SEO World

When you register a new website, always try to register it for at least 10 years. This is important for a few reasons. First off, it shows you long term commitment to the search engines, which will help build trust. Secondly, it ensures that you won’t lose your website should the registration renewal deadline pass without you remembering.

Watch this week’s SEO video lesson from Nick Stamoulis here!

For more Internet marketing lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing Internet marketing video lesson archive.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal

We’re kicking off the award season in style here at Branded3 with a prestigious Insider Yorkshire Digital and Technology Award nomination for our talented web design team.

We’ve had the pleasure of working on some great projects in the last year, and our design team have had the chance to truly showcase their creative talent, and we’re thrilled that this has been recognised.

Our designers have been the brains behind some of our most innovative work to date, not just concentrating on the aesthetics, but piecing together immersive user journeys and memorable user experiences too.

Nominated for the award alongside highly-reputable agency Numiko, and leading design agency MadeByPi, we’re happy just to be featured in the same category as these companies, and we’re excited to see what projects they’ve been working on.

The ceremony takes place tomorrow evening at the Royal Armouries in Leeds, where the best web design (diseño web), mobile technology and IT teams in Yorkshire will be gathering to see which agencies walk away with top awards this year.

We’re looking forward to catching up with other industry professionals, and celebrating the best digital talent that Yorkshire has to offer.

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Branded3

I suppose you were probably expecting a post here reviewing the top Affiliate Marketing Forums, but I’m actually on the same hunt as you are trying to find the best out there.

Traditionally there have only been a few places to get solid information on Affiliate Marketing beyond what’s available for free here and on other affiliate marketing blogs.

In fact, there’s a reason that we can’t post different case studies and exact advertising campaigns on a public blog, because they will get overrun almost immediately with the masses of people that read blogs.

That’s where private training forums come in… they have a smaller audience and can actually post stuff that’s not going to be seen by 40,000 people a month, or some equally large number of people.

So, I’m on a journey to find the best private affiliate marketing training forum out there.

There are a couple I have on my list to review and look at. I’m not sure if I’m going to register anonymously or use my real name when I get around to each forum. I haven’t decided on that yet.

My question to all of you… which forums should I review? Which ones are you curious about? Which ones have you already been to and are they any good?

If you don’t want to post your real thoughts publicly on the comments, feel free to email me directly with your experiences on various forums/training sites for affiliates.

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Daily Conversions

Our regular blog readers will have heard repeatedly from me that I’m a huge fan of Best Of The Web.  BOTW is a now 18 year old directory that holds some very solid SEO value.  One of the niceties of BOTW is that their review fee is (if you want it) one time.  Another of the great things about this directory is that they’re turn you down if your site sucks.  Why is this a good thing?  It’s good because directories that include everyone who pays hold very little weight in the eyes of Google and for good reason.  A directory that will turn you away if your site is sub-par is naturally going to be a better vote in Google’s eyes when they do choose to accept a listing.

Well … today being their birthday they’re offering 50% off listings.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen them give this big a discount so today’s the day to submit that’s for sure.  You just need to use the code “SINCE94″ when submitting.  It’s good for all their submissions from web to blogs, etc.

To submit just head over to http://botw.org/ and click “Submit Site”.

And if you’re looking for something to do with the 50% you’ll save … we do accept cookie baskets and ThinkGeek.com gift certificates as appropriate thanks.

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Beanstalk’s SEO News Blog

class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2527" title="audit" src="http://www.highervisibility.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/audit.jpg?9d7bd4" alt="" width="615" height="230" />

Because SEO results are always changing, it’s easy to make mistakes along the way without even realizing what you’re doing is wrong. Seeing results from your SEO strategy is a long process, and there may very well come a time when you aren’t seeing the results you want. Therefore, it is extremely important that you perform an SEO audit every few months to make sure that you are on the right track.

For those who are unfamiliar, an SEO audit is something that you can perform to analyze your current strategy and results. If you are missing opportunities or making mistakes, an SEO audit will look at your past efforts and determine where the problem lies.

