the inner workings of the SEO Ultimate features was not entirely deliberate, there was a concurrent master plan in the works. Just think of it like a 6 year chess game where each move unfolds another strategic layer of the battle plan, only to culminate in a brilliant (market-dominating) end-game and check mate. It’s like that, but in this case its all about the WP Ultimate Framework.

The WP Ultimate Framework for WordPress

The market dominating check mate in this scenario was that our proprietary SEO platform (SEO Ultimate) was absorbed and integrated into our WordPress Framework to provide unparalled SEO & Design flexibility. The beauty for end-users is, once you gain access to the framework, you also get access to the training as well.

Is WP Ultimate Ready Yet?

Thank you for your patience, as many of you know for the past two years we’ve toiled away in the labs like obsessive compulsive perfectionists testing the WPU Framework and we’re nearly finished coding and stress-testing now. When complete, we will release 1000 copies to a select group, then take that feedback and roll even more powerful features into the Framework.

Consider it a work in progress, however, recent additions to the framework include adding Twitter Bootstrap, Google Fonts, a Lightbox Feature which can be toggled via a timer or link), a more comprehensive Style Editor, a New Media Manager suite to insert ads, media, shortcodes and more and a Completely Reworked Grid System to handle responsive layouts, fluid layouts or the ability to create fixed width layouts to liberate your design impulse and display options and build websites that rank as great as they look.

Combine this with the robust SEO power of SEO Ultimate and you can see why we’re excited…

For a sneak peek, you can read a few of the WP Ultimate features, or stay tuned as we release more information on the launch details over the next few weeks.

WARNING!

I prefer transparency about everything, so, do not be surprised from the opt-in form prior to accessing the video tutorial. The video is over one hour long and jam-packed with  EVERYTHING you’ll need to get the most our of SEO Ultimate.

Also, keep in mind, we intend on putting other advanced training videos and tactics which will not be featured anywhere else in the members section. By opting-in, you’ll gain access to that material and will also be notified when we launch the WP Ultimate Framework.

We hate spam as much as you do and respect your privacy. You can opt out-at any time.  This (content-locking) method simply helps us manage our user-base more efficiently and separate the power-users from the sheep.

Enter First Name and Email Address for Instant Access!

>>>Click Here to Watch the Official SEO Ultimate Video Tutorial<<<

We wish you the best in 2013 and look forward to providing the best, cutting-edge SEO tools for WordPress – period! Help SEO Design Solutions spread the word by sharing or commenting on this post!

-Jeffrey

Watch the video above (which is an insightful view into the mind of Sue “The Architect” Bell from Themezoom / Network Empire) as she reveals dozens of useful SEO strategies for harvesting lucrative keywords and how to integrate them into your semantic website architecture using The Last Keyword Tool.

Enjoy!

-Jeffrey

While the first thought that comes to mind is mission impossible – “if you are caught, the government will disavow your existence”. Now, it seems that webmasters have the ability to do this with their links (if their mission fails).

On a brief comical Google conspiracy side note: now, the “unnatural links warning” broadcast email from Google this July makes perfect strategic sense.

Was this part of the plan all along, to scare webmasters with the notice then have them participate in the cleanup with the new link disavow tool (to further improve their algorithm) like a mass web-wide manual review using us as user generated base of “motivated” volunteers? Hmmm <fingers on chin in perplexed pondering gesture>, the world may never know.

Anyway, so much for the Google conspiracy theories or movie trivia, so how does the tool work? After logging in, simply click the red button and then proceed to the browse / upload feature.

Next, simply select the link location file (a .txt file with the URL’s or domains in question) and upload it and that’s it.

After you submit your file, allow Google ample time to re-crawl the links (with Googlebot armed with the link abort list) and monitor the SERPs for signs of Penguin symptom- like recovery.

Google suggests not to disavow links from your own website, however aside from that, this is one way to get rid of pesky links which could be hurting your website in the SERPs (search engine result pages).

Since you can’t control who links to you, this is a great way to unwind potential backlinks acquired from negative SEO via competitors or otherwise.

In closing, there are no guarantees that they will disavow any or all links found in the discovery from the uploaded file, but this tool is better than having no option at all and having to sit it out in the penalty box indefinitely (if your website has lost rankings or been penalized in some way as a result of bad link neighborhoods).

Consider yourself debriefed and good luck on your mission: Project SERP Recovery.

-Jeffrey

First, it was the dawn of the web shattering Panda update (a content classifier designed to remove low quality web pages, websites that copied from other websites or weak internal pages with minimal value) from their index,  second, the backlink witch hunt / Penguin update (designed to demote websites from ranking highly which have off-topic or inbound links from low quality websites) and now the EMD update (the exact match domain update) which demotes websites which have exact match domains from easily ranking for their core keywords.

What’s an EMD?

While most savvy SEO’s or online marketing types understand the lingo, for those unfamiliar with the terminology, exact match domains are websites such as babycribs.com which in the past would rank rather easily for the key phrase “baby cribs”.

Exact match domains are typically highly sought from “Domaineers” (individuals who purchase, collect, monetize or sell domains) due to their ability to (1) rank highly in search engines with a fraction of the effort by the virtue of the domain name or (2) monetize those sites due to the commercial viability (since consumers easily commit the domain name to memory); that is, until the Google EMD update.

Before this update, there was a glaring loophole in search engines (Google in particular) which allowed exact match domains to rank uncontested with minimal SEO (sometimes within days of being created). So, instead of spending money on SEO, backlinks or promotion, businesses would often spend the money on acquiring a top level exact match domain.

The reason is simple, a website in the #1 position for an organic search phrase can garner 42-70% of the click through traffic for a keyword (compared to 2% in the number 10 position on the page); and since 7 out of 10 people typically click the organic results instead of paid (PPC) results, this is a major blow if dethroned from the #1 position or top 3 organic positions on the page.

Minor or Major Change?

On September 28^th, avid SEO personality Barry Schwartz from SEO Round Table gleaned a tidbit of relevant info on the EMD update. Apparently, in a recent tweet by Matt Cutts (head of Google’s Web Spam Team) he states – “Minor weather report: small upcoming Google algo change will reduce low-quality “exact-match” domains in search results.”

Cutts later tweeted – “New exact-match domain (EMD) algo affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. Unrelated to Panda/Penguin”.

Now your first thought, 0.6 that’s not so bad right? That all depends on the sheer volume of total English-US queries, and, if that number is theoretically 100,000,000,000 queries per day (100 billion), that represents 60 million potential queries affected daily by this change.

There’s nothing minor about this or any other algorithm, infrastructure or classifier change in a search engines’ index, more specifically, this is the equivalent of Hurricane Katrina to a small business or website not fortified by alternative traffic or citation sources.

While most webmasters may not own an EMD or rely strictly on the ranking power of an exact match domain alone; if you do own a full or partial hyphenated EMD and your website’s major keywords disappear, your revenue is and business model are inevitably impacted instantly.

As far as chain reactions go, once rankings dip, your cash flow could tank or you could inevitably go out of business, unless you have a plan B for traffic (particularly in this economy).

Based on the inquiries we have received for the past 6 months from companies in need of solutions to Google changes, most webmasters (business owners, individuals and affiliates alike), do not have a plan B and are puzzled, frustrated, agitated or struggling to determine what happened to their traffic, what they did or did not do and, most of all why now, when things were just fine before the latest monkey wrench tweak. Was it a competitor throwing a batch of bad links from negative SEO, or did they simply trip a filter and get hit with a penalty?

In either case, it’s dangerous for webmasters to blindly assume that once you attain a high ranking position for your primary keyword (exact match domain or otherwise) that your website won’t be churned off the page (from an update, filter or algorithm change).

Often, it’s not even your site being penalized; it’s the other sites that linked to yours that took the hit (and your website is no longer buoyant in the search results as a result). Keep in mind that when they purge their index many of the sites that were holding other sites up (by virtue of their citation/links) have been caught (essentially algorithmically neutered) from passing link flow to other websites.

Since citation leaves a footprint, if your website happened to receive sustenance from an algorithmically compromised website, then, like a chain of dominos, the link-flow dropped off. Essentially, you start from zero again and fall to the back of the line (rolled back 5-10 pages in the search results) or sometimes worse (not ranking at all for the keyword).

The point is, there are no guarantees when it comes to how search engines tally links, popularity, relevance and value, it’s merely their perception of what they think their users want. What Google forgets is, it’s those same users who own websites and have become dependent on that traffic for their business who are getting thrown under the bus and have no idea why.

This process has gone on for years and quite frankly, people are getting tired of running the gauntlet and trying to appease their new rules (starting with things like adding nofollow attributes to all outbound links) because Google couldn’t detect link intent i.e. “paid links” with their algorithm and wanted to impose using nofollow to webmasters to add nofollow attributes to all outbound links (using the fear of penalties) as a consequence.

Over time, Google just kept a plethora of updates coming (in the name or relevancy) from the Florida Update, the Big Daddy Update, the May Day Update, The Vince Update, the Panda Update, Penguin Update, etc., enough is enough already.

Is SEO Still Important?

Is SEO still important? Yes and No!

SEO is important if you have (1) implemented conversion optimization first, so that regardless of where your traffic emanates from, it will result in increased ROI (return on investment)  via more subscriptions, social engagement (viral traffic) or sales and (2) If you have the budget and / or staff to afford implementing the often tedious work associated with SEO.

SEO is NOT important if want to spend more money on Television, Radio, Newspaper ads, Pay-Per-Click, have a strong offline marketing push. While Google’s claim for making these changes is relevancy, their motivation has transcended “building the best search engine” and has become something far more transparent (scrub compromise the organic search results and focus on paid search which provides approximately 98% of all profits for Google).

How Do You Get Ranked?

After perfecting your on page SEO, a large portion of the SEO process is based on developing sufficient website authority through exceeding the algorithmic tipping point for on page content (with the quality of that content now being equally as important as the volume and frequency).

Essentially, since articles don’t write themselves, you’ll need an in-house subject matter expert or a knowledgeable writer or team of writers if you intend on developing the authority site model.  Instead of building and relying on backlinks, create content that is worthy to garner its own links or leverage the on page authority and trust your website has to catapult past less authoritative websites in your way.

Keep in mind, developing authority is a lengthy process that requires commitment and dedication to quality and consistency (always providing users’ value instead of rehashing vague fodder). Also remember that nothing happens overnight with SEO (most sustainable results can take months), in short, it’s all about planting and sowing the results over time.

If your content is stellar, people will share it (if you give them a nudge) and the social sharing has tremendous weight in the new algorithm (to expedite authority for the page and hence the site).

If you plan on using the three strategies outlined above, then SEO is important. Otherwise, you may have to seek alternative traffic sources to offset dependency on Google’s organic traffic as a life vein for your business.

SEO Bizarro World

Is the epic battle of giants affecting your business?

Me Facebook Beat You Google

Image courtesy of (comic coverage).

In this Bizarro world where Google wants to be more social and Facebook is talking about creating their own search engine, be worried, be very worried since core competencies exist for a reason.

The rise and fall of search results for webmasters may result in a requiem for search engines, since consumers can easily “jump ship” and find the next big thing and find new ways to get what they want.

Let’s just say that backlash is an understatement and when the search bubble bursts (and it will), I wouldn’t want to be in aisle 5 (if you catch my drift). I’m sure Myspace, Digg and other once popular websites never saw it coming as they were displaced by a fickle (or bored) user base or lots of savvy emerging competitors who introduced something equally viable to woo their users away. The end result,  their traffic sources (repeat visitors) dried up (like dust in the wind).

While search does not exclusively belong to Google, quality matters and the importance and credibility of organic results is what delivers the most traffic from repeat visitors.

If the quality and relevancy suffers, the site loses its value. In my opinion, that is how I view Google’s search results, quite simply, they have filtered so many things that good sites along with the bad have been suppressed (which translates to a poor user experience). I find myself having to refine my searches more and more, since the results on the first page are NOT what I am looking for and often are so far off topic I am amazed how it surfaced.

