OnTheAvenues - SEO Blog

Google Free SEO Starter Guide. DIY SEO Help

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:14:53 -0600

Google Free SEO Starter Guide. DIY SEO Help

Times are. tough. The recession is here, money is tight, real estate is tougher. I feel for all Realtors. Those of you with web sites must consider doing all you can to achieve top organic placements so that business and clients can be obtained. Your purse strings may now be tight because of the economic situation, and as such, the last thing you may be considering is hiring a professional SEO consultant that can help get you those top search engine placements. I, as SEO professional consultant here your pain.

So, here is a link to Googles SEO Starter Guide. It is free. It is very basic, and has the basic elements that an SEO pro would do....not everything, but enough to help you improve your web site placements on your own. Those of you with a template web site will find some restrictions on all you can do, others may find your web site design will cause a hinderance, but....making some of the changes needed can help. It is free and takes only your time to complete.

The link to the free SEO Starter Guide from Google can be found at this link
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html

From Google:
Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.

And, to make you laugh..here is a funny blog I made for one of my Realtor clients
http://www.not-my-monkey.com/

Best
Bonnie

14 Web Tools to Legally Spy On Your Competition

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:50:38 -0500

14 Web Tools to Legally Spy On Your Competition

This is written by: Bryan Eisenberg It really has some great info and links to seeing what your competitors are doing. Many I heard of, but some were new too me as well.

Have you ever wished you were Bond? James Bond? Here are 007+007 = fourteen ways to spy on your competitors' web sites, without breaking any FISA laws.

1. Statbrain - Using several sources, Statbrain's algorithm computes the number of visitors to a website based on offsite factors like backlinks, Alexa Rank etc. Statbrain does not have access to log files or any hit-counter information. Use this as a rough relative benchmark of your traffic to theirs. First run your website and compare the results given by StatBrain to your actual results to get a sense of its accuracy in your category. Figure out what the multiplier is and then try it on a competitor.

2. AideRSS - Find out which of your competitors' blog posts and topics are engaging people. This should provide you with a list of topics you should be covering. Engagement doesn't necessarily mean your competitor's opinion is right or even agreed with - but it does mean the engaged people are interested in the topic and therefore why not your opinion on the topic.

3. FeedCompare - If you use Feedburner to track your rss subscribers you can compare the size of your feed to others. Just like in #1 above, figure out your own multiplier and then compare it to the competition.
4. Xinu Returns - Xinu Runs a report from multiple sites to tell you how well a site is doing in popular search engines, social bookmarking sites and other technical details. How well are you stacking up against your 5 biggest competitors?

5. Google Trends For Websites - Enter up to five topics and see how often those topics been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most. You can learn more on how to use this from our friend, Avinash Kaushik.

6. Google Insights for Search - With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames. Again, Avinash explains how to use this well.

7. Microsoft's Keyword Forecast tool - This tool forecasts the impression count and predicts demographic distributions of keywords.

8. Microsoft's Search Funnels - Customers often perform searches by typing related keywords in specific sequences. This tool helps in visualizing and analyzing the customers' search sequences. Search Engine guru Mike Grehan explains the value of these query chains.

9. WayBackMachine - Go back in web history to see how your competitors' site has changed through the years. Look for the things that have stayed consistent, because those might have been the most successful. In the same vein, what have you changed on your own site during that time? It's easy to lose track, particularly of your own work, and to think of your current site as "how it's always been".

10. Web Page Speed Analyzer - Compare the download speed of your pages with those of your competitors to see which are loading quicker. Quicker loading pages tend to have an advantage at converting visitors. This analyzer provides a detail analysis of the page elements. For a rough comparison of two pages side by side try WebSlug. And, WebWait is great when you want to get accurate speed results from the visitors perspective because WebWait pulls down the entire website into your browser, so it takes into account Ajax/Javascript processing and image loading which other tools ignore.

11. Web Page Readability - By comparing the readability score of web pages you can optimize your writing and make sure that you aren't creating overly complex sentences and paragraphs for your audience.