There are people and companies you can hire to perform an SEO audit for you, but there are also plenty of tools you can utilize instead. Below is a list of some of the most popular and well-rated tools to help you perform an SEO audit on your own:

Top 5 SEO Audit Tools

1. href="http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/">Open Site Explorer – SEO Moz seems to do it all from great blog posts to great SEO services, and one of their newest software is Open Site Explorer. This software will give you up to 10,000 links to help you tell whether or not your link building (posicionamiento web) is working. It will give you information about your competitors’ internal and external links, give you on-page optimization suggestions, and will sync with Google Analytics to help you get analysis on your traffic.
2. href="http://www.link-assistant.com/website-auditor/">Website Auditor – This software will crawl your website and then detect any nofollow site links and complete HTML error checking. The only downside to this tool is the fact that it is desktop-based, so you can’t leave your computer and come back when the audit is done.  However, it is one of the few tools that will allow you to see how to better optimize both your domain and your on-page content.
3. href="http://www.webceo.com/">Web CEO – This tool is available as both an online and desktop version. This tool will give you optimization advice and analysis of your current SEO efforts as well as look at your content and HTML structure. It is considered one of the easier tools to understand, which makes it quite popular. However, the online version is extremely basic, only pointing out broken links, anchors, slow pages, and missing title tags. If you’re looking for something more advanced, the desktop version is the way to go.
4. href="http://www.alexa.com/siteaudit">Alexa Site Audit – This tool will help give you suggestions for keywords and will give you a backlink report based upon Alexa data. This tool comes from a very well known company, and it continues to offer very detailed reports in an easy-to-read fashion.
5. href="http://grader.com/">Website Grader – This SEO audit tool was created by Hubspot and helps you measure your website along with social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and even your blogging efforts. It will then give you a grade out of 100 that will tell you how well you’re doing in these different areas.

Many experts recommend getting an SEO audit before hiring an href="http://www.highervisibility.com/">SEO agency or in-house expert so that you know exactly what needs to be done before making the hiring decision. Have you ever used an SEO audit tool that you found helpful?

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HigherVisibility

You might not say it, but you know that not all your customers are created equal. Some bring more value to your business than others. And you know that the key to really growing your business is to increase loyalty among your top customers, so you can keep your best customers and attract more like them.

But relationships are tricky. Keeping your best customers happy and loyal is going to take some work on your part. It’s just like any other relationship. You can’t just ignore your wife, husband, girlfriend, or boyfriend and expect everything to be hunky dory; you have to put time and effort into keeping the relationship strong.

With a romantic partner, that might mean going out on a date or just spending quiet time together talking, but how can you keep the spark alive with a customer?

• Keep regular contact—You can’t build a relationship without communication. Think about it. If you go a long time without seeing or speaking to a friend, things just aren’t the same when you see them again, right? The relationship weakens without regular communication. That’s why you have to keep in touch with your best customers. Check in with them regularly, connect with them on Twitter and Facebook, send them holiday cards, invite them to events…do whatever you have to do to stay in touch so the relationship doesn’t fizzle out.
• Always deliver above and beyond expectations—One of the keys to keeping a romantic relationship fresh and exciting is to “wow” your partner from time to time by doing something truly amazing for them. The same goes for keeping customer relationships strong. You have to “wow” customers every time, and the best way to do this is to always exceed expectations. Give them an experience they’ll never forget.
• Ask for feedback—Show your best customers that you care what they think by asking for their feedback. They can suggest ways to make your company even better. Just make sure that you’re actually taking their feedback into consideration and implementing the good ideas; otherwise, it’s all for nothing.
• Reward them—Loyalty should be rewarded. There are many different ways you can reward your best customers, including giving them discounts, service/product upgrades, exclusive information, and much more.

What do you do to keep relationships strong with your best customers?

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SEO Hosting Blog

Posted by Erica McGillivray

MozCon 2012 July 25th – July 27th, 2012 at the Westin in Seattle

Amazing Content from Industry Leaders

• AJ Kohn | Blind Five Year Old
• Aleyda Solis | aleydasolis.com
• Annie Cushing | SEER Interactive
• Cyrus Shepard | Above the Fold
• Greg Boser | BlueGlass
• Ian Lurie | Portent Interactive
• Jen Lopez | SEOmoz
• Jessica Bowman | SEOinhouse.com
• Joanna Lord | SEOmoz
• Jonathon Colman | REI
• Jon Henshaw | Raven
• Laura Lippay (emcee) | How's Your Pony?
• Martin MacDonald | Expedia
• Marty Weintraub | aimClear
• Matt Peters | SEOmoz
• Mike King | iPullRank
• Mike Pantoliano | Distilled
• Paddy Moogan | Distilled
• Pete Meyers | SEOmoz
• Rand Fishkin | SEOmoz
• Rhea Drysdale | Outspoken Media
• Richard Baxter | SEOgadget
• Tom Critchlow | Distilled
• Wil Reynolds | SEER Interactive

Actionable Tips and Deep Insights

• SEO and Google+
• Community as an Inbound Marketing Channel
• Cutting Edge Web Spam Research
• New Forms of Conversion Rate Optimization
• Link Analysis through APIs
• SEO Project Management

Three Days and One Amazing Experience

Celebrate, Moz-Style

Relax at the Westin Hotel in Downtown Seattle

Don't Delay as the Early Bird Gets the Best Priced Worm

Photos by Rudy Lopez

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2457" title="blog" src="http://www.highervisibility.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/blog.jpg?9d7bd4" alt="" width="615" height="230" />

As an href="http://www.highervisibility.com/">SEO company one of the more frequent questions we get from our clients is how they should be managing and writing their blog. We have decided to publish a Best Practices for Blog Writing post.