Don’t Let Bad Search Happen to You!

So, not to go all “fist of goodness” on you here (props to direct TV vs. cable ads) but, this is one thing for both Google and users alike to keep in mind.

When people lose confidence in search engines, the less people search, the less people search, the less valuable the paid ads become, the less valuable the paid ads become the more a search engine tries to justify its position to those paying for ads, the more a search engine tries to justify its position for those paying for ads, the more changes, penalties or adjustments are enforced through “the index vs. the content in the index” which affects its organic user base, the more changes, penalties or adjustments are made that affect the organic user base, the less users will depend on search engines.

Don’t let bad search happen to you, don’t rely strictly on search engines…

-Jeffrey

It's Not About Links, It's About Promotions

Keep in mind suspicious or contrived link signals could imply a wide variety of possibilities, such as:

• Unnatural link velocity (building or losing links too fast).
• Excessive anchor text, i.e. a high percentage of the same or similar anchor-text.
• Links from mixed-fruit / atypical websites that lack genuine/natural signals such as (1) supporting / thematic inbound links (2) traffic and engagement or (3) social signals (which is why many generic link networks failed to get past Penguin).

It’s no secret that two Google algorithm changes (Penguin and Panda) nearly eradicated SEO as we knew it, however,one thing is certain about SEO, the fact that it’s always adapting or in a state of flux.

Adaptation in this instance implies (a) understanding the entire keyword climate for all educational or promotional key phrases that consumers are using while progressing through the sales cycle (b) using that language strategically in titles, on page content, in your promotions (content, images and links) and (c) in the social graph as hooks that all drive traffic back to your branded promotional properties or your primary website. Expanding this process systemically facilitates perpetual conversions.

Is SEO Dead As We Know It?

Have the rules changed? Absolutely! Is SEO dead? In its previous embodiment, to a large extent, yes!  So, the bottom line is (1) what now? And (2) how do I broadcast my brand and my message instead of merely churning mediocre content or fiddling with low quality backlinks?

Watch the videos below and learn how to quickly create your own thematically relevant “personal broadcast network” using WordPress, DWS and our plugin amply named “The Silo Blog Builder”. Afterwards, make sure to  watch the webinar (further down the page) for an in depth overview of the new DWS 4.0 online promotion paradigm.

Put simply, if your primary website lacks traffic or sales, then no amount of outdated SEO (circa. the Google Penguin update April 2012) will make a difference. It’s not just about rankings; it’s about how scalable your traffic sources are and how adept you are in extracting relevant traffic on demand.

Spoiler Alert Regarding Blog Networks!!!

Do mixed-fruit blog networks still work? No! or at least until a filter weeds them out. However, theme relevant networks still pass ranking factor (and can serve as a branded broadcast beacon for extended promotions), which means a link from site B to site A must be theme relevant (have the same topic) and use the appropriate anchor text along with related synonyms (a.k.a. the DNA Braid) to avoid overoptimization filters or being smacked / deindexed.

If you are creating a beacon/site, it also helps to create stellar content (worthy of social media) and syndicate that content (to build links to your links) and ensure the longevity of your “broadcast channel”.

The new paradigm suggests to look past rankings and think of each site or promotional property as a beacon, broadcasting YOU (your brand), All the Time, Right NOW!

It’s Not About Links, It’s About Promotions!

In a competitive online environment, using obsolete legacy metrics (such as search engine rankings and only using one website to compete) is defunct as a viable strategy.

The imperative metrics to consider are (1) how scalable are your personal broadcast networks? and (2) how theme relevant and extensive are your syndication sequences for generating traffic which is the only metric that matters.

Learn how to create a proper promotional campaign, including:

• which keywords to use
• how much those keywords are worth to your business
• how long it will take to get ranked
• how to use website silo architecture  to build your website
• which content , synonyms and type of promotions you need to drive traffic
• knowing which social media sites, RSS directories, video sites or press release
  sources to use and having a project management suite to coordinate your team.

Take The Next Step: Watch the DWS 4.0 Webinar!

Sure, on page SEO is still important, however quality content and engagement is a metric you simply can’t afford to overlook, and about that “off page SEO thing”, yeah, over optimization is real, but just keep in mind, now, it’s not just about links, it’s about promotions.

Allow me to explain!

People Hemmed up in Panda and Penguin Algorithms Typically:

1. Got a bit too greedy with off page SEO (link metrics) and churned out as much content to build links as possible (without thinking of quality).As a result, Google struck back with their quality control algorithms which comprised stricter filters, classifiers and relevance signals, (i.e. social signals, engagement time, bounce rate, thematic relevance of the link graph for the target and refering site) and 200 other fancy smancy words that translate to “if your website sucks, then good luck finding it in their SERPs”).
2. People hemmed up in the Panda / Penguin Algo had a tendency to get a bit too lose with quality control on their promotional content and found out that regardless of the traffic source – you MUST have something useful to contribute.Otherwise, your content will simply be skimmed over for something useful and ignored vs. starting with a solid foundation of engaging contnent and promotional content to begin with.
3. Websites drastically afftected by Panda or Penguin often relied too heavily on one metric (such as links)  because it was working and thus became complacent in regard to seeking viable alternatives or finding new ways to reach their ideal consumer.

Remember, Google is merely one traffic source; a very popular one, but not  every consumer uses or purchases exclusively through their link/traffic/ sales funnel. This means, there are a myriad of alternate traffic funnels that you can leverage systematically to reach your audience contextually, socially or otherwise.

A consumer’s impulse to purchase is either active or dormant, yet if that dormant spark of desire is enlivened through curiosity, a clever headline, utility or impulse, then conversion is merely a few clicks away. Conversions (making a sale) is not exclusive to Google, in fact, conversions can occur from a multitude of sources.

For example, a conversion could occur from:

• playing a game online and being lured by an enticing banner
• during social interactions on Facebook (or other social platforms) from banners or contextual links
  being lured from teaser “check this out” social media content or images in their various clever iterations
• from reading articles and clicking the contextual links (after social proof is established).

This process, setting up the sales funnel should not be left to happenstance alone. In fact, when we map this phase of a campaign for a new client, we use what Russell Wright brilliantly coined as the IS-DNA. The letter “I” in “IS-DNA” stands for Invention/Innovation/Industry and the “S” stands for “Solution”.

Understanding Promotion as a Stackable Process

When we speak of “DNA” in our material we simply mean “components of” or “building blocks of”.

So “IS-DNA” translates into the “building blocks” of your innovation or invention that you have provided to your industry.

The purpose of the IS-DNA process is to align your market’s FAQs (frequently asked questions) with your market’s SAQ’s (should ask questions) by drilling down and getting to “the questions behind the questions”, or “the pain behind the questions” which will be used later to create highly converting articles and videos using the PAM (painkiller article method).

Remember that we are giving you a highly profitable stack-able business process, and the IS-DNA may very well be the most important part of the entire process, because it is the BASE of your PLMM (Perpetual Lead Magnet Machine) System and Pyramid. Get this wrong and you may end up using the wrong language to talk to the wrong market!

The IS-DNA set’s the stage by creating a matrix of market questions in order to help you select the most effective language that can reach your target market because you (and your team) will truly understand the problems and pains that have been solved for them by your product or service (innovation or invention).

Once you have mapped out “the pain in the market”, you can tactfully craft “pain killers” (PDF Download) in your content, videos, social media and/or promotions to transcend traffic-dependency (such as Google) to devour your entire market. To thrive, you’ll have to escape the grasp of one simple traffic funnel to flourish.

Whenever you rely solely on a “for profit business”, that business (potentially) has the ability to endanger your bottom line. Just as the “eggs in one basket” adage comes to mind, the question is, are you still in Google’s pocket? Or have you considered a long-term contingent strategy diverse enough to flourish (if Google or your most lucrative traffic source simply stopped providing traffic?).

To avoid putting your business at risk you must hedge your primary property with branded social media and third-party websites (just in case). Consider Google’s last algorithm change Penguin. Many who were unprepared suffered, as their once profitable websites spigot of traffic got shut off, forcing them to find alternatives – rather than diverisfying and being prepared (as if Google never existed) in the first place.

In order to do that, you must change the way you think, which means instead of thinking about backlinks and on page optimization, replace on page SEO with “genuinely engaging content” and replace backlinks with the idea of “broadcasts” and “promotions” and broadcasting your brand (across hundreds of traffic-bearing sources) using a stackable / repeatable process that YOU control.

Remember, backlinks are merely a byproduct of promotions if you don’t have anything worthy of sending traffic to, then visitors will simply bounce in search of better content; so, there is no need to put the cart before the horse.

Does Your Content Have a Clear Call to Action?

After seeing the image above, did you want to buy something? Ok, perhaps not this time right? It’s obvious that the image/message and timing doesn’t coinside as a strong call to action.

The point remains that regardless of the website a consumer is frequenting, conversion is merely a matter of enlivening synchronicity (between their needs and desires to your perfect solution via a product or service) to facilitate an impulse to purchase.

This fact was often overlooked entirely from SEO practitioners prior to Penguin who focused solely on fabricating lackluster content and flinging it in a thousand directions in an attempt to get links. Content farms thrived, comment spam, forum links and network sites were the rave.

The truth is, most SEO practioners missed the boat from taking short cuts with their primary and promotional content. The notion that people would actually consume or be persuaded by fodder (lackluster content) and purchase is ridiculous. Don’t make the same mistake…tap the web, not just Google as a source of revenue.

Why Has Our Blog Been So Quiet for 3 Months?

In case you have wondered why the 3 month silence on the SEO Design Solutions Blog, On April 8th, I survived a horrific motorcycle crash avoiding a minivan that took my lane while I was riding my Ducati 996 at 90 MPH. It resulted in tumbling twisting and sliding nearly 900 feet on the Freeway (like a bowling ball).

Although the bike is totalled, I have multiple broken bones and some bumps and bruises (which are all healing now), thankfully, I survived with no brain injury or spinal damage.

However, during the last 90 days, we have continued to make updates to SEO Ultimate “The Real All-In One SEO Plugin” and The WP Ultimate Theme – our sleek, flexible, WordPress Theme Framework (designed to give existing WordPress frameworks a run for their money).

Also, later this month our lead developer John Lamansky plans to release an updated video for all the SEO Ultimate features from version .5 to present (which includes dozens of tips, updates and tweaks).

Shortly thereafter, we will release our beta version of WP Ultimate for suggestions and tweaks for the final version. Until then, thank you for your patience and welcome to the new paradigm and it’s herald and summary – it’s not about links, it’s about promotions.

-Jeffrey

Google’s greatest fear is you not using or needing to use Google...

As if running a business wasn’t hard enough, business owners are now forced to deal with the rise and fall of search engine results (knowing that at any time aside from ruthless competitors targeting their most coveted positions that a new algorithm change could come along and potentially sweep all their progress under the rug) without warning.

The only solution is to either (1) conform or (2) diversify your traffic sources to become less dependent on any one source of visitors, however, most are either unwilling or unaware of their options, so they continue to run on the treadmill in hope of stability.

For large or small businesses alike faced with overhead, cash flow and competition; conforming or overly depending on any one traffic source (Google) is not a viable solution for creating long-term stability.

Faced with violent shifts in rankings and either posting record profits or losses based on where you rank is a type of traffic-dependency. That dependency can be weaned and replaced if those same business owners took their searches or paid search budget to other viable search engines and / or traffic sources to funnel traffic.

Objectively, it’s time to see things for what they really are; the fact that Google (not surprisingly) is a business model motivated by profits. Despite the “don’t be evil” motto which once brandished a blind eye from most, with recent allegations of privacy concerns, changes in Adwords policies (which left thousands banned with no explanation) and the constant organic search algorithm shuffle, at some point users will come to terms with this and act accordingly (and ignore Google).