12. Attention Meter - Attentionmeter gives you a quick snapshot comparing any websites you want (traffic) using Alexa, Compete, and Quancast.

13. Websitegrader - Website Grader is a free tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective. Also worth checking out Twittergrader to check on your competitors' twitter accounts.

14. Google Alerts - set up searches for your competitors, key employees, and keywords to monitor their activity.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it: Try some (or all) of the above techniques and report back on your intriguing espionage! This tape will self-destruct in 10 clicks.
Shhhhh... care to share your spying secrets? What tools or techniques do you use?

Follow Bonnie SEO Consultant on Twitter http://twitter.com/burnsie_seo

Twitter Fun. Twitter For Business. Twitter For Clients

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:45:59 -0500

Do you Twitter?

Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/burnsie_seo

What is Twitter?

According to the Twitter FAQ, Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with business, clients, friends no matter where you are or what you're doing.

Wikipedia says, Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates via SMS, instant messaging, email, to the Twitter website, or any one of the multitude of Twitter applications now available.

Basically Twitter asks the question, "What are you doing?" and allows you to send a short update (your tweets are limited to 140 characters) to your followers (family, friends, colleagues, customers, potential customers etc).

Twitter allows you to send and receive updates (also called tweets) via your browser, email , instant messaging clients and SMS (using your cell phone). No matter where you are, you can tweet!

Remember, when you first join Twitter, it can feel like a lonely place. When you aren't following anyone and no one is following you, you may find yourself asking "what is the point?" I've heard so many people say they just don't get it.

The key is to find the Tweets you want to follow so you can keep your finger on the pulse of your niche. The next key is to start building your followers.

How can Twitter help your business?

The more contact you have with a potential customer, the more likely you are to get their business. You can stay "top of mind" through Twitter. Let them know what's new in your industry, in your company etc. You become a source of quick news flashes for them.

Here are just a few of the benefits of Twitter:
It reminds people that you exist
It shows people you have something to say
It shows them that you are human
It allows you to mention new offers, sales and breaking news immediately
It allows you to form a more casual relationship
You can use Twitter to promote your social bookmarking submissions.
You can ask for referrals, suggestions, feedback and help, and people will respond.

Twitter is also fun and is contributing to the new language we are constantly developing. For example "Twitterference" the intrusion of twitter updates on your phone making it hard to have a conversation on your phone.

Finding Followers:

Start by reaching out to your friends, family, mailing list etc. You can also add your Twitter link to your email signature line; add links to your website and Blog. Mention your Twitter account in your newsletter. Search for people in you industry. For example, searc real estate or real estate agents and you will find a slwe of folks. or search for realtors in your area by adding your regions: phoenix realtors

Twitter Rules

One cardinal rule (that is in your best interest to follow): if you use Twitter as a pure sales tool, you will lose followers quickly. As with all forms of social media, it is about creating a conversation and sharing news it's not all about you shoving your sales message down their throats.

Tweets are limited to 140 characters. This is to allow them to be easily sent over mobile SMS systems.

You aren't able to embed HTML with the exception of hyperlinks. (But they are no-follow links, so they won't help you in your SEO quest for backlinks) Bonus: Twitter automatically uses the TinyURL service to shorten links.

Don't tweet too much, or too little. There is no magic number and it varies according to your audience. Some people say don't update more than once per hour. Others say not more than once or twice a day. I tend to be in the once or twice a day camp. If there is breaking news and some days you just have to update more often then it's OK. If your tweets are valuable information people will be more tolerant of frequent updates.

On the other hand if you are too quiet, people have nothing to follow so make sure you find that balance and tweet just enough to keep people informed but not annoyed.

Don't forget that your profile shows a history of all your tweets, so if a new person comes along and sees that you don't have many tweets they may decide you aren't worthy of following. Also if your past tweets aren't informative or interesting, you lose some potential followers.

