I haven’t been doing SEO too long, but I’ve heard stories from older SEOs about the “good old days.” They talked about how meta tags could be spammed to get rankings. They told me that submitting your site to the search engines actually helped. In fact, you could get indexed in one day by submitting your site. They told me that keyword stuffing use to be an effective method.

Then, they told me how Google’s arrival changed the game. Suddenly, links were everything in SEO. SEOs started link farms. Webmasters began to create directories to trade links with other webmasters even their sites were unrelated. There were real estate sites with directories that included sports sites, jewelry sites, and gaming sites!

But Google cut down the effectiveness of reciprocal links. In fact, many of those real estate sites got penalized. And linking to link farms got your site penalized, too.

Now we’re in 2007. What are the new rules of the SEO landscape?

I believe the necessary SEO skillset to survive has increased because Google has had years to improve their algorithm. Google is not perfect by any means. But when I hear of an experienced black hat SEO moving into white hat because his auto-generated sites dropped 90% in earnings, you know Google has made drastic changes.

I thought of two skills that have become increasingly important to SEOs: writing and networking.

Writing

I think of writing in three different ways.

First, there’s writing to give information. The key to information-based writing is being clear and following basic writing principles. Every site needs good, informative content written in a clear manner. But not only that, some of the best links come from this type of content. For example, the best article directories like Ezine Articles require informative articles. They won’t accept promotional, press release type articles. Also, they won’t publish low quality content. Another place for this type of writing is guest blogging. Bloggers won’t publish your content unless you write well and give useful information.

Some SEOs are in charge of raising conversion rates. If you have this responsibility, you need the skills of a copywriter. Copywriting is different from information-based writing. Copywriting is the art of getting the reader to do a certain action, whether it’s buy a product, opt in to a email newsletter, or subscribe to an RSS feed.

Finally, there’s creative (or unique) writing. I like to call this type of content, linkbait. This is interesting and/or useful content that is unique to your site. Most content can be found elsewhere. Look at two sites in a same niche. You’ll find that much of the content between the two sites is basically the same. Linkbait is concerned with creating content that no one else has created. This could be content organized in a unique way, or content that covers a niche with a unique angle. This writing will become more important with the growing popularity of social media sites like Digg and Netscape. To fully leverage these sites, you need unique content that social media users will find interesting and vote for.

Networking

Networking is growing in importance because the online users that can get you quality links value friendship. Two of the biggest places to network are in the social media community and the blogosphere.

Social media works by users voting on webpages. The more votes for a webpage, the more traffic it will receive. We already talked about linkbait.  Linkbait is exactly what SEOs need to promote to the social media community.  And you can increase the promotion of your linkbait by building friendships with social media users.  These relationships lead to votes, which lead to traffic and links. In fact, I believe promoting linkbait on social media sites is the best link building method. Even Matt Cutts, Google’s head spam killer, recommends linkbait.

The blogosphere is important in today’s internet marketing world because bloggers link out much more than other webmasters. Also, Google loves blogs. Many blogs have great rankings and high PR and traffic. Just remember that blogging itself is built on relationships. By networking with bloggers in your niche, you’ll have a group of webmasters that can give you quality, contextual, permanent links.

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Aviva Directory has released a promo code that is good until the end of July (07). I just found out about this promo code, so I hope you read this before it expires!

The code takes off $20 for the submission and can be directly input on the submit link page. The promo code is “Umdum”. 

*Disclaimer: Links to Aviva Directory in this post are affiliate links.  I just created an affiliate account while writing this post :).

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One of the more frustrating things for me an SEO is seeing pages with quality content in the supplemental index. Pages in the supplemental index can still rank. However, these pages won’t rank as well as pages in the normal index.

To pull up results for a search query, Google will first choose from the normal index. If it can’t find what it wants, it looks through the supplemental index. Needless to say, if your page is in the supplemental index, you won’t be ranking for many good keywords. The supplemental index is definitely not a good place for pages to be.

How can you get your pages out of this index? Here are a couple things that can help.

Avoid duplicate content.
Hopefully, you don’t have to be reminded of this. Duplicate content is the fastest way to get into the supplemental index. Not only that, your duplicate content pages may eventually get dropped from the index altogether.

Avoid duplicate title tags.
Use unique title tags for each page. Also, don’t copy page titles of other sites. For example, let’s say you have a Honda car site. Don’t use Honda Civic as a title tag. Many other sites are probably using the same tag. Much better is Honda Civic - Reviews, Prices, And Pictures.

Avoid duplicate meta description tags.
Meta tags are not dead. In 2007, they serve a different purpose. Google has modified its duplicate content filters to include the meta description tags. If you’re using a CMS, you may need to hack it to make sure each of your tags are unique.