The Pervasive Threat of Google Penalties

Recently Google informed untold numbers of webmasters that they were in violation of their terms of service for unnatural link activity. Needless to say, the fear of loss is a great motivator. When people are told to conform, most will to avoid going against the current of the status quo.

However, the audacity that webmasters should conform to a terms of service (considering they didn’t opt in in the first place) based on Google’s limitation on determining the value of the link graph (paid link, intentional link, unintenional link, etc.) is preposterous. It’s not like anyone in their index ever received a request asking if it was ok to crawl your content and include it in their index?

Does CNN, New York Times, USA today or other massive authority sites add rel=”nofollow” tags to every outbound link or risk getting deindexed? No, they do not… Then why should you have to?

The fact is that websites with that extent of authority simply don’t need Google (because they already have an established brand) and users will go directly to their website instead of using Google as an intermediary (which is essentially all they are).

And how “relevant” would Google be if a user typed in CNN in Google and couldn’t find CNN (or any large brand for that matter), which makes brands essentially immune to being banned from their search results.

Yet, for small businesses, entrepreneurs, affiliates and others forced to compete daily in search engines to funnel traffic to thrive and survive are constantly pummeled by the vague terms of service which essentially means you cannot promote your website (unless it’s done according to Google’s promotional policy).

Google’s Stance on Links is Dated

Sorry, the last time I checked links were not exclusively designed to manipulate PageRank, links are just links, the are simply how people move from page to page and website to website. Just as freedom of speech exists, the freedom to link to who you like when you like exists in the same vein.

The only difference (mind you) is intent and links are either designed to deliver visitors from Page A to Page B or to promote – it’s that simple. And people are going to promote their business by necessity in order to create a profit so, I don’t see links going away any time soon, so, Google you will simply have to adapt (and stop penalizing webmasters) or they will simply move on to other traffic funnels.

The point I am making is, if Google were losing money due to their massive operation, do you think they would have the time, energy or resources to keep “shaking things up” in the organic search results in the name of search quality?

Would they have time to ban countless advertisers (since they collectively are not worth the time to service compared to fortune 500 and up clientele)? – I think not.

Is Google’ Greatest Fear Competition or Complacency?

With Facebook (the social giant) and Apple (the mobile giant)  both considering entering the search engine space, Google could potentially have some SERIOUS competition ahead (unlike Yahoo or Bing) and which suggests that…

Google biggest fear is:

1)      They will become obsolete as the preferred organic search engine and lose their monopoly (and profit).

2)      Paid search will fail to deliver (since organic search is no longer “the cats meow” for disgruntled users) and the organic traffic base will diminish.

3)      The curve will change (which is the most likely) meaning that new technologies, platforms, methods and/or solutions will emerge and people will simply move on from typing keywords in to search engines and use alternative methods such as apps, HTML5 or other alternatives to have media or commerce delivered on demand.

The cycle of emerging innovation (from BBS, to directories, to search engines) followed by user adaptation which now borders on user complacency has already reached the point of consolidation.

This implies that the cycle is ripe for change and a new potential curve (such as Apples Siri) or other alternatives to search could make the previous achievement obsolete (e.g. pagers, cassette tapes, VCR’s, the Yellow Pages).

However, at the time (back in the day) few were looking past the phase of user complacency and would still be using Pagers, cassette tapes, VCR’s, etc. if new innovations and curves had not usurped them, now making them obsolete.

While most people didn’t know (or care) what a search engine was 10 years ago, fast forward 10 years and they may not even be able to remember.

Keep in mind, the market is fickle and here today gone tomorrow can happen faster with the acceleration of communication and new emerging technologies.

The Take Away to Remeber

1)      The very data in Google’s index that they attempt to police and enforce does not belong to them, it belongs to the others (those who wrote it) and the web at large who are generous enough to share. Google does not create the content their index, you do and how you promote it is up to you.

2)      The web is bigger than Google and you decide Google’s fate every time you search on their platform or choose another search engine you cast your vote. There are thousands of traffic funnels to drive visitors to your websites aside from search engines (investigate them for viability to your business).

3)      Google telling people to jump through hoops (in fear of a ranking penalty or removal from their index) is a Pandora’s Box they should leave behind (or they might be left behind on the next emerging curve from those same banned/penalized users).

In closing, Google’s greatest fear is you not using them and while their business model is brilliant, they’re the most successful company in history to profit from (1) using content created from other websites via crawling and indexing technology (2) create a synergistic advertising model as an accessory to their organic search results and (3)  getting paid to send traffic away from their own site as an authoritative intermediary – this curve, put simply, has  its limitations, particularly, if any of the aforementioned metrics change, (such as Google having to ask permission to crawl your data).

Fortunately for us (based on previous experience), we know that consumers are fickle and at any time they could opt-out and frequent other websites which have more emotional, funcional or curb appeal than Google. Google started as one website and can potentially be reduced to that if people choose not to use it.

This means you, the users hold the key to just how much power or control you wish to allow it to have over you or your business.

Feel free to share your thoughts below…

-Jeffrey

Stay tuned for more SEO tips and tactics from SEO Design Solutions and the upcoming release of our new WP Ultimate Theme and WP Silo Builder plugin.

-Jeffrey

Like a fine wine, authority occurs over time

While most blindly assume that SEO is about keywords (which is partially true), real SEO is involves grasping the underlying metrics and logic that search engines use to determine which websites are authoritative and which others are not.

The real goal of SEO is to create authority; and the faster you accomplish domain or page level authority for any website, the faster keyword conquests are realized and achieved. The extent of the authority of a website, determines how long (or short) a keyword conquest becomes.

If your website has exceeded the necessary tipping point (meaning it has enough term weight, link-flow from supporting anchor text and pages) and nests the proper on page signals, then that website is a candidate for occupying the top 1000 seed pages in Google’s index otherwise dubbed “the authority set“. In essence, the more weight the pages have, the more pages from that domain can be included as seeds in the organic search landscape.

While other pages are crawled, only the top 1000 matter and from those 1000 pages there are typically a handful of domains which are considered dominant within the scope of that topic.

Those websites are considered “the authority set” and once any page from any website has reached the apex of a topic and breaches the authority set, it now becomes the model that Google and other search engines compare other pages to (to ascertain relevance, validity and rankings).

Your objective is to (a) model your data (b) site architecture (c) internal linking structures (d) backlinks and (e) navigation schema to reinforce the topical scope of a page for (1) the primary phrase (2) parallel themes or categories (3) synonyms and sibling themes and (4) adjacent pages which could benefit from the link-flow or page level / theme /authority of that page.

This in turn allows you to funnel PageRank, trust and authority to any area of your website with the ideal anchor text (at will) which makes your website less dependent on off-site linking structures to achieve buoyant ranking factor.

For example, we have built websites using this technique and created PR5 sites from brand new domain (which achieved first page results in 30-45 days time for competitive keywords up to 7,500,000 competing pages using less than 50 backlinks off-site.

Similarly, the 70+ of the 95 internal pages also sprouted page rank (PR3,PR4 and PR5) which in turn funneled that ranking factor to other select pages creating an unparalleled tipping point like a tube Taurus folding in on itself) to propel even more rankings as a result, which leads to my next point.

Rankings can be observed from two perspectives (similar to the haves and have nots) and while the ultimate goal or optimizing your website stems from the desire to reach the top 3 spots (the traffic band) getting there is ultimately determined by how authoritative your page is and the website that supports it.

Allow me to elaborate.

Every page of your website (if optimal) represents an opportunity to rank that page and dozens more when combined with SEO best practices, such as:

• Relevant meta data (for every page).
• A mirrored keyword-rich URL structure for the primary market and semantic focus of the page.
• Proper H1 use to reflect the primary keyword
• Sufficient inclusion of theme relevant keywords for the primary and secondary keyword shingles (groups of words).
• Awareness of link-flow limitations (not having 100+links on a page via navigation and contextual areas to bleed ranking factor).
• Use of optimal internal linking
• Proper site architecture that reflects a natural data hierarchy (with more competitive keywords higher up in the hierarchy and less competitive categories and mid-tail and long-tail keyword variations supporting the theme).
• Proper grammar and conversion cues
• The proper proportion of themed inbound links from qualified sources to the home page and deep links to various supporting categories and landing pages (with their primary shingles and / or synonyms).

The takeaway here is, cultivation of authority is the goal of SEO. Once that authority has been realized, it must be leveraged to propel entire clusters of keywords into a prominent search engine position (with minimal backlinks) from using the overlapping nodes of relevance and page level trust and relevance score it has accumulated.

The extent of the authority depends on (a) the freshness and introduction of new / supporting content (b) the volume of content (c) the age of the domain (d) the relevancy or the internal link structure and most importantly (e) the time to authority factor (like a fine wine aging over time) that represents the priceless / more elusive ranking factor to distill in reverse or from the perspective of a competitor to emulate.

-Jeffrey

Most Websites Are Structured Like The Image Above

Website silo architecture is the process of implementing a structure whereby each topic is housed in it’s own mini-site within the site and the internal linking pushes ranking factor back up to the primary / topic page otherwise dubbed the “silo landing page”.

While SEO is simpler than most so called “experts” imply, it’s like the difference between a short order cook and a chef, they both cook food and often use the same ingredients, but it’s how they use them that matters.

Similarly, when you dial in the appropriate on page and off page SEO using website silo architecture, then regardless of whether your website is aged or new, a website which previously had zero presence can instantly sprout wings and start ascending the SERPs (search engine result pages) to the top 5 results.

On the contrary, if your execution lacks the proper structure for the granular ingredients, then lackluster results are sure to follow. You have to (a) understand your topic (b) create a top down model (starting from broad phrases to specific categories and supporting content) and (c) put each thing in its proper place.

So, what is the proper way to structure a result-driven SEO campaign? Here’s our take on five fundamental methods which we have deemed evergreen SEO principles we’ve used for years to create proven results.

1. Proper Title and URL structure.
2. Proper H1 Use (to mirror title and URL).
3. Proper site structure (cascading tiers of relevance).
4. Theme relevant internal linking.
5. The proper amount of link flow (to reach and exceed the tipping point).

Proper Title and URL Structure

By using specific shingles (groups of words) in the title (with prominent keywords first) you send the strongest SEO signal to search engines (as they attempt to determine the topic of your page).

The more diffused (or verbose) a title is, the less effective it is for SEO. For example, if I am trying to rank for insurance rates, then those shingles should be the sole or primary page title as well as the URL structure should follow suit such as domain.com/insurance-rates/

While conversion cues must be balanced with SEO, it is possible to get the best of both worlds through using synonyms or plural variations in the title while keeping it succinct and relevant.

For example, a title such as -  Insurance Rates: Find the Best Rate and Affordable Prices! (which also includes keywords like best, prices, rate and rates) in case consumers use a long-tail query, then your landing page can rank for all potential variations of any of the shingles.

Proper H1 Usage

Using the proper H1 tag (header tag) is a common tried and true SEO technique; if you use WordPress then your permalink (page title) can easily be switched to your H1 tag by simply changing your style sheet.

If you are using other CMS (content management systems) or static html pages, similarly, the suggestion to mirror your title and URL structure with the primary keyword is ideal. Such as the example above, the H1 tag should be “Insurance Rates”.

One little trick is, you can also make the H1 (Header Tag / Text) a link and link that either to the home page or pass that ranking factor on to another page you intend to rank. If you are properly theming your website using website silo architecture, then it is possible to feed the primary silo landing page from your category pages this way (to page rank flows up and back to the primary landing page) from nested pages that support the category.

Proper Site Structure

Think of your website in tiers, those tier represent the natural data hierarchy of your website. Starting with your home page (in the root folder), this is tier 1 and the starting point for your SEO.

The root folder is the natural destination for your most prominent pages and should house your primary landing pages in the first tier. This is because eventually, all the nested pages will pass their link-flow back to the root and you can scale laterally with multiple silo landing pages for competitive keywords and markets.