You'll find that sometimes you get involved in personal conversation with someone. Try to avoid doing too much of this. Not everyone will be interested in your personal communications. If you do need to do this, put the @ symbol in front of somebody's name - this indicates that this message is for them.

And....if you use an iPhone, you can easily twitter with the iPhone twitter wideget.

Increase Your Web Site Traffic Video

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:30:30 -0500

If you're serious about increasing your website traffic and you want to do it the right way, you owe it to yourself to check out this online video.

The link below is a free online video which provides you with 10 really good suggestions on how to increase your web site traffic as well as some seo and marketing. It has a really cool opening, so hang in there as it changes. Hey, I may be an SEO pro for the past 15 years, but even I learned a thing or two:-)

http://www.trafficsecrets.com/webiness

Easy SEO Tips Online Video. SEO for Beginners Tips

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:53:55 -0500

Easy SEO Tips Online Video. SEO for Beginners Tips Jefferson Graham didn’t just write an article of free SEO tips — he also brought his video camera along. The result is a five minute video interview with more easy, free search engine optimization tips. Again, this is targeted at beginner SEO and small business SEO instead of advanced marketers. You can watch the video below:

Source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/free-search-engine-optimizatio-tips/

Good directions drive traffic to your website

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:18:18 -0500

The below article from USAToday is excellent. It is an interview Matt Cutts, known to the SEO world as The Google Guy. We SEO's follow Matt's blogs and teachings closely as he is, after all, Google.

Jefferson Graham of USA Today stopped by the Googleplex a little while ago and talked about SEO tips for business owners that want to run their business, not live and breathe search 24 hours a day. The result is an article of search engine optimization (SEO) advice that you could hand to any friend that runs a mom/pop business who wants learn a little more about SEO. Experts won't be surprised, but Graham's article covers the basics for a general audience very well.

Google's Cutts: Good directions drive traffic to your website

By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY

You have a website and can't figure out why it's not showing up at the top of Google's search rankings. You go to Google.com for some guidance but get lost trying to find answers.

Certainly, achieving visibility in Google's search rankings can be a mystery. To help solve the riddle, USA TODAY sat down with Google's Matt Cutts, an engineer and active blogger, who has five easy tips on how to "optimize" your site so Google (GOOG) and the rest of the world can find it.

TALKING TECH: Google's Matt Cutts discusses how to improve your site's search ranking

More and more businesses are turning to the Web to find customers: $5.8 billion was spent on advertising in the first quarter alone, up 18.2% from the prior year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Google's share of Internet searches continues to rise as well - to a record 61.8% in May, according to measurement service ComScore Media Metrix.

If you haven't "optimized" your site, here's how:

1. Spotlight your search term on the page.

"Think about what people are going to type in to try and find you," Cutts says. He tells of meeting a chiropractor from San Diego who complained that his site couldn't be found easily using Google search. The words "San Diego chiropractor" were listed nowhere on his site. "You have to make sure the keywords are on the page," Cutts says. If you're a San Diego doctor, Des Moines architect or Portland ad agency, best to let people know so immediately, at the top of your page.

2. Fill in your "tags."

When creating websites, Internet coding language includes two key tags: title and description. Even if you don't know code, which is used to create pages, software programs such as Adobe's Dreamweaver have tools that let you fill them in in plain English (rather than "<title>San Diego Chiropractor</title"). Tags are crucial, Cutts says, because what's shown in search results most often are the title and description tags.

If Cutts' chiropractor had properly tagged his Web page, a search would have returned something like this: "San Diego chiropractor. Local doctor serves San Diego community."

There's also a third tag, to add keywords, or search terms, but Cutts says Google doesn't put much weight in its rankings on that one.

3. Get other sites to "link" back to you.

Google says it looks at more than 100 pieces of data to determine a site's ranking. But links are where it's at, once your search terms are clearly visible on your site and the title and description tags correctly marked.

In a nutshell: Google ranks sites based on popularity. If authoritative sites link to you, you must be good, and therefore you get to the top of the list. If you can't get top sites such as USATODAY.com or The New York Times to link to you, try your friends. And what if they don't have a site? They probably do. Read on.

