If you are based in the United States and you focus all your SEO efforts locally, you might not be able to relate to this post. For those of you who are expanding or thinking of expanding to other countries, however, you might find this information useful. I was reading up on SEO trends when I ran across an article titled “7 Weirdest SEO Mistakes Big Companies Make Abroad.” Let us take a look at some of them.

They have more lawyers than marketers it seems as I always get the NDAs first and am not allowed to even tell my mother who I work for. Imagine a web designer etc. not able to brag about the brands he works for. They (both) lose so much publicity!

This is really weird although I have encountered a lot of situations like these. On the one hand, there is some rationale in NDAs. However, on the other hand, wouldn’t it be better for everyone involved to at least acknowledge each other’s existence? Can anyone shed light on this matter?

I am not allowed to use the simplest and most effective SEO techniques. The corporate structure is sometimes so monolithic, the CI so rigid, the technical limitations so many that basically everything a SEO does usually is not possible or permitted. How do you build links when no press releases, no blog posts, no link baits, no nothing is allowed?

I guess that business practices in other countries limit SEO efforts and if this item is to be believed, they limit SEO effectiveness a LOT. If you cannot create online press releases, you can create blogs, and so on, how are you supposed to be as active as you can in the SEO perspective?

(to be continued)

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This post is for bloggers out there who are using WordPress. You would all know that there is a proliferation of plugins available for this blogging platform. Some of them are quite useful and fun while others may not be necessary. Here is one plugin that you would surely be interested in – the new Disqus comments feature.

What is it all about and what does it have to offer WordPress users? The Download Squad has a pretty good write up:

Disqus offers web publishers the ability to spruce up their comments sections with advanced features including threaded comments, avatars, and ratings. Perhaps the most significant advantage Disqus offers over the default Blogger, WordPress, TypePad or Moveable Type comments features is the fact that users can sign up for one Disqus account and leave comments on thousands of blogs and web sites.

There’s just one problem (for web publishers): Up until now, user comments were stored on Disqus servers, not on your web page. That means search engines didn’t notice any information left in comments on your site, which could hurt your page rank. Today, Disqus took the first step to address this shortcoming with a new WordPress plugin.

The second paragraph is the key to it all – what the plugin does is allow the comments to be seen by Google and all the other search engines out there. This is all good news for bloggers who pay close attention to SEO. The original plugin also works for Blogger but I don’t know if the updated one does. Anyone know?

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We have talked about blogs that spam anchor text links and blogs that have fake links (that is, links that point to ads and trick users into clicking on them).  Are there any other kinds of blogs out there that you would want to avoid if you want to make a good name for yourself in the blogosphere?  I am sure that there are several more but for now, I shall feature one more and then move on to another topic in the next posts.

The last type of blog that I want to focus on is the “I am a blogger not a writer blog.”  I know a LOT of bloggers who do not want to admit or acknowledge the fact that writing IS blogging.  When you blog, you use written words.  There is no going around this fact.  When you blog, you write.  As such, it follows that you have to be at least a decent writer if you want to be a good blogger.

You might be thinking that what is important is that you have good ideas to present.  That it does not matter if you do not write well.  Think again.  Think of those blogs which present the most interesting topics.  Then use your imagination and pretend that the posts are rife with misspellings, grammar mistakes, and incoherent paragraphs.  Punctuation marks are not present, capitalization is non-existent, and sentences are all run on.  How much do you think you would enjoy reading the posts?

The bottom line is that to have a good blog, you must at least know the basics of writing.  This is learned in school and honed through practice.  Do not use the excuse that you are not a “professional” writer.  Everyone can write decently if they tried.

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In the previous post, we took a look at one blog type that – despite the blogger’s good intentions – may not be as appealing to readers as one would have previously thought.  We talked about how having too many anchor text links can take away (A LOT) from the value of a blog.  Now let us take a look at another kind of blog that you should stay away from.

I am talking about a blog that is rife with ads and somehow tricks readers into clicking on them.