Here is a visual aid to assist provided by Network Empire.

Sample of Properly Siloed Website

Using the example from above, domain.com/insurance-rates  – would be my Silo Landing Page, i.e. the keyword I want to rank for. Now, by adding relevant categories and supporting articles, you can give any landing /silo page wings in the SERPs (search engine result pages).

Theme-Relevant Internal Linking

To implement theme-relevant internal linking, It is linked from my homepage with the keyword “insurance rates” as the anchor text to reinforce it. I would also use contextual anchor text links to any other silo landing pages that need tier one link flow to support them.

By writing a contextual article and linking to the silo landing pages from the homepage, any link juice my homepage receives, get ring-fenced and passed along to the on page editorial links (the silo landing pages / preferred keyword landing pages) by design.

The next tier is your category pages; these will become the hub page that sites on tier 2 one folder away from the root.

The category page and primary landing page share a similar URL structure, but the primary landing page is the grandparent and the category parent, next up the posts or supporting articles are the children of the parent/category page.

For example (to support my silo landing page, I would create a category called “affordable insurance rates” since it is thematically relevant to the silo landing page.

On that page, if I wanted to use the H1 tag to link back to the primary landing page with “insurance rates” it would pass along that link flow, when I add the tier 3 pages (blog posts/products or articles) depending on the type of site you are building.

Domain.com/insurance-rates/affordable-insurance-rates/ – whereby the silo landing page becomes the grandparent, the category the parent and the post/supporting article becomes the child.

The third tier would be used for adding supporting content under the nested theme relevant category which has the primary purpose of acting as a controlled portion of the website to administer all content that contains the primary or secondary keywords associated with the primary silo landing page.

Adding the Proper Amount of Link-Flow

Link flow is created from linking from page to page with the appropriate anchor text. Link-flow also takes the number of inbound and outbound links in addition to the strength and thematic relevance of the links. Siloing passes maximum link flow by capping contextual links (from only linking within the silo) and each page is linked via navigation by virtue of the category.

As an example, if I added supporting articles to the affordable insurance rates category they would also be theme related and contain a contextual link that linked back to my category page, which in turn links to my silo landing page (primary landing page in the root).

I would add pages like:

• Best insurance rates
• Save money on insurance
• Compare insurance rates

And each would become a post attached to the category, such as: domain.com/insurance-rates/affordable-insurance-rates/compare-insurance-rates

And have navigational links to everything in that category, while linking back to the silo landing page with the contextual keyword it is trying to rank for “insurance rates”.

The benefit to this type of siloing (using a helix link structure for the data hierarchy) is that the primary keyword (the most competitive phrase) gets ranked from the pooling link flow becoming buoyant underneath it and the category and supporting articles also get ranked as a side benefit (from the internal linking from the navigation).

To take this a step further, you can mix the anchor text shingles and link back to the category / or silo landing page with multiple anchors (to create keyword stemming).

Or, if you wanted to purely silo the page, then you would link in your navigation from the tier 3 pages back to your category page and use the contextual links from the nested supporting articles to link to the primary silo landing page (and not link across to other silos or silo landing pages from any category) only the parent or grandparent (Silo Landing Page).

Building sites in this method produce tectonic shifts in rankings, the only thing you need to is (a) continue to drip fresh content and (b) start link building using deep links to the silo landing page or the category pages.

There is no need to link to the supporting articles, unless you want to give them a boost, since, over time, they too will rank (from sharing the collective PageRank and link-flow of the theme cluster you created).

Website Silo Architecture SEO Tools Under Development

Siloing can be difficult, which is why to make this simple, this feature has been integrated into our upcoming theme WP Ultimate (which is still undergoing fine tuning). We will however, be releasing our plugin the WP Silo Importer that works in tandem with Domain Web Studio and allows you to build theme relevant optimized WordPress sites in minutes (instead of painstakingly publishing dozens or hundreds of pages by hand).

In order to use the advanced silo importer, you will require a subscription to DWS. But we also have a basic silo importer inside “The WP Ultimate Theme“ that allows you to quickly and easily create categories and nested posts on the fly.

The advanced silo importer however is far superior and adds a parent silo landing page, ties the category (using a page not a post) to keep link flow buoyant (so your rankings stick) and then uses the posts as the last tier after the categories.

The WP Silo Importer Plugin (released within 7-10 days to the DWS community) also uses shortcode which you can inject into pages or sidebars to instantly build our all of the navigational elements for theming your content. Doing this by hand on a 100 page site would take hours, with our plugin, merely seconds.

So, the takeaway is, proper planning from theming the website at the beginning of a campaign, combined with tactful supporting content and site structure can save you months on the way to page one and allow you to rank for multiple keywords with 1/10th of the links as a mixed-fruit website.

-Jeffrey

Whether you are an agency (who has clients), an affiliate (looking to leverage your assets for maximum ROI) or a small business owner (trying to carve you own slice of  a market), these tools represent the pinnacle of market research, SEO implementation and syndication, allowing you to create an unfair advantage over your competition.

There are 3 videos below (each is over 1 hour) and shows you how to unleash the power of DWS (using data from the Krakken and Last Keyword Tool).  Consider them your training videos (after you sign up) and you can watch the layers unfold. Keep in mind, these offers will not last long, so take action or pay the full price later (you have been warned).

These are not common ideas or loose theory, they are methods we use to literally dominate search engines for competitive verticals for our clients and ourselves.

We start with the silo framework module and take keyword research and theme the website architecture, from there, we move on the the DNA braid and put together the on page and off page internal / backlink profile and see how steep the competition is, then we move to the third step in the Project Management Module and coordinate the team, structure the on-site content and then push the site live and start promoting it through the syndication blueprint. Trust me, give yourself a few hours, watch the videos and then get access to these tools before they go underground again.

The Silo Framework Module

To get the job done you need the right tools and having advanced SEO tools like DWS, Krakken and The Last Keyword Tool are critical for accessing intel that allow you to (1) assess your market (2) data mine competitors and (3) implement exclusive tactics from a vantage point that few competitors are privileged enough to observe.

Superior intel allows you to work smarter and identify weaknesses, overlooked niche phrases and markets that overlap on the way up the ladder to the more lucrative / crowning market-defining keywords.

But, if you didn’t know what those market defining phrases were, or whether or not those keywords have “actual” dollars attached to their rankings (once you reach the top 3 positions of the traffic band); then you could waste weeks, months or years of time chasing phantom-like silhouettes that merely deliver a fraction of the traffic you had over zealously anticipated.

Wasting time is not an option.  Insulate yourself from futility of targeting duds by using metrics like the Krakken’s Total Search Market Value (TSMV). TSMV is an assessment for each market that corresponds to a dollar figure based on organic and PPC ranking value.

This way, once you now where the money is, and whether or not there is commercial intent, you can tactfully implement website silo architecture to scale a plethora of lucrative keywords (like layers of an onion) through using one or multiple websites.

Using multiple properties allows you to liberate your revenue model from being overly dependent on any one property. To accomplish this feat, you need a solid strategy and system based repeatability that targets entire cluster of phrases, (The DNA Braid) vs. a few poultry keywords.

The DNA Braid Module

Would you rather rank for one keyword or rank for hundreds to thousands of keywords, that allow you to reach that “one” keyword faster while you enjoy the fruit of keyword stemming (ranking for stemmed variations) along the way?

Time is the real asset in SEO and the extent of the volume of work you can accomplish depends on the tools you have at your disposal, and the team that you have to implement those tactics; especially when it comes to SEO and competing in saturated markets.

To use an analogy, working with the wrong tools (against a seasoned competitor) is like bringing 3 men to a battle when your adversary has an army. No matter what strategy you implement (with those 3 men) their limited scope and resources will fall short when the numbers game creeps into the equation.

For a website to knock an authority site off the pedestal of the #1 position, it needs both (1) a foundation that is broad enough to support the ascent (by leveraging semantically structured supporting content) and (2) enough vertical milestones (categories and landing pages) to reach the apex for the primary phrase. This means for competitive markets, you may require thousands of pages (to support the mid tail and lucrative / competitive keywords) and dozens to hundreds of links to critical internal pages to reach the aggregate tipping point to reach the apex of a market.

But also keep in mind, that for every primary keyword, there are dozens of mid-tail and long-tail keywords that are equally as lucrative (if you devour the entire market along the way).

The Project Management Module

To create websites and manage the process (using clusters and co-occurrence), you need a scalable system that allows you to (a) identify keyword and markets (b) model data, cost, time management and resources and calculate ROI from click through rates, time to rank, the volume of content and internal links required per keyword or the number of deep links you will need (that was our proprietary algorithm and you can see it work in Video 1 on the silo framework module above) – that is the power of DWS, Krakken and The Last Keyword Tool; that is the collective suite known as Network Empire.

The volume and extent of the work you execute depends on the system and tools you have at your disposal, especially when SEO and competitive saturated markets are the battleground.

Working with advanced SEO tools allows you to plan your roll-out with more depth, a more robust array of theme relevant supporting articles, categories and landing pages and allows you to work smarter and not harder when chipping away at market defining phrases.

I have had the distinct honor of working with some of the most brilliant minds (the team from Themezoom) over the past 5 years and I can assure you that there are only a handful of people who understand and implement SEO on this level.

While this was our best kept secret for years “The Krakken”, now it is time to borrow a phrase from Hades from Clash of the Titans and “Release the Krakken”!

This suite will allow you to walk into a market cold and within 20 minutes have the creamy keywords that float to the top in which to base your existing legacy site (by breathing life into it with a new blog) or start anew and scale the market in a fraction of the time.

If you are struggling to find theme relevant keywords (based on sophisticated information retrieval algorithms such as sparse matrix clustering, co-occurrence, Bayes, PaIR, LSI and semantic connectivity) then the Krakken (which drills into 60-90,000 keywords in under 5 minutes) only brings you back phrases which are (1) theme relevant to the parent cluster (original keyword) and (2) either have organic search value or PPC search value.

When you continue to refine, add synonyms and keep drilling, you end up with the perfect blueprint (like a skeleton) in which to build out your website into a robust authority site or niche specific entity.

This means that if you include these phrases (in their respective website silo architecture) then the entire cluster gets devoured and you rank for more keywords with fewer inbound links (since your own website becomes its own PageRank and link-flow spewing, top 10 ranking juggernaut).

Keep in mind that the Krakken transcends ordinary keyword research and uses the same type of natural data hierarchy information retrieval structures (such as Google, Yahoo and Bing) use to ascertain relevance.

In short, a blueprint from the Krakken is like mirroring the ideal on page SEO elements, synonyms and synonymic sets search engines grade relevance score with as a conditional metric when analyzing authoritative websites and sorting the wheat from the chaff for positioning.

Rarely would I share the exact tools we use to inspect, enter and dominate markets, but in the spirit of the New Year I do have one special offer I have been permitted to pass along (for a very limited time) to all of you who either get our email / blog posts, read whitepapers and updates from our plugin SEO Ultimate or know who we are and what we do.

In this special offer you get the opportunity to (1) unleash the Krakken in your market (2) it’s powerful and quite formidable little brother “The Last Keyword Tool” and (3) the DWS (Domain Web Studio) the most powerful SEO management suite ever conceived for:

a) mapping out markets

b) creating properly themed websites with silo site architecture

c) managing all elements of the campaign from outsourcing content creation, project management, web development and SEO tasks and most importantly

d) having a syndication blueprint that creates a timeline for every keyword, assesses its cost, time to rank, ROI and even lets you know how to cross the tipping-point with every keyword in a blueprint.

Put simply, this bundle is a must! We have paid $12,000 a year just to use the Krakken, in this offer, you will have to click and see for yourself the savings you can receive.