Get links pointing to the supplemental pages.
These links are called internal, or deep, links. By getting these links, you increase the link authority of your subpages. The higher a page’s link authority, the better chance it has of escaping the supplemental index.

Get quality links.
I know this is a good answer for most SEO questions, but it’s always good to be reminded of the importance of quality links. High PR pages do a good job of staying out of the supplemental index. And the best and quickest way to increase a page’s PR is by getting links from those high PR pages.

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When I first got interested in SEO, I thought it would require mostly technical skills. While there are many important technical aspects to SEO like testing, conversion rates, and keyword research, I’m convinced the social aspect of SEO has become more important. And it’s getting more and more important as Google and social media sites mature.

Google

Google’s algorithm has improved substantially in the last couple of years.

The best example I know of comes from the world of black hat SEO. Black hat SEOs, which I consider the most technical SEOs, are now giving up on their auto-generated sites. I know of one black hat SEO who used to make a ton of money with his black hat sites. In the last couple of months, he’s seen his earnings go way down. Many of his sites have been dropped from Google’s index. However, his white hat sites are consistently growing in traffic, links, and revenue. When you look at the SERPs, there is less spam. Google is doing a pretty good job returning relevant results.

Google’s algorithm is primarily based on non-manipulative links. And Google is doing a better job of detecting manipulative links. Remember when reciprocal links used to work? Google shut that down because it manipulated their algorithm. Also, Google is cracking down on paid links.

So, what does being social have to do with all this? Well, if you are social and build friendships within your industry, it’s a lot easier to get links.

For example, let’s take blogging. I choose blogging, because bloggers are more likely to link out than other webmasters. Blogging has social aspects like trackbacks and comments. If you consistently interact with other industry bloggers by commenting on their blogs and linking out to their posts, you’ll begin to develop a reputation within your industry. Your comments and trackbacks will send targeted traffic to your blog. This traffic will eventually lead to links. Also, you can notify your blogger friends whenever you publish great content. Since they’re your friends, they’ll be more likely to link to your content.

Social Media Sites

Let’s take another example. Social media sites have made the social side of SEO much more important. I believe that using social media sites offers the best ROI for your time and money. If you hit the front page of Digg or Netscape, you’ll get much traffic and many links.

However, to have a shot at the front page, you need to be social. You need to develop friendships with the social site users. They’re the ones that can vote your story to the front page. Similar to blogging, you need to interact with the social site users by voting, commenting, add them as friends, and submitting relevant stories.

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Keyword research is a vital part of any SEO plan. Keywords are the foundation of search engines. Search engines account for most of the traffic online, so finding great keywords can drive a lot of visitors to your site.

What should you look for in a keyword? What makes a keyword worth targeting?

Here are the 3 basic things I consider before targeting a specific keyword.

Search Volume

Search volume simply means how many people search for the keyword. You can hit the top 10 of Google for the search term, my favorite cat fifi. It won’t do you any good though, because no one is searching for that keyword.

Make sure internet users are actually searching for your keyword. This is where keyword tools can help. I personally like using Google Adwords keyword tool because it’s based on Google’s database.

Don’t fully rely on keyword tools. Keyword tools don’t predict the future search volume. For example, more people will search for a movie or a gadget after it’s been released. In this case, keyword tools will not be very accurate, because they don’t take account future events.

Competition

Just because a phrase has high search volume doesn’t mean you should target it. If you have a new travel site, you shouldn’t target travel. This keyword is super competitive. There’s over 700 million results for that term. Each of the top 10 sites have a PR7 or higher. You may never rank for this term in your lifetime!

Some people determine competition by the number of search results for the keyword. However, I think that method doesn’t give an accurate portrayal of the competition.

Here are 2 tips for being more accurate in determining the competitiveness of a search term.

Research the top 10 sites. The tool, SEO for Firefox, helps greatly in this. The most important things to look for are PR, Yahoo links for the domain, and Yahoo links for the page.

Use the allinanchor and allintitle command and search with quotes. This shows you how many pages are optimized for the keyword. For example, if you want to know the competitiveness of the keyword cheap real estate, enter these two searches in Google:

• allinanchor:”cheap real estate”
• allintitle:”cheap real estate”

The allinanchor command tells you how many pages have the anchor text cheap real estate. The allintitle command tells you how many pages have cheap real estate in their title tags.

Value

Here are three methods to find out the value of a keyword.

Use the Google Adwords keyword tool to figure out the estimated cost per click for a specific keyword. To use this keyword tool, follow these steps.

1. Enter a keyword in the text box.
2. In the field “choose data to display”, find the text box that says “Cost and Ad Position Estimates.”
3. A new text box will appear for dollar amounts. Enter “100.00″ in text box and click on “recalculate.”
4. After Google crunches the data, a bunch of keywords with their click values will show up.
5. If you don’t see your keyword, hit Ctrl+F and use the find command to locate it.