4. Create a blog and post often.

Cutts says blogging is a great way to add links and start a conversation with customers and friends. It will cost you only time: Google's Blogger, WordPress and others offer free blogging tools. With a blog, you can link back to your site and offer links to others. It's also a great way to start building content, Cutts says.

5. Register for free tools. Google's google.com/webmaster offers freebies to help get your site found. You can upload a text-based site map, which shows Google the pages of your site (create it at www.xml-sitemaps.com). Once that's done, you'll be registered with Google, where you can learn vital statistics - including who is linking to your site and how often Google "crawls" your site for updates.

Google's Local Business center (google.com/local/add) is the place for business owners to submit a site so it shows up in local searches, with a map attached. Savvy consumers who use Google for searches know that the first 10 non-advertising results often are from Google Maps, so if you have a business and haven't submitted it, you're losing out on potential customers.

Don't overdo it

When weaving keywords into a main page, Cutts says, some zealous Web publishers will use the term over and over again. That's called "keyword stuffing." It's a big Google no-no that can have your site removed from the index.

"After you've said it two or three times, Google has a pretty good idea - 'OK, this page has something to do with this keyword,' " he says. "Just think about the two or three phrases you want to be known for and weave that in naturally."

For blogger newbies, Cutts knows that writing (for example, posting new material) doesn't always come easy. He suggests finding ideas by visiting social news sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon, to see what people are saying about your particular topic.

Aside from that, Cutts says, new material falls into the common-sense category: It's all about your business. "If I'm a plumber in Iowa, I may want to write about some of the strange things that happen to me on the job, or the five most common ways to fix a toilet," he says. "That kind of content can get really popular, and it's a great way to get links." Folks will post your piece on one of the social media sites. And with links comes higher Google rankings.

Finally, Cutts says, there is one big misconception about getting Google visibility that he wants to clear up: In order to be found at the top of Google's rankings, you do not also have to advertise.

"One thing doesn't have to do with the other," he says

51 Web Page Elements That Yahoo Looks At For Ranking Web Sites

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:51:23 -0500

Do search engines care about the usability of your web pages? Does it make a difference whether your web pages are easy to navigate or not?

A recent patent application from Yahoo indicates that search engines might take a look at your web page design. The document includes a long list of factors that search engines can consider to determine the usability of a web page.

Why can usability be important to search engines?

The patent application contains a short paragraph that explains why search engines might consider the usability of web pages:

"It can be important to make web pages easy and pleasing to use, which can be particularly important for web pages it is desired to monetize.

If such web pages are not easy and pleasing to use, the money-making potential of those web pages can be jeopardized. One conventional indication of whether a web page is easy and pleasing to use is called 'clutter.'"

Web pages with good usability usually have a higher conversion rate than cluttered web pages. Web pages with good usability often have a higher quality than other web pages and search engines try to return high quality web pages in their search results.

Which factors can search engines analyze to determine the clutter of your pages?

Yahoo's patent applications provides a list of 51 web page elements that can be analyzed to determine the clutter of a web page:

Total number of links
Total number of words
Total number of images (non-ad images)
Image area above the fold (non-ad images)
Dimensions of page
Page area (total)
Page length
Total number of tables
Maximum table columns (per table)
Maximum table rows (per table)
Total rows
Total columns
Total cells
Average cell padding (per table)
Average cell spacing (per table)
Dimensions of fold
Fold area
Location of center of fold relative to center of page
Total number of font sizes used for links
Total number of font sizes used for headings
Total number of font sizes used for body text
Total number of font sizes
Presence of "tiny" text
Total number of colors (excluding ads)
Alignment of page elements
Average page luminosity
Fixed vs. relative page width
Page weight (proxy for load time)
Total number of ads
Total ad area
Area of individual ads
Area of largest ad above the fold
Largest ad area
Total area of ads above the fold
Page space allocated to ads
Total number of external ads above the fold
Total number of external ads below the fold
Total number of external ads
Total number of internal ads above the fold
Total number of internal ads below the fold
Total number of internal ads
Number of sponsored link ads above the fold
Number of sponsored link ads below the fold
Total number of sponsored link ads
Number of image ads above the fold
Number of image ads below the fold
Total number of image ads
Number of text ads above the fold
Number of text ads below the fold
Total number of text ads
Position of ads on page

According to the patent application, Yahoo might also consider the presence of animated and flashing ads and the average ad luminosity.