Do yourself a favor; you can win the battle before you even step on the field. I speak from experience on this one, we can do more in less time and completely crush seasoned competitors (such as brands, Wikipedia results, Amazon, Target, Wal-mart and other “strong sites”) using the formula’s developed from building sites (and links) in tandem with a search engines natural data hierarchy – and that is what you will learn from using this suite .

In essence, Network Empire silently slays competitors and uses unstoppable algorithms (that search engines love and reward), and now, for a limited time you can save hundreds by following this link and getting your subscription for a hefty discount.

In closing, for those naysayers, here are links to an exclusive webinar on the DWS 3.5 launch and other videos on the Krakken and The Last Keyword Tool.

This is not a marketing ploy; this is a special offer with bona fide savings for those of you who are serious about dominating your market. This offer will not last and will be pulled in the next 24-48 hours. Act now, or pay full price later. I leave the rest to you…

-Jeffrey

Take WordPress and Rankings to a Higher Level with SEO Ultimate.

Global Link Mask Admin Interface

The Link Mask Generator module, which first came out almost exactly a year ago, has been overhauled with a brand new administration interface that lets you create link masks that apply globally across your entire WordPress-powered website.

As in previous versions of SEO Ultimate, Link Mask Generator scans your posts for links and gives you the option of generating an alternate URL that redirects to the “real” URL.

For example, if your post contains a link to www.amazon.com, you can use Link Mask Generator to change that link URL to www.your-website.tld/go/amazon/. When your visitors click the link to go to www.your-website.tld/go/amazon/, they are seamlessly redirected to the original URL at www.amazon.com.

Link masking has two benefits: First, it lets you replace lengthy affiliate URLs with short, clean, internal URL masks (using 301 redirects, which have no search engine penalty). Second, Link Mask Generator automatically generates robots.txt rules that disallow your masked URLs, effectively neutering the juice-flow of the link, without resorting to the rel nofollow attribute. This combination makes Link Mask Generator a perfect tool for affiliate marketers.

The latest releases of SEO Ultimate expand on this existing functionality by adding a new global interface which lets you see all your link masks in one place and which lets you apply a link mask globally instead of just to one post as before.

Just go to the new “Link Mask Generator” menu item under SEO Ultimate’s “SEO” menu in your WordPresss admin to view and edit the alias list. The alias table includes a field for the actual URL (e.g. www.amazon.com), a field for the alias URL (e.g. /go/amazon/), a “test” link that lets you check that the alias URL is working, and an optional “Only on This Post” field that lets you limit the application of the link mask to a specific post (thereby emulating the functionality of the previous version of Link Mask Generator).

If you have an affiliate URL that you use in multiple posts across your entire site, the new version of Link Mask Generator lets you mask all instances of that URL in one fell swoop.

Deeplink Juggernaut & Link Mask Generator Integration

One of the great things about having all your SEO features in one plugin is that the modules can integrate with each other. Deeplink Juggernaut and Link Mask Generator can now work together starting with SEO Ultimate 7.1, allowing you to use link masks as autolinking destinations in Deeplink Juggernaut.

Let’s say you’ve already used Link Mask Generator to mask all your www.amazon.com links with internal /go/amazon/ URLs. Now let’s say you want to autolink all instances of the word “Amazon” to your new /go/amazon/ URL. Just go to the “Add a New Link” section of the “Content Links” tab of Deeplink Juggernaut, type “Amazon” in the “Anchor Text” box, and type “amazon” in the “Destination” box. Then click the /go/amazon/ item that appears in the dropdown beneath the “Destination” box. Then just click Save Changes to add the new autolink.

Now all instances of the word “Amazon” (in our example) will autolink to http://www.your-website.tld/go/amazon/. When a visitor clicks the link, he or she will be silently redirected to the original URL at www.amazon.com.

This conjunction of Deeplink Juggernaut and Link Mask Generator functionality is a perfect combo for affiliate marketers looking to autolink all instances of a relevant keyword to a masked affiliate URL.

More Features, Changes, & Fixes

Those 2 features are the headline additions to the latest versions of SEO Ultimate, but there’s even more worth mentioning:

• Permalink Tweaker now includes a new setting that lets you handle URL conflicts between pages and categories/tags that can arise when you use Permalink Tweaker to remove category/tag URL bases. For example, if you have a category called “Blue Widgets” and a page called “Blue Widgets,” and if you have configured Permalink Tweaker to remove the /category/ portion of your categories’ URLs, then both the page and the category will have the URL of http://www.your-website.tld/blue-widgets/. As of SEO Ultimate 7.2, Permalink Tweaker includes a new “URL Conflict Resolution” setting that lets you choose whether the category or the page should get the URL in case of a conflict.
• In previous versions of SEO Ultimate, modules had multiple help dropdowns (in the upper-right-hand corner of the module admin pages) containing module documentation, such as “Overview,” “FAQ,” “Troubleshooting,” etc. As of version 7.0 and later, SEO Ultimate now uses the new help system of WordPress 3.3 that places all these documentation sections into a single “Help” dropdown with multiple tabs.
• Deeplink Juggernaut’s “Tag Restrictions” setting should now handle nested tags with aplomb. If you’ve configured Deeplink Juggernaut to refrain from autolinking within <h3> tags, for example, this setting will now take effect even if that <h3> tag has a nested <span> tag or <br /> tag. If this bug has been giving you trouble, upgrade to SEO Ultimate 7.2.1 or later and let us know whether the fix is working for you.
• Meta Description Editor now lets you differentiate your meta descriptions on paginated subpages of categories, tags, and pages. For example, you can use Meta Description Editor to automatically tack on “Page 2″ to the end of the meta description of page 2 of a category archive. This new feature helps avoid “duplicate meta description” errors in Google Webmaster Tools.

Download version 7.2.1 today to enjoy the new features and multiple enhancements. If you’re already one of the thousands who use SEO Ultimate, you can upgrade for free via your WordPress plugin admin section. If you’re a new user who’d like to take advantage of this powerful free plugin, you can download it from WordPress.org or search for “SEO Ultimate” on your blog’s plugin install screen.

Also, you can view or download All of SEO Ultimate’s Features by right-clicking and saving this convenient PDF file (The SEO Ultimate Feature List).

The WP Ultimate Theme: So Powerful, It Should Have Its Own Cape!

Our objective is simple, to provide users with fine-grained control over multiple on page settings (such as nearly instantaneous site architecture injection, custom navigation options, multiple layout and theme choices, breadcrumbs, internal links, widgets, typography controls and more) for the optimal WordPress SEO framework.

Rather than spill the beans now, I will be posting sneak previews of the features as well as preparing some unique use-case examples of how to leverage the power of WP and SEO Ultimate in tandem.

If you know us by now, you know that SEO Design Solutions is not about shallow or flimsy SEO tactics or tools; everything we do is cutting-edge and is founded on years of battle tested tactics that dominate search engines and produce real-world results by their very design.

WP Ultimate is no different – there simply isn’t anything like it as a WordPress framework (more on that later) and this is not to knock the competition.

Stay tuned for videos, strategies and more from our upcoming product launch (which will change the way you think about SEO Themes for WordPress once and for all).

The countdown for the launch is scheduled for  1-2-2012

Until the next post…

-Jeffrey

Aside from the glaring monetization prowess of “The Digital Juggernaut” known as Google, just remember “your clicks equate to revenue”.

Let’s take a peek behind the numbers from Google’s 2010 profits to answer any questions about how profitable search as a viable business model is.

From: BusinessMBA.org

From Humble Beginnings to Market Dominance

Who would have thought that two college students (Sergey Brin and Larry Page) attending Stanford University 14 years ago would create a content-devouring search engine that re-purposes crawled content (yours and mine) and then makes (others) competitors or yourself bid on related keywords using display / pay per click (PPC) advertising or SEO in the interests of commercial intent / “relevance” would grow to such epic proportions.

Fact: “88% of online search dollars are spent on paid results, even though 85% of searchers click on organic results”

- Vanessa Fox, “Marketing in the Age of Google”, May 3, 2010.

In closing, I believe Google is one of the most brilliant and profitable websites (that wrapped an empire around itself) ever created. But the double edge sword is, Google also has their own agenda!

At the end of the day, what will they do with their power and wealth to make the world a better place?

With power comes responsibility and while Google has an 80% stake in search / market share, perhaps Google could think less about “making others conform to their terms of service” or “penalizing them” if they fail to comply and more about giving back to those whose content they are overtly “borrowing” and leveraging for the sake of profit.

And a profitable market it is indeed, as we can see above… Share your thoughts below or pass this along to others if you enjoyed it.

-Jeffrey

Where is the SEO Backlink Tipping Point?

Based on our heuristic testing, absolutely!  Just like wine, links get stronger with age – if they are supported by (a) sufficient internal links within the site linking out or (b) have deep links from other websites augmenting them.

If properly augmented, then those pages become hub pages (pages with trust and ranking factor) which can rank additional spokes (pages) on the wheel via links.

Internal page augmentation can be as simple as using an RSS feed, syndicating a page and providing a link back to the published page.

Do this with 5 RSS aggregators and you could get 5 backlinks for every page or post you create. Do this with hundreds of RSS aggregators or syndication sources and you can get hundreds of links per day (just from adding one page of content).

This method is easy to implement with WordPress (if you have a content development strategy in place) to drip fresh content.

Each new page or post published represents another opportunity to leverage and syndicate that content (to build links back to the original page) which can eventually sprout PageRank and pass ranking factor to your preferred landing pages.

Those link-rich hub pages also double as places to build solid secondary navigation or internal links to your commercial landing pages or other hub pages in your website to enhance search engine positioning.

Link Signals

One often overlooked aspect of search engine optimization is that search engines are programmed to suppress new link signals (for passing ranking factor) until they pass a certain criteria of trust.

The link/trust threshold  is the secret sauce known only by a select group of developers from Google, Yahoo and Bing. The prime directive of this filter to keep their search engine indices less polluted (from aggressive link building tactics).

The good news is, if you are building links properly, you can get past this filter by layering permanent one way links strategically over time.

I have witnessed:

• the first phase at approximately 10-14 days (to sprout a ranking from inbound links)
• the second phase of a the link /trust cycle is estimated at 40-45 days
• the third phase in the link-flow cycle typically occurs in the 90-120 day range and
• the fourth phase occurs after 6-8 months – and continues to pass more value as time progresses.

After the 8 month threshold, a backlink is stable and well on it’s way to gaining trust and passing along its total link flow to the target site. This suggests that as links age, they pass more ranking factor.

The three primary factors that impact this algorithm are  (1) the age/time of the link and (2) the relevancy of the link and (3) page strength as determined by the number of inbound / outbound links on the page providing the link.

As an aspect of link velocity, the rate in which you gain and / or lose inbound links impacts a website, but also, the age (as mentioned above) dramatically impacts ranking.

We can speculate the reason for this, but rather than look at the nuts and bolts of the algo, simply think like a developer and put yourself in the shoes of the programmers crafting the coding symphony known as Google’s search algorithm.

How would you keep new links from being disruptive (if automated or otherwise) if they passed 100% ranking factor out of the gate? This would be an open invitation for automation (which could easily skew search engine result page results) from a barrage or spike of links.

Factoring The Link Grandfather Effect

The answer to this quandary, merely think of it as an algorithmic link-throttle that essentially limits how much link-juice links produce based on specific thresholds.

Put simply, as links age, they pass more trust, trust translates into (a) PageRank (b) link-flow which in turn pass ranking factor along the link graph to the target page (which eventually becomes more buoyant (until it collides with the next page above it who has more relevance score) and then subsides in the search engine result pages.

Aside from the off page inbound links, their age and relevancy,  typically on page factors or the degree of your on page efficiency determines how many off page inbound links are required to cross the tipping point.

Each website varies based on the competition in the marketplace, the on site architecture, the volume and integrity of the internal links, the age of the site, how each page is fed in the hierarchy and how many shingles (supporting keyword occurrences) or internal links based on semantic overlap are present.