Do a Google search on your keyword. Count how many ads show up on the SERPs. The more ads, the better.

Look for affiliate offers that relate closely to your keyword. If there are affiliate offers with a high commission and a high conversion rate, you have a valuable keyword.

Conclusion

Let’s wrap this up. When dealing with keywords, keep these 3 simple things in mind:

• The higher the search volume, the better.
• The lower the competition, the better.
• The higher the value, the better.

Most keywords will not have all 3 characteristics. But at least target keywords with 2 of the qualities. If a keyword does not have a high search volume, make sure it has high value and low competition. Don’t target a competitive keyword unless it has high search volume and high value. And go ahead and target a low value keyword if it has high search volume and low competition.

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It’s been awhile since I’ve written about search engine ranking factors. I’m using SEOmoz’s survey of 37 SEO experts as my base. The SEO experts ranked this factor in 7th place.

7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world

Historically, Google has not put much weight in the link popularity of a site in its topical community. However, it looks like this is changing. The SEO pros give examples of Google giving more weight to links from related, topical sites. Google seems to be moving to a more topical based algorithm.

One expert, Guillaume, said this about topical links:

I’ve seen one of my sites go from #39 to #1 right after I got 1 link… from the #1 spot on the keyword I was trying to get.

I believe that as the internet matures and more people build webpages and start online businesses, you’ll see more and more small niche sites.  This sites will seek to capture a very focused customer base within an industry. To stay relevant by ranking these smaller sites, Google will have to move away from general link authority to topical link authority.

The technology for determining a site’s theme is more advanced.  This may be why Google has not yet become more topical based. However, Google has always improved its search engine, so it’s not a stretch to believe that Google will improve it again and make it more topical based.

As Google does this, it becomes even more important to participate in your industry community. For example, if you have a site that covers Hawaii travel, you should participate in the online travel community especially other Hawaii travel sites.  This could mean starting a blog, commenting on travel blogs, posting on travel forums, and submitting articles to sites covering the travel industry. Basically, you want to get the word out about your site. Your industry needs to know that you exist. By doing this, you’ll get those valuable topical links.

Another way to get topical links is to build other sites within your overall industry. For example, if you have a site about Honda vehicles, you can start other related sites like a site about Honda sport cars and a site about cars in general. Then, simply link to your Honda vehicle site from your two related sites. If you’ve got the cash, you can buy topical sites too. Just make sure not to overextend yourself. If any of your sites in the industry suffer in quality, you’re building too many sites. Each of your sites must be quality sites for topical linking to be fully effective.

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In my last blog post, I gave two steps dealing with linkbait - preparing and creating the linkbait. Today I’ll go over the third step, promoting the linkbait.

3. Promote The Linkbait

I’ll talk about social media sites and blogs because they usually send the most amount of traffic. Press releases can also help if you have newsworthy linkbait.

Social Media Sites

Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Netscape are the “Big 4″ in the social media arena. Stumbleupon and Netscape accept many kinds of submissions from different niches. However, Digg and Reddit are primarily about gaming, tech, politics, and humor, so don’t submit your gardening related linkbait there.

Also, make sure to check out social niche sites. Here is a good resource post filled with 25 social niche sites. Check the comments on the post for more sites. Social niche sites are great even though they don’t send as much traffic as the Big 4. Here’s a blog comment that illustrates their usefulness:

I think it’s fun to observe hundreds of people from Stubmleupon or Digg hitting your site…

But recently I had 160 hits from Stumbleupon and NONE of them signed up for our live help service.

So, personally, I think that 10 visitors from a niche social bookmarking site (above) that sign up are still better than 1,000 from Digg or Stumbleupon that just come by and go.

It’s great to have a massive amount of traffic from the Big 4. Just remember that the bigger the social niche site, the more likely it will refer less-targeted visitors.

Blogs

Blogs in your industry are great sites to promote to. Many bloggers used to linking out. Also, they drive targeted traffic.

Email your linkbait to the relevant bloggers. You don’t necessarily have to ask for a link. Hopefully, you linkbait will interest them enough that they’ll post about it.

Community Participation

Your linkbait will have a better chance of spreading if you participate the social media site and blogging community.

For example, if you’ve built relationships with key bloggers in your niche, you have a much better chance of them linking your linkbait. You can build these important relationships by blog commenting, linking out with your blog, and occasionally emailing them interesting industry information (not just your own content).

With social media sites, you can participate in their community to get more votes (or diggs and stumbles) to drive traffic to your linkbait. Participate by leaving comments, voting on other people’s submissions, and submitting stories not your own. Also, try going to webmaster forums like DigitalPoint. Interact with the forum members and then see if any of them would be okay with trading votes with you.

As you can see, much of the promoting step takes time. In fact, it’s a good idea to spend a couple weeks participating in the blog community of your niche and the social media site community before creating linkbait.

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