What does this mean to your web pages?

Good website usability can greatly improve the conversion rate of your website. If your website gets many visitors but only a few sales then it might be that your web pages are too cluttered and that you have to improve your website design.

Google has a similar patent application with the name "Detecting and rejecting annoying documents" so it seems that good website design becomes more and more important if you want to get high search engine rankings.

The HTML code of your web pages must make a good impression to search engines. If search engines find that your web pages don't have the right content then these pages cannot get high search engine rankings.

Google and Spam Detection. What Google Knows About Spam

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:47:13 -0500

What Google Knows About Spam 10 Minute Video

Visit: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/what-google-knows-about-spam/

If you didn’t attend Web 2.0, you can watch Matt Cutts, the Google Guy ten-minute keynote about “What Google Knows About Spam” (and several other keynotes) on blip.tv. I’ll embed the keynote below as well

So if you want a great introduction to "What Google Knows About Spam" then spend 10 minutes watching Matt's Web 2.0 keynote video. It will be the best 10 minute investment you make all week.

http://www.ontheavenues.com

How focused is your Web site to your customers' needs versus your needs

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:44:59 -0500

Free SEO Tool To Check Web Site Customer Focus

How focused is your Web site to your customers' needs versus your needs? Remember that your Web site should be built for your customer with words spoken just for your customer.

Visit the "We We Monitor" to see how customer focused your Web site copy really is. http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm

10 Blog Traffic Tips. Learn How To Profit From Your Blog

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:40:42 -0500

In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else''s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that''s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click here now

These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called "traction", which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major "pillar" articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good "how-to" lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn''t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don''t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need an easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that''s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you''ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people''s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger''s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it''s sort of like your blog telling someone else''s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com/. 3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it''s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it''s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn''t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it''s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your "Resource Box". You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I''ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won''t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.To get more information about Blog Mastermind click here now

Peak Over The Shoulder of An SEO Guru...

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:50:13 -0600

Peak Over The Shoulder of An SEO Guru...

Learn The Insider Tips That We Use To
Dominate The Engines and Drive Massive Traffic For Clients.

"Search Engine Optimization Step By Step
- We Reveal It All"

You've read the books, listened to the conference calls, read the reports and critiques on your site but you've never peaked over the shoulder of our Director of SEO and watched her work! Now you can.

For the first time ever we are doing a special exposé - a live Webinar where we reveal our SEO techniques.

You are truly getting an inside look at Bonnie's work. You'll not only watch her work, but you'll get play by play - as she explains optimization each step of the way. It'll be like sitting right there in her office. You may even hear her dog Lucy barking in the background.

What's even more exciting than that? The page she optimizes could be yours! More on that in a minute.

(In a hurry? Click here for the "just the facts ma'am" outline)

Have you ever wondered:

How do you use ALT tags properly?
What is a Header tag, how many do you need and where on the page do they go?
How much content do you need?
What is interlinking and how do you do it?
What makes a good Meta tag and are they even important any more??

Find out the answers to those questions, and so much more.

We are practically taking you by the hand and offering up all our knowledge about on-page optimization in one information packed Webinar.

With over 200 factors in Google's algorithm, search engine optimization often baffles web site owners. After this special peak over Bonnie's shoulder, you'll understand exactly what she does, why she does it and how she does it.

Why are we letting you in and revealing our optimization process?

The truth is, we would love for you to hire us to handle your SEO but we know not everyone can afford it, and not everyone wants to outsource.