So, if you understand that it’s not always backlinks that push rankings higher, it’s capping link-loss and trust from the pre-existing inbound links or strong internal pages getting more link-flow and pushing it to the appropriate silo (preferred landing page) of the semantic theme that make this a powerful on page and off page SEO combination.

One quick way to give your rankings a boost is (a) build links to your links or (b) go back to published URL’s and syndicate them across multiple feeds (to get more page level citation) which in turn translates into buoyant rankings.

The takeaway here is (1) use content syndication and aggregators to steadily build a stream of inbound deep links to internal pages and (2) use the collective link-weight they produce to rank multiple semantic themes within your website.

-Jeffrey

Gain Access to the Vault!

For a brief history lesson, Michael Campbell is a man who has been silently slaying markets online since 1988 and is either innovating evergreen methods (from revenge of the mininet) which now applies to social media and web 2.0 properties (whereas previously it applied to how to create your own network of sites to dominate search engines) or raking in 6 to 7 figures yearly from their application.

In either case, the information provided inside “The Vault” is nothing less than battle tested methods and strategies that you can use to monetize websites, CPA offers and conversion tactics, such as his free report / whitepaper on 9 proven templates, their ideal ad and content placement and which positions earned the highest click through rates using heat maps and statistical test data conducted over a 6 month sample set for the data.

You can Download >>>The Ultimate HeatMap Report<<< here – but to truly gain access to over 150 hours of podcasts, conversion tests, strategies, hardcore / real world tactics that you can put to work – spend the money (aff link) to become a member.

It’s a one-time fee you won’t regret, and quite simply, you won’t find information like this floating around the web, since people typically keep this stuff close to the chest (and behind closed doors).

Fortunately, Michael is generous and truly enjoys giving back to others. Don’t take my word for it, check it out for yourself and you be the judge there are dozens of hour-long podcasts, useful guides and more inside the vault!

Hope to see you on the inside and this truly is one tool in your internet marketing arsenal you can leverage time and time again.

Enjoy!

-Jeffrey

Should You Obfuscate Your Links?

In this context, the pattern is anchor text obviousness (linking to a page with the same anchor text with minimal variation). Failure to add variety to inbound or internal anchor text (links) can lead to over optimization as a result of link velocity and how people link from the web.

For example, if a large percentage of your backlinks are all from similar IP sources, have appeared in clusters in a timeline that seems (to good to be true), then chances are they could leave a trail that suggests that some type of intentional promotion / link building being done.

While it is no surprise (as a capitalistic system denotes) competition can bring out the best and the worst of us. While the moral climate of promotion is questionable, it all boils down to intent. The quandary about link building (between Google and SEO) is based on the intent of the link.

Their argument is, are you linking to other websites because you want to share a resource or because someone is paying you to do so? While their position on links is clear, expecting the web to conform is highly unlikely (considering what is at stake) high rankings and traffic for positions above the fold for businesses who bag the best links with ideal anchor text.

Considering that links were around before search engines and links are the only thing allowing you to move from page to page and website to website about the web only validates their importance. Your interpretation of link building should be (links come in various types but if used in the right context, each type has a place) if you are using a tiered approach (to deep to discuss in this brief post).

Implementing Shingle Diversity

While there are no absolutes, merely consider these suggestions ideal guidelines for building a more robust and / or natural link profile.

• Use the domain name or website address  in 10% of inbound links (ideally to the homepage)
• Use the primary shingle “exact match” keyword to a preferred silo landing page (a page built specifically for that keyword” approximately 35% of the time while keeping link velocity in mind (not building or losing links too fast) while linking to it from the homepage or other strong navigational or silo landing pages from “contextual links”.
• Use an alternative variations 15% of the time (to mix up the natural inbound link diversity) such as juxtaposed shingles, or synonyms mixed with the primary keyword.
• Use long tail variations 20% of the time (whereby the keyword is surrounded by the primary keyword and / or additional modifiers either before or after the shingles.
• Use the plural variation 20% of the time (building both singular and plural variations ensures you rank for both).

Also remember, the same applies for internal links, except for the diversity should be less, but still incorporate a variety of shingles, depending on the method you are utilizing. For example, in order to boost one keyword, then:

• Build the same anchor text shingle (group of words) to the primary landing page from within the site.

To make the page rank for additional keyword variations / keyword queries (that either appear on the page or are linked form pages designed to rank for those shingles) which are in essence “passing along” their link-flow and authority to the target page. For that method of on page / off page SEO ratios use:

• Use a mixed ratio of primary internal links to the target / preferred landing page
• Use a mixed ratio of off page inbound links to make the page rank for the spread of aggregate links in the anchor text.

The extent of the result depends on (a) competitors (b) domain and page strength (c) trust passed from the citation of the collective links and (d) the percentage of on page and off page inbound links to a page.

The takeaway here is diversity is the spice of life, and also applies when building internal or inbound back links. So, mix it up (your anchor text) to get past stale rankings and strengthen the link profile of your websites. Ultimately the ratios are up to you, but at least you have a method to fall back for a skeleton when it comes to shingle usage and links (either internal or inbound).

-Jeffrey

Which Links Pass the Most Link-Flow and Link Weight?

However, before you initiate any type of off page SEO (building inbound links); make sure that you aren’t building your internal links by relying on minimal navigational links alone.

If you fail to map out your on page elements, it’s the equivalent of trying to fill a leaky bucket full of water to no avail. No matter how much water you pour into it, the bigger the puddle on the floor. In essence, the container becomes null (regardless of the volume being poured into it).

This is often the case with most SEO practitioners who fall into the vicious cycle of relying heavily on off page ranking factor (links) to perform the heavy lifting and overlook the on page SEO finesse required to create the proper balance.

Like the analogy above, within your website, the premise of link-weight and link-flow similar to the bucket.

The second layer to this quandary is the volume of outbound links on a page (even if they are to other internal pages) should be balanced by a fair text to link ratio in addition to inbound links from other internal and external pages.

For example, a page with 10 outbound links is 10 times stronger than a page with 100 outbound / internal links. Which would you rather have boosting your internal pages? More on that later…

During the interim, feel free to peruse related posts on the topic below:

• Understanding Link Volume Velocity and Diversity
• Balancing Link Velocity and Link Volume
• Google Website Analysis – Live Site Review

Does a link count on the page more than once?

Yes, a link does count on the page more than once and there is a distinct difference between the amount of link-flow from a link in the navigation, footer or sidebar, an image based “alt attribute link” and a contextual link “a text link linked amidst supporting semantically related keywords”.

Fortunately for advanced SEO’s who map link flow and shingles as part of the on page SEO process, there are tools like SEOEngine that (1) crawl, analyze and provide invaluable feedback on the link-flow percentages of each page in your website (2) whether or not the shingles (groups of words) are aligned with the market focus (the purpose of the page) as well as (3) how many inbound and / or external links are present or (4) whether or not the market focus is supported by sufficient link-flow – in addition to dozens of other critical metrics; and then translates it into a 1 out of 100 scoring system.

Optimize Your Website NOW!

If you’re curious about your on page SEO score (on a scale of 1-100), enter your domain name in the SEOEngine toolbar above for a behind the scenes look from the eyes of a search engine.

What About First Link Priority?

The notion behind this theory was that the first crawled link was the only one that mattered if you had more than one link to a target landing page (with the same or multiple anchors). My response…

Yes, there is a scoring system that search engines utilize to sort, sift and assign weight in the eigenvector, despite the first link priority suggestion made popular years ago from Leslie Rohde (whom I have the utmost respect for). Despite the theory, yes, more than one link on the page passes weight and ranking factor, even if those links are to the same destination page and have the same anchor text.

Aside from search engine metrics always changing, I can assure you that search engines weight different areas of the page with different integer values (such as the body area and contextual links carrying more weight than footer or links in the sidebar).

Not to say that each type of link does not have its place for conversion cues and visual appeal, some more so than others, but you should understand what type of inbound anchor text link flow is required to rank for more competitive keywords.

One algorithm that pays particular attention to page layout dubbed VIPS which is a Vision-Based Page Segmentation Algorithm dating back to 2003. This algorithm uses a top down approach and can intelligently decipher relevance based on visual blocks and degrees of coherence.

Let’s just say, things have evolved since then, but layout, positioning, proximity and where content and or links matters based on position on the page to a search engine. The SEOEngine does an excellent job of this as well when scoring link-flow within a website based on link type, location, and multivariate shingle analysis in addition to anchor text.

Link Value Trumps Link Volume

Sometimes it’s not about the volume of links as much as it is about the efficiency of the website and its propensity to leverage on page link flow properly. Combine this with website silo architecture and a powerful collection of strong, topical backlinks to your silo landing pages and you have a trifecta that makes Wikipedia, Amazon and Fortune 500 companies a ripple in your wake as you devour the top 10 positions on your way to the top.

We do with a few hundred links what most do with thousands. Rankings are driven from understanding (a) the proper amount of shingles, internal links and deep links, backed by (b) the amount of trust and authority developed as a byproduct, percolation and time to achieve the authority set in Google (the page in which all other less perfect pages deemed by the algorithm) are measured.

By chipping away with semantically aligned topical nodes of content, supporting synonyms and blanketing the relevance landscape, your websites base expands and the process of keyword stemming is no longer a theory, but a byproduct of tactful content development aligned with on page and off page citation (via internal links)and syndication (validation from citation from off page sources).

To keep the post from spilling over into a 4000 word whitepaper, we can continue the conversation at a later date. I plan to create a video to follow up and showcase how (with the proper understanding) you can map and / or correct link-flow imbalance within a website particularly when mapping out shingles for on page content and internal links, in addition to deep links to create a ranking juggernaut.

In the meantime, if you want to schedule an SEO consultation for your website to map out link-flow, visit this page or email us to get started (hourly rate billed at $400/hr).

Link-flow is the lifeblood of your website. Once mastered, you will think before you link and understand how each page, each word and each type of link within a website works cohesively to achieve a common goal.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoyed our SEO tips and tactics to distinguish your website in search engines from the SEO Design Solutions Blog.

Make sure you follow us on twitter, like us on Facebook or subscribe to our RSS feed for additional search engine optimization tips and techniques.

-Jeffrey

Ready, Aim, Fire!

From Florida updates to Panda maulings, despite the ups and downs, certain metrics remain intact.

As a webmaster, these evergreen metrics are the focal point to remain relevant amidst the rise and fall of questionable flavor of the month SEO methodologies before they get leaked, peak and go the way of overused and abused SEO tactics like keyword stuffing and other dated practices from our fabled list of 10 SEO techniques to avoid.

Search engines are stepping up their game, and so should you. Today’s topic is a refresher on strategy, ROI and scalability when determining which keywords are worthwhile to engage.

Aim for Lucrative Keywords

The type of keywords you target matters. Ranking for obscure, less popular keywords never made anyone rich, nor will keyword duds recover their vested interest or the financial return on investment anted up to get ranked in the first place.

The moral of the story is to watch where you point your SEO, more specifically, target the best keywords based on the climate for conversion.

Of the three types of keywords:

• Long tail keywords (easy to rank for, not as much search volume, but you can target more of them with less effort).
• Mid tail keywords (they take more time, but have a steady flow of traffic and conversions) – or -
• Primary root phrases (they take the longest, but are often educational keywords that lack commercial intent).

Certain keywords produce click throughs and others create conversions. Depending on your business model (if you get paid from CPM advertising, CPA offers, Direct Sales, Lead Generation, or other means) determines which type of traffic is more important for your business and where you should put your attention.

If you find yourself in an organic SEO campaign, make sure you stay away from the bright shiny objects and focus on profitable keyword clusters laced with conversion opportunities fermenting with intent that turn browsers into buyers and not browsers into a high bounce rate (which can impact and undermine your websites’ trust and relevance score).