Now don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against ads.  After all, ads serve a purpose and everyone involved (blogger, advertiser, and reader) can gain something positive from their presence.  What is irritating, however, is when you have “fake” links within the posts themselves.  I say fake because what normally happens is that a reader would see an underlined word or phrase (sometimes they have double underlines) and think that it was a link to additional relevant information.  When he clicks on the link though, he would be redirected to an advertisement.  Now isn’t that just irritating?

It would be better if one were to disclose that he has ads on his blog.  What would happen then is that the reader would consciously click on an ad because he wants to, not because he was duped into thinking that he would find something else.

What is your opinion on this matter?

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Have you ever visited a blog and then found yourself being disappointed, even irritated, that you visited that blog?  Let us be honest – there are many blogs out there that fall into this category.  For one reason or another, these blogs do not really offer much to their readers or perhaps they do but their presentation does not entice people.  Of course, you wouldn’t want to have these kinds of blogs, would you?  Let us look at a few examples.

Too many anchor text words
Some experts have actually pointed out these blogs to be “anchor text spam.”  What do I mean by this?  Think about those blogs which seem to have too many links within the posts.  Now, let me make it clear that links within blog posts are very important.  They help readers get more information without having to search for it themselves.  But then, blogs that have an excess of such links within anchor texts are irritating.

I am sure that there are some bloggers who may not be aware that they are providing too many links and anchor text in their post.  Perhaps their idea is to offer as much assistance to their readers as they can – by providing the links to as many sources of information as they can.  This does not have to be the case, though.  Imagine reading through a 250-word post and having 10 links!

I suggest that you provide 2 or 3 links which are of the highest importance in relation to your post.  That should be enough to provide your readers with the necessary information.

(to be continued)

Photo courtesy of sparktography

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I love blogs.  To be honest, though, I used to NOT care about blogs at all.  Yet when I started reading some really good blogs and then I started maintaining my own blog, I realized just how fun they can be.  But have you heard of some web site owners who have turned to blogging merely for SEO purposes?

The truth is that blogging has been touted to help one’s SEO program get started.  I have heard people saying that if you want to be a success in SEO, then your main web site should have a blog.  Now I am not denying it – blogs do play a role in SEO.

The basic premise behind a blog is that you provide fresh, relevant, and timely content on a regular basis.  Your ultimate goal is to help improve your search engine rankings.  What I have noticed, though, is that some blogs do not do this – they do not present well-written, relevant, and timely content.  Indeed, sometimes blogs made SOLELY for SEO purposes are not interesting.

What am I trying to say in this post?  It is really simple.  Jump into the blogging bandwagon NOT ONLY because you are thinking of your SEO strategy.  When you start blogging, think about your readers, how you can entice them to read, keep reading, and stick with your blog.

In the next post, let us look at some types of blogs that are examples of blogging solely for SEO purposes.

Photo courtesy of Daniel Greene

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If your answer is an adamant NO, then you might not be ready to take on SEO.  Well, at least according to Chris Bloggs, who wrote something about SEO being a lifelong engagement.  According to him, getting on the good side of Google is more than a one-time fix.

I have always thought the same thing and it is nice to read about experts saying the same things.  Even though this idea has been repeated time and again, it is still a good thing to be reminded of the effort and patience that is needed to get results from SEO practices.

All too often, we see and hear of new bloggers or new web site owners who want to make it big overnight.  They have this great concept for their web site and they think that it is so great that they should see results almost at once.  Of course, we know that this is all but impossible.  Even the best SEO practitioners will not guarantee such results within such a short period of time.

SEO is more than giving it your best shot once, twice, or even thrice.  SEO is all about having an overall plan and identifying specific goals.  SEO is all about having definitive steps as to how to reach these goals.  SEO is all about working regularly to achieve results over a period of time.

Indeed, SEO is all about the long, a lifelong engagement. Your thoughts?

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Comments are a blogger’s best friend – well, among many other things. We have been focusing on increasing Page Rank in the past several posts. However, as many of my friends online have pointed out, commenting can bring about more benefits than Page Rank. Google’s PR does have its value, but it would be good to not lose sight of the bigger picture because of it.