1. Unique Quality Content. When it comes to search engines, content is king. They value good quality content and give it much greater consideration in the rankings. Avoid copying and pasting other content that you find on the internet unless you are quoting a publication. If there are some similar points that you want make, it would be best to rewrite the content into your own words.
2. Be Engaging. If you write engaging content your readers will want to keep coming back. Not only will they want to come back, but they will also be more willing to share what you write with their friends.
3. Social Tools. Incorporating social sharing tools such as Addthis.com or Sharethis.com into your blog posts will provide easy options for your readers to share information with their friends. The search engines analyze social signals to determine which companies or websites people like as well as who is legitimate. They have incorporated those signals into their algorithms.
4. Length of Posts. Search engines do care about how many words a blog post has. They are looking for content with substance even though the length of a post isn’t a true gauge of that. I would recommend somewhere between 250-600 words. Just keep in mind that you shouldn’t be href="http://www.highervisibility.com/blog/a-guide-to-writing-content-for-seo/">writing content just to meet a word quota. Quality content is always king.
5. Comments. I always recommend allowing comments. You want to stay connected to your readers. You also get an SEO benefit from the comment content being added to the page. Search Engines like it when pages are updated. Make sure you moderate often and have a comment spam solution in place.
6. Spelling and Grammar. The search engines pay close attention to spelling and grammar. There are several low quality websites that outsource their writing needs to content shops that just churn out low quality content. Sniffing out and devaluing that low quality content was and is one of the primary objectives for the href="http://www.highervisibility.com/blog/panda-update-refines-local-search-optimization/">Google Panda Updates.
7. Linking Strategies. When you are writing your posts don’t forget to look for opportunities to link to other content within your website. It is even better if you have the opportunity to link back to that content with a keyword phrase that you are trying to rank for on the linked page. It is also okay to link outside of your website if they are an authoritative source on the topic of your post. Obviously you won’t receive as much of a benefit as you would if you were linking to your own website, but the post could get some trust points with the search engines if they are quality sources. As for how many links you would have in a given post, I would try and limit that to 1-2 links per 200 words.
8. Tagging. After you have written your blog post, title, description, and keywords, you also generally have the option to set tags. Tags can be used for categorization by the search engines, but probably don’t hold much weight. Content will be the ultimate guide for their algorithms. When you tag try and keep the tags limited to ideas, concepts, locations, events, and product names. Don’t overuse tags either. I wouldn’t use more than 10 tags to categorize a blog post. In the vast majority of instances I will use 4 or less.

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HigherVisibility

title="Press Release" href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/2/prweb9146809.htm" target="_blank"> />

HigherVisibility Recognized as one of Nation’s Best SEO Companies

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HigherVisibility

Not all customers are created equal. If your business is like most others, you have a few great customers, a few bad customers, and a lot of customers that fall somewhere in between. The key, of course, is to get as many great customers as you can. Great customers are the ones who are loyal, refer you to their friends, don’t try to beat you up on your prices, don’t complain every time they get a chance, etc.

The reason most companies don’t attract more great customers is because they don’t really know who their best customers are in the first place. See, once you identify your best customers, you can focus on appealing to more customers like them.

To identify your best customers, you need to:

• Identify what makes a customer valuable to your business—You might think that your best customers are the ones who spend the most money, and that may be the case. However, the customers you find most valuable may be ones who offer value in a different way. Maybe they’re just easy to have a relationship with. Maybe they’re low maintenance. Or maybe they like to tell others about your company. Make a list of the traits you value in customers.
• Create a list of all customers and prospects—Now that you know what makes a customer valuable to your business, you need to make a complete list of all your customers and prospects. Don’t leave anyone off this list.
• Rate each customer based on the value they bring to your business—On a scale of 1 to 5, rate each customer or prospect on the value they bring to your business, based on the criteria you set forth earlier. This will help you quick way to clearly see who your best customers are (and who your worst ones are too, by the way). You can then focus your time and energy on your top clients and prospects, so you can build better relationships with them.

Do you know who your best customers are?

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SEO Hosting Blog