Employ Relevancy and Recency

Two things make search engines tick (1) relevance and (2) recency – making sure the breaking story is still hot or newsworthy or making sure that someone looking for the best sewing kits or fly fishing rods finds a website worthy of praise.

Your goal is to become that site by catering to the full spectrum (not just the tip of the iceberg) and use the secret sauce of co-occurrence (using various phrases found in the most authoritative websites on the topic) to ensure your website is the definitive go to destination for not only one type of query but rather a full spectrum of semantic variables within a market or niche.

You accomplish this through topical relevance and by applying constant pressure though content creation or content curation to provide leverage and scale past complacent competitors.

Keep in mind that Google looks at more than just site structure and links. They observe the stickiness of the page, social signals, bounce rate and uniqueness.

However, if you need to scale and conquer, then content curation (if done properly) can still yield favorable results through leveraging the inbound link opportunities that exist (for creating shingles to your primary landing pages) even if the supporting article or page is intended to rank or just serve as eye candy to entice a larger audience.

If you generate hundreds of visitors to your website daily, search engines will take notice and start sending more theme relevant traffic your way (if you intended it or not).

The key is to understand the effect and keep enough unique content in play (while remaining relevant and recent) such as using trends data from Google, what’s hot in Alexa or trending topics in Twitter or Facebook to find the happy medium that can generate a stream of new visitors to your website.

Flowing with the go instead of merely treading water or getting swept away in a competitive current instead of leveraging the “what’s hot / it factor” and integrating some newsworthy topic or recent event can mean the difference between a couple of clicks from random sources or a flurry of traffic.

Replicate: Syndication Equals Impact

How influential your website becomes is dependent on (1) the audience (2) their propensity to share and (3) the curb appeal of your headlines, writing style, verve or the appeal of the content, tutorial, newsflash or entertainment value therein.

Expand your reach intelligently by straying away from flimsy content and provide quality through and through to develop genuine domain authority. In other words, target behaviors not just keywords.

So, before you write your next post, remember, search engines are designed to follow trends, and prefer a full spectrum of topical content on a subject rather than the tip of the iceberg randomness.

So, before you start writing about dust mites, automotive parts and health and fitness and trying to make it all work, you are only setting yourself up to fail. Snipe a few keywords starting with some low hanging fruit, use those pages or posts to provide internal links to the more competitive mid-tail keywords and then leverage those landing pages using links via syndication to tackle the more competitive traffic-bearing keywords.

If you target keywords in phases, then you can test, measure, determine what works then lean into the phrases bringing your revenue to scale and replicate through content curation or syndication of current and legacy content.

Once mastered, search engines will follow you, not the other way around!

-Jeffrey

Rome was not built in a day

In order to conquer competitors and reach the top 10 results, you need to understand the 3 P’s of SEO conquest and live by their credo.

The 3P’s of SEO are:

• Planning
• Persistence
• Patience

As rudimentary as these 3 words appear, once you understand that everything can be reduced to its essence, and the essence of a strong SEO campaign is founded upon these three principles.

PLANNING

Planning – No battle (at least any significant one) was ever one from a bunch of warriors just showing up, after picking a random direction, with no battle plan – against a significant adversary.

Any worthwhile endeavor is born from planning. In this instance you need to survey the reach and exposure of your competitors (content, links, advertising budget, whether or not they are using affiliates, etc.) in order to surmise their strengths and weaknesses.

Based on your discovery, you look for chinks in the armor to determine whether or not their weakness will serve your advance.

For example, if your competitor is relying solely on one type of promotion too heavily, that would provide you with an opportunity to leverage a medium they may be ignoring (like Press releases, editorial content swapping on powerful websites, powerhouse aged directories or even selective article marketing – to get tons of long tail inbound links to your landing pages).

Study their rankings, see where they are visible and start with a solid plan that you can (a) roll out as aggressively as your budget permits but (b) is founded in a timeline with KPI’s (key performance indicators) as a sounding board for advancement and ROI (return on investment).

Be aware it may take 6-9 months to get a foothold for competitive verticals, but the traffic is your reward (if you cultivate positioning on the appropriate keyword/fronts).

PERSISTENCE

Persistence – Are you the kind of guy (or girl) that picks a fight with an 800 pound gorilla, then once you get hit in the face throw in the towel and give up? If so, then SEO is not for you (you are better off paying for every click with PPC or media buys).

Persistence is one of your most notable allies in the battles that erupt with the other 990 contenders on your ascent to the top 10. If you crumble easily or get flustered if you rise 5 pages for a few weeks, then fall back 2 pages, then reconsider your resolve.

Search engine result pages (SERPs) are volatile, as there are hundreds of known factors and thousands of variables which contribute to a website remaining buoyant amidst the chaos of recency and relevance in addition to competitors all aiming to take your spot.

You have to stay active in order to impress search engine algorithms, and that means using diversity (in keywords, internal links, the content you publish on site and how you reinforce that content through syndication or off page ranking factors).

The key is to keep things moving and to scale on page SEO equally while focusing on promotion and off page (links and syndication). We never advise any type of SEO campaign without recommending the addition of fresh, topical content being dripped daily to the web from the property you are trying to establish.

On page content sends a clear signal that your effort is genuine and each new page gives you an opportunity to reinforce another shingle (group of words) that are pieces in the puzzle (parts of the semantic hierarchy) that you are attempting to establish a foothold in.

The more keywords your website spans, the more relevant your website becomes. The more relevant your website becomes, the more search engines will funnel traffic to your pages. The more traffic and exposure you receive, the more you can leverage those ranked pages to rank 10 more in kind and in essence develop a ranking juggernaut.

This is a worthy strategy for conquest, building an authority site to weather SERP fluctuations and lazy competitors. All the while, this is only part one of the equation. When you couple this with progressive off page inbound links (over time) all keywords are attainable (if you cross the tipping point).

The question is, do you have the commitment, persistence, drive, budget or time to do so. If you are up against a competitor who has been dominant for 5 years uncontested by a challenger, then be prepared to engage the battle (when they see you picking off keywords and taking their spots).

This is why the next virtue is of extreme importance… that virtue is patience.

PATIENCE

Patience is not a naturally occurring trait for most; it must be developed over time. SEO requires time and much like a great battle or game of chess getting to the end game with an advantage all depends on what moves you made in the beginning or previous moves leading up to it.

While there are various strategies and tactics, they are mere pieces on the board. What matters is how they are used (leverage), when you use them (timing) and why you would elect to use them in the first place (circumstance).  To sift through the archives of our strategies, you need look no further than our sitemap for gems. But no strategy or tactic will help you if you don’t have the patience to let it play out.

So, before you pick your next battle or your next keyword, know what you are up against and plan accordingly. Remember, Rome was not built in a day and neither is a lucrative ranking either – so, bring your best arsenal (site architecture, content creation, internal links and syndication and backlinks) or you are already defeated before even stepping on the battlefield from some competitor who already has.

-Jeffrey

Create Content With Purpose

The first short-term purpose is to generate a surge of present-tense traffic. Even if your new page or post generates 25 new visitors to your website in one day, reaching 100, 200 or 500 visitors per day is scalable by the introduction and syndication of new and / or relevant content.

The second long-term purpose content creation serves is the ability for each page you create to age and transform into a powerful hub page (replete with PageRank, link-flow and ranking power) which can funnel link juice to more critical (spoke in the wheel) commercial pages with the express intent of getting those pages into the top 10 spotlight.

As traffic and mileage may vary from website to website depending on the subject/topic, demand and/or authority of your website; in the instance of SEO Design Solutions, I know that I can generate additional 300-400 fresh visitors per day from one blog post over the average ambient traffic we receive to our website from the aged legacy content it houses.

The other added benefit is the more content you have the more PageRank and authority you develop. The takeaway is that creating qualified, rich, engaging content not only wins you points from search engines, but will insulate your website from vacillations (rising and falling) if minor algorithmic changes threaten the relevancy and ranking landscape (if you were relying on off page backlinks alone).

A proper SEO campaign should always involve the introduction of fresh/relevant content. Not so much to obfuscate links or link building as much as the on-page justification of giving search engines a reason to rank a website higher (from being a genuine resource).

Search engines are based on a basic principle (1) crawl, index and store content and then (2) use that content to query against (with 200+ relevance and recency filters) to determine which group of websites are (a) trusted and (b) authoritative enough to rank in the “authority set” – the top 10 results.

Aside from the two points made above about creating more traffic and leveraging pages eventually to foster additional buoyancy for landing pages. Content (and the quality and relevance of the content) is truly one of the more prominent metrics that search engines use when deciding who wins the click (as a result of where they are positioned in the search engines index).

On page internal linking opportunities are also a side benefit of strategic content creation. By spanning the topical nodes of synonyms and other related phrases that pertain to the topic, you can sprinkle phrases in landing pages and / or supporting pages which you can use for internal links.

These internal links carry more weight in the algorithm than links found in common areas like the footer, sidebar or navigation and a page that is a PageRank 3 internal page (for example) passes equally as much weight through a link as a link from another website/page from outside the website. This means the more pages in your website that have trust, relevance, PageRank/Link-flow or authority, the less you need to depend on backlinks to get ranked.

When you understand the premise of theming your content (creating a main topic and nesting supporting keywords, articles and / or pages), your own website becomes a powerful on-page dynamo that is capable of fueling less competitive keywords through tactful internal links.

Also, when considering that your website is only as strong as its weakest page, leaving no page behind and giving it a function to act as a supporting page that links to more commercial landing pages or sculpting that page as a destination is a great alternative to each page fending for itself with no continuity or links from contextual linking or navigation.

In either case, the entire corpus of documents benefit (as the whole becomes stronger, more relevant and more interdependent) if you are leveraging the premise of tactful content creation and keyword occurrence. The occurrence of a phrase can become a link to the appropriate landing page.

Once you cross the tipping point for on page internal links, the page becomes buoyant. Don’t believe me, just think about the cohesiveness of Wikipedia and it’s no surprise while they are one of the most dominant websites in Google’s index ranking for millions of keywords as a result of their on-page structure and internal links.

While you may not have a website the size of Wikipedia (most don’t), you do have the ability to create fresh content and also syndicate that content to social media sites, article directories, RSS aggregators and more to (a) generate more traffic and (b) cultivate relevant internal links which boost page level trust and PageRank and eventually domain authority for the entire website.

In closing, here is an alternative to content creation it’s called content curation and our friends at Network Empire are teaching a course “Premium Content Curation” for those of you who are interested. Pass it along and as always, I hope you found this post useful and informative.

-Jeffrey

How to Get Dropped Search Engine Rankings Back

One day you have traffic, visitors and conversions from your most cherished ranking, then for reasons unbeknownst to you, your legacy position is a memory and your ranking is bouncing about, rolled off the page or no where in sight.

The natural reaction; what the %#%$@ do I do now? While your first reaction is panic (in fear of an SEO penalty), the reason for the usurping could potentially be derived from a variety of equally substantial causes, such as:

• Google or other search engine algorithms are merely testing a new filter.
• The search index is being rebuilt (where old pages are scored in contrast to new entries and aged contenders), which often settles and your ranking / position reemerges.
• The link flow (rank order) of your pages shifted from making changes to your website.
• Some of your own pages and / or internal links have lost value from (a) duplicity (b) low value content or (c) potential indexation issues or the most obvious…
• Competition has kicked their SEO in gear to take your spot!

While frustration from any of these causes can make even the most calm, collected business owner or webmaster uneasy, there are ways you can stave these vacillations by either creating additional padding within your website (theming) that insulates your primary pages (by reinforcing them with internal links) and / or creating stronger trust signals that omit your website from the churn.

While no website is immune, there are varying degrees of displacement which can occur as the search engine index is like an organism in its own right vastly spanning billions of documents with the constant yet prime directive to find the best 10 pages for any given search query.

Okay, Einstein Now What?