So, rather than not do any business with you at all, we realized it would benefit us (we are in business to make money after all) and more importantly YOU if we opened the door to Bonnie's office and shared all of this vital information with you.

You might expect to pay a thousand dollars or more for this kind of personal, insider information. It's definitely worth that and more! We are willing to offer this special Webinar one time only at the hugely discounted rated of $147 per person - but only for a limited time.

So, how does your web page get selected to be the one we optimize during the Webinar?

Sign up for the Webinar today and we will select one person at random to be featured as the web page that gets optimized live on the Webinar.

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To Your Success,

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Director of Marketing
EcomBuffet.com
562-592-5347
Jennifer@ecombuffet.com

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P.P.S. If you don't already know how to optimize a web page, you don't want to miss this special event. Learn:

How to create compelling Meta tags the search engines will love.
How to effectively use Header tags and ALT tags.
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What interlinking means and how to properly interlink your pages.
Other on-page optimization tips, techniques and secrets.

Real Estate Blogs Can Help Drive Traffic To Your Web Site

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:10:21 -0600

Real Estate Blogs Can Help Drive Traffic To Your Web Site

Blogs are a real must today. They are actually seen as more trustworthy then a web site and can gain rankings quickly if developed correctlyand you use keywords.

We just built a new Blog located at http://phoenixlivingnews.com/ For this blog we used Wordpress. This free software is very easy to manage and offers many plugins to help your blog function and obtain top rankings. We actually have our own URL that is used for the wordpress blog, but they do offer a free function as well, where you do not need to host the blog. Blogger by Google also offers a free blog which you do not need to host. Both, in my view are exceptional for something that is free. Please note that the free blogs can gain rankings very quickly if you ensure that keywords are being used correctly in blog titles and postings. I can post an entry in the morning and have it found in a top search by afternoon.

We obtained the url from namescheap.com. Why, because it was so cheap:-)
We got our hosting at hostgator.com. Why...well, it was cheap. Allows me to host as many urls as I want for just the one low price...what does that mean...for me to host 3 URLs on godaddy would cost me about 100 dollars a year for each url I am hosting. With hostgator, I can host unlimited urls for $100 dollars. And as I have so many blogs that I manage or develop for others, this really is a money saver. It also has Wordpress all ready installed so it was just a few clicks to get up and running.

So, if you do not have a blog, I suggest you get one quickly. Be sure to update daily as well. They are an added benefit to your web site...especially if you have a template web site that is not ranking well. Your blog can bring you consumers to your web site.

Good Blogging to you!
Bonnie

SEO For Your Blog

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:29:24 -0600

SEO For Your Blog

What Yaro states is true. We should know, we are SEO pro's and his advice holds-up, it works, and is easy to do. We recommend you follow his instructions, we sure have:-) Below is his article:

How Important Is SEO For Your Blog? Source: Building Blog Traffic by Yaro Starak

I was recently putting together a lesson for the final class in the Blog Traffic School course. This lesson is part of what I call the “advanced” materials - topics focused on taking your blog beyond the 1000 daily readers we aim for in Blog Traffic School, which are discussed in the concluding sections of the course. Essentially everything in Blog Traffic School can be used to grow your blog beyond 1000 readers, but for this particular lesson I wanted to focus on the things I have found that really brought my blog above the 1000 daily visitors mark and into the 2000+ daily readers milestone.

As I sat back and thought about it I realized there was one very powerful traffic source, one that many bloggers don’t think about too much, which accounted for a lot of my traffic once my blog had matured - the search engines. I say it had to “mature” for a reason, you see my blog received barely any search traffic for at least the first 4-6 months of its life. I had purchased a new domain name (entrepreneurs-journey.com) for it and while it was very easy to get my blog at least listed in the search engines, quite a few things had to happen before I started ranking well.