So what can we do with comments? Let us look at the situation from the other perspective – us bloggers commenting on other blogs. As I pointed out in the previous post, we love receiving comments but may be a bit lax when it comes to dishing out comments.

However, when we comment on other blogs, we take advantage of the chance of making new friends. This, in turn, can translate into attracting more traffic to our own blog or web site. Real traffic is something that also takes some time to build up. It depends on many factors, delivering quality content being one of them. Once you have this down pat, you still need to let the world know that your blog or web site exists. This is where commenting comes in.

I call this technique the “manual” way. That is, instead of depending on SEO professionals and techniques alone, you do your own advertising by visiting as many relevant blogs as you can and leaving quality comments as well. Remember, spamming is not the idea here. You are leaving comments because you want other people to become interested in your blog, to visit it, and to become returning visitors.

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I recently set up a new site for my own pleasure – just something I can play around with and use as a personal outlet when I need to vent. Just because it is mainly for my own pleasure does not mean that I don’t want to work on promoting it as well. That’s when I realized that I have to go back to the beginning and start building up the site’s PR from 0 to as high as I can get it to be.

As of now, I am not getting far – it has only been a week or so anyway. I think the hardest part is being patient. I am doing a lot of things but results do not come overnight. For now, I am focusing on getting the PR up. For starters, PR0 to PR2 would not be bad in several months. So how do I plan on going about this?

We all know that Google has not disclosed – and probably never will – how it calculates PR exactly. We do have a general sense of what they are doing, however, so we can try to work with this idea in mind.

The number of links that point to your site seems to be the major consideration when it comes to Google PR. So obviously, this is what you need to work on if you want to increase PR. So my site has PR0 right now – maybe a couple of external sites link back to it. How many do I need to get PR1 or PR2? I don’t have exact figures here (only Google knows) but Mark Walters suggests more than 50.

How do you get these many links? Let’s look at that in the next post.

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I’m not sure if I’ve made it known here at Smart SEO Blog, but I work as a professional blogger for some non-SEO blogs. When I say “professional blogger” in the context of this article, it means the following things:

I don’t own all of the blogs that I write for.
If I don’t own the blog, I’m paid to write for it.
Most of these blogs already have an existing audience.

Apart from my gigs as a professional blogger, I run some online businesses – with most of them having really competitive keywords. Let’s take the case of Business#1, my oldest-running online service. Here are the stats for the second most competitive keyword for that business (from Nichebot):

Competition: 58,900

KEI: 0.08

Predicted daily count: 123

A year ago, when the website was 3 years old, I got tired of searching amongst 20+ search engine result pages to find my site. Now, I’m on the first page for that keyword. I’m currently the 7th, to be exact. How did I get there?

As a professional blogger, I have access to blogs that have thousands of pageviews in a month. One of the blogs I write for clocks in around 45,000 monthly pageviews. Another one has at least 10,000 pageviews (a conservative estimate). All the main blogs I write for have a PR of at least 4 and above (not that it’s that important an indicator nowadays).

At this point I would like to reiterate that my website for Business#1 wasn’t within the first 20 SERPs for the competitive keyword I wanted. For three whole years, at least.
The only thing I did that made a difference in my rankings was to link to the Business#1 website. Using the said keyword as the anchor text.

And now the site is #7 within the first page of Google’s search results.

Pretty sweet. I can’t believe it took me 3 years to figure that out. (Then again, I wasn’t actively SEO-ing the site, apart from onpage stuff.)

Now the harder part is to get from #7 to #1. Here are some ideas on how I can get there:

• Get more backlinks using that keyword – not just limited to the blogs I write for.
• A small-budget ad campaign for increase visibility in the marketplace.

The rankings boost has already increased my number of clients for Business#1. I’d have to say that for an effective SEO campaign, that was pretty easy. It’s actually common sense, but it’s exactly the type of thing that you can overlook.

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