Most causes are algorithmic, so, if you address and make the appropriate change, stability returns. The question is, what can you do about it today? So, here are 10 tested SEO solutions you can start with right now in your vetting process:

1)      Revise Titles: Check your titles (to see if you can remove any noise) and refine relevance. Excessive titles diffuse relevance, so, make sure they are succinct and only reference the content on THAT page, not something general. Follow the link for more information about optimizing titles and meta descriptions.

2)      Indexed Pages: Use the site:mydomain.com command [replace mydomain.com with your own domain name in a Google search] to see if you have lost an inordinate amount of pages. If you had 1000 pages indexed and now you have 100, there are crawl or sever issues which could cripple your websites link flow. If you are suffering from indexation issues then pages that are not in the index are no longer passing ranking factor as supporting pages.

3)      Inflated indexation: like the contrary and not having enough pages indexed, sometimes your website/server will create a hiccup and pages will get indexed multiple times. If this happens, then your website can trigger duplicate content penalties (where multiple pages have the same data and go supplemental) in other words, they will not rank in Google’s primary index (which is what you are querying, Google’s snapshot from their spiders, not the web) when you are searching using THEIR engine.

4)      Add content: Add more unique content to primary landing pages. Ensuring your pages have at least 500-750 words of unique content for primary landing page can aid relevance and authority. This is critical because a search engine is programmed to look for co-occurrence (the presence and proximity of other supporting synonyms and / or related keywords) to ascertain relevance.

5)      Target Specific Landing Pages: Make sure primary keywords have the appropriate landing pages. For example, instead of the homepage ranking for everything, use a keyword specific landing page. Not only does this help on page conversions from message match (giving a user what they expect when they click through) but it also adds another layer to your SEO for deep links (building backlinks to pages other than the homepage) see next item for elaboration.

6)      Build Deep Links: By building specific links to keyword-rich landing pages designed specifically for the keyword, you can dramatically increase rankings by consolidating on page SEO efforts.

This means if you have a category called electronics, and you have different sub categories (portable electronics, USB accessories, wireless accessories), then create specific pages for those sub categories and then build links to them from other websites with the keyword those sub categories/landing pages should rank for (portable electronics, USB accessories or Wireless Accessories, respectively). This also strengthens the category (Electronics) and all the pages it links to.

7)      Remove Excessive Links: If you have excessive internal links on a page (particularly boilerplate links that appear on multiple pages) then you are better off minimizing the amount of outbound/internal links to under 50 links per page (up to 100 links max) when internally linking your pages.

This accomplished two things (1) it make the page preserve more ranking factor and (2) excessive links won’t bleed ranking factor for the pages you link to. The more links you have on a page, the weaker each one becomes, so, keep your on page SEO tight and link only as needed. Click here to see a video on how to properly silo your website.

8)      Inbound Link IP Diversity: Get more inbound IP link diversity from other websites. You can do this by (a) syndicating old content on the site (rewriting it and submitting to article directories, RSS directories, using www.pingler.com or getting fresh links from press releases like www.prweb.com to create more IP diversity.

9)      Diversify Internal Link Anchor Text: While you think that linking the same keyword from every page in your website to one target page might help, if done in excess, you can toggle an internal over-optimization penalty.

To correct this, use link-caps (determine and implement a cut-off point) and then use alternate keywords and / or synonyms to link to primary landing pages. The benefit is (1) the target page still has the overlapping keywords so the primary phrase gets a boost and (2) the target page can rank for a broader array of keyword variations (mid-tail and long-tail keywords).

10)   Time: Sometimes you need to give everything more time. Between Google and other search engines constantly changing their algorithms it’s not always what you do with your on page optimization or how many links you have; it’s how trusted your website is?

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more SEO Tips, tactics and strategies to diversify your website in search engines. If you like, make sure to follow us on twitter for updates as they occur.

If you like, feel free to comment below, share this post or start a discussion on techniques you either (a) personally use (b) are curious about or (c) have used to put your websites’ rankings back on course in a trajectory towards the top 10 after experiencing a dip.

-Jeffrey

Create Stronger Websites and Rankings

The undeniable value of adding topical theme-relevant content is imperative for long-term positioning. Why, you might ask? Because as your website grows, your opportunity to raise your website’s SEO ceiling (the range of competitive keywords you can rank for by default/virtue of your websites trust, age and theme) shift and evolve concurrently.

For example, approaching SEO (without website authority), you might think of producing rankings the hard way (trying to rank before you have the clout and authority using links alone) vs. building authority and rankings emerging as if by default from the correlation of your on site optimization strategy with minimal off site dependency.

As a testament to this method, our website ( SEO Design Solutions ) can rank in 10 minutes from publishing a keyword in a title in a blog post for a keyword up to 4,000,000 competing pages in phrase match (which would take a less authoritative site months to rank). Our websites SEO ceiling is higher due to authority and trust. This in turn allows us to devour less competitive keywords with ease, often by simply creating a page (and building a few themed internal links).

The beautiful thing is, this is a scalable, repeatable SEO tactic. Although, it does require long-term dedication, the results are immense when you implement a strategic content development plan based on topical nodes of relevance within a market.

The genuine premise is based on leaving no page behind or rather understanding the life cycle of what and how a webpage will evolve and eventually serve as a topical/pivotal hub.  The distinction of this tactic is that it allows a skilled SEO practitioner to set the stage organically and allow their SEO seeds to unfold over time vs. just focusing on landing pages and links alone.

For example, if your website architecture and link-flow are properly formatted from the onset, meaning:

• Capping links between pages (meaning minimizing excessive leaks from a high volume of navigation or contextual links) such as capping links on a page to under 50 links (for navigational links) or capping contextual links to 1 link for every 100 words of body content (i.e. 500 words 5 contextual links).
• Prevention of duplicate content from recurring elements in sidebars or templates (which neutralize relevancy on the page level and prevent a page from passing optimal ranking factor to other mission critical landing pages).
• Page specific landing pages are created in the root folder (using exact match URL’s, succinct titles, reflective H1 and H2 tags and meta data).
• An internal linking strategy (including internal link thresholds) are planned and executed (via dripping internal links in content over time).

-          Then you can funnel ranking factor at leisure to dozens, hundreds or thousands of landing pages over time.

The first prerequisite for grooming a favorable search engine ranking is simple; create a page specifically that corresponds to your keyword. After the “exact match” landing page is completed, not you have a destination to provide internal link weight to those “exact match” shingles (keywords or group of words).

The more dynamic the website, the more opportunity for growth, mind you, this means leaving no page behind (through lack of internal links, and / or link flow).

I suggest you plan on getting 3-5 links min. for internal “supporting article” pages. Even though their purpose may not be to get ranked, if they are not indexed or have enough citation (on page or off page) then they are virtually useless unless cultivated.

So, if you are expecting to “just add content” without rhyme, reason or strategy and you inadvertently neglect to (a) get the supporting page sufficient link-flow (from on site or off site means), then those pages cannot pass along any on page reputation, since (b) those pages alone (without support) are not considered authoritative.

One way to accomplish this simply is through RSS syndication and promotion of deep nested URL’s from your category or supporting article pages (using RSS aggregators to ping other services that create instant backlinks).

To develop backlinks on auto pilot, you can leverage properties such as technorati, icerocket, jumptags, amplify and other RSS syndication sources provide trusted backlinks that pass the necessary validation for a search engine to assess the page as worthy.

The key to this technique is to create internal pages budding with links from outside sources, while simultaneously scaling additional content (through website silo architecture). The process works by cultivating pages that can attract their own links (2) those pages eventually gain Page Rank and/or domain trust and (3) they become pages that (a) rank and (b) can pass along vital ranking factor vs. an orphaned page (that previously, you may have inadvertently expected to create value). The stronger all your pages are, the stronger the website becomes.

The takeaway is:

1)      Create stellar on page content for the long-haul (create content that can stand the test of time and eventually stem to rank for additional keywords and key phrase variations).

2)      Get links to internal pages from (a) tactful internal links (b) categorical sitemaps (c) other theme relevant internal pages and (d) deep links from a variety of IP sources.

3)      Never underestimate the budding of authority (pages you forget about today could be stable landing pages of tomorrow and stem into a steady baseline of improved traffic and conversions.

So, create with the long-term purpose of building an authoritative website using expert content that is both compelling, engaging and worthy of syndication and allow that syndication /citation to explode through exceeding the tipping point / thresholds for their primary “groomed” keywords.

Coupled with a firm understanding of a hierarchical structure (using themes and keyword clusters) you can scale over time (much like Wikipedia) to devour an entire semantic market, one keyword at a time.

-Jeffrey

Are you leaving money on the table from lackluster titles?

Using “exact match shingles”, i.e. “dialing in variations of keyword clusters in titles” can align your landing pages to resonate with phrases with high search volume vs. randomly having keywords appear in broad match form. Luckily for you, we have a free solution.

Mass Edit Titles with the SEO Ultimate Title Tag Rewriter Module

Rewrite Titles In Mass with SEO Ultimate's Title Tag Rewriter

Since click through rates are a ranking factor (and most definitely a conversion factor), there is no point in ranking on page one with a lackluster meta title or description, which is why our solution to this dilemma (SEO Ultimate) has the ability to rewrite tags, titles, meta descriptions and now “even meta keywords” as an added layer to complement your on page SEO efforts in search engines.

Now you can reclaim lackluster titles  and capture more traffic as a result of aligning keywords to phrases with search volume with ease.

1. First,  download SEO Ultimate (our free WordPress SEO plugin) you can download our SEO plugin directly from WordPress or simply use your dashboard within WordPress and go to Plugins > Search for SEO > then select Install for SEO Ultimate.
2. Once installed go the module manager.
3. From there you can turn any features on or off that you do not require (for example, I usually turn off the slug optimizer) unless it’s a new blog and I am starting fresh with the slug in the URL optimized (stop words removed). In any case, you can customize which modules (plugins) you enable or silence from the module manager.
4. Click Title Tag Rewriter from the menu.
5. On the left you will see the existing Permalink title for the post or page and next to it is a blank field.
6. In the blank field, simply write your preferred title (you can mass edit up to 100 posts or pages at a time) and then click “save changes”.

The beauty of this module in SEO Ultimate is (a) if you missed the boat on your initial titles (b) if you want to re-theme your posts or pages title to something more conducive to search engine traffic, you can do so without having to load one page at a time and execute this painstaking task.

Imagine Rewriting 934 posts by hand (the old way)...

Keep in mind, the Permalink you had will still show up in the post or page, but the title tag in the html header portion of the document, will reflect the more streamlined / optimal refined title tag, which is what search engines will display in the SERPs (search engine result pages) to viewers.

With a bit of keyword research and an optimized search engine title and meta tag snippet (1) you can rank for dozens or hundreds of additional dormant keyword variations and (2) dial in your titles to garner more traffic on demand.

Now that your titles are tweaked, the SEO Ultimate plugin also has a “Meta Description Editor” module (in addition to the Title Tag Rewriter) which also allows you to mass edit 100 posts or pages at a time. Talk about a time saver for on page SEO revisions.

Mass Edit Page Descriptions 100 at a time with SEO Ultimate

If you would rather have our plugin fill in the meta descriptions on automatically, Meta Description Editor has a new {excerpt::autogen} variable that lets you autogenerate meta descriptions using the first words of your posts. This can be a huge timesaver, especially if your posts’ first content is already primed for SERP clickthroughs.

Having this kind of fine-grained control over the meta title and meta description is like breathing new life into dead posts or creating a more coherent topical theme for your website.

Just another feature provided by SEO Ultimate from SEO Design Solutions, a premium quality SEO Plugin, offered free of charge for WordPress.

Download your copy today and enjoy dozens of real-word in the trenches SEO features like this. New training modules are in the works in addition to finalizing our WordPress theme framework (WP Ultimate).

Stay tuned for updates make sure you come back and read the SEO Design Solutions Blog for SEO Tips and Tactics to Distinguish your website in search engines. Thanks for reading!

-Jeffrey