Search Engine Optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is an area that most bloggers will never get into in any real depth. At the highest level, very technical minded people are testing and tracking things to optimize search rankings for their websites and blogs. These people use controlled tests, playing with all the variables that make up a website - the words, code, links and so forth. Once they have results the rest of us can study their findings and apply the latest “theories” as tests for our own search engine rankings. Some things work well, some don’t.

In a lot of ways search engine optimization is an art form. It has fundamental principles which make you feel like it is a science - and a lot of people working in SEO will tell you it is and they will purport to having complete control over search engine results - but they would be lying. In reality everyone who works in SEO is guessing. Yes they have some very sound principles to work from but ultimately no direct control over the deciding factors - the search engine algorithms, which is as it should be or the system could be corrupted by those in power.

Why Does SEO Matter? So what does all this have to do with your blog? As I stated once my blog had matured and grown past its first birthday I noticed that my articles started to show up in the first page of search engine results for some pretty relevant terms for my blog’s niche. While they don’t individually provide a lot of traffic, collectively it is a steady stream of new visitors - and this is the key - these are mostly new visitors.

Search engine traffic serves to bring in new visitors to your blog. Now I of course thoroughly recommend you work on building a loyal readership for your blog, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want new visitors coming in as well. Attracting new visitors is how your blog grows, and converting those new visitors into regular readers is the process you should be aiming to complete.

How To Get More Search Traffic To Your Blog That’s the million dollar question isn’t it! Okay, first up if you know nothing about search engine optimization and you have time to really get your teeth into it, read this article series I wrote - The Top 8 Search Engine Optimization Techniques.

In that article I have collected the most relevant things you can do to help your blog’s SEO, however there is a lot to do and you may not be up for the task. If you don’t have the time or energy for in-depth SEO then here is my advice for you -

Focus your energies on one thing - get links from authority sites. What are authority sites? They are websites that have a lot of links from other authority sites! Aha - catch 22 you say, and yes in a way it doesn’t sound fair does it. Authority sites are websites, and blogs are included, which the search engines consider to be authority sources of information. Generally if the site has lots of traffic, links from other authority sites and people doing searches keep finding the answers they want from these sites, you have the formula for authority status. It’s a hard thing to pinpoint but virtually every niche online has a handful of authority sites. Right now I bet every website you visit on a daily basis (perhaps besides your own) is an authority site for it’s niche.

When authority sites link to your site then your site gets some of that “authority” juice. It’s that juice that will help your blog climb higher in the rankings.

For the sake of clarification I want to state that your blog’s search engine ranking is dependent on a lot of variables and just focusing on authority links is only part of the picture, but in my opinion it is the most crucial and the most difficult to accomplish. To get a link from an authority site, or preferably lots of them, and from many different authority sites, you really need to be doing spectacular things or saying spectacular things or helping people in spectacular ways or have a spectacular PR person working for you. It’s by no means easy and it doesn’t (nor should it) happen over night. This is something that you build up to over time.

So essentially, once again my advice to you regarding your blog’s search engine rankings is to become spectacular. As simple as that

Yaro StarakSpectacular Blogger and The Blog Traffic King

Ultimate SEO Resource for Real Estate Agents

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:24:07 -0600

Ultimate SEO Resource for Real Estate Agents

Note: OnTheAvenues Blog achieves top recognition for real estate SEO SEO, as a rule, isn’t easy. Of course, this goes double if you’re a real estate agent with hundreds of competitors in your area–all targetting the same keywords. The real estate industry is large, it’s competitive, and the average realtor has a million other things to worry about besides their SEO strategy. But that doesn’t mean you should give up–leveraged successfully, the Internet has the potential to be the largest and most profitable sales channel in an agent’s marketing mix.

The following list is filled with tools and resources that will help any real estate agent achieve their SEO goals. You can choose to learn from blogs, tutorials, or forums, and we’ve also pointed you to specific blog entries and forum threads that will get you started. You can study search engines to learn what they require from you, and you can choose among some professionals to help you refine your Web site or to take over completely. The choice is yours. The links to each tool are listed alphabetically within the categories listed immediately below. The numbering does not indicate that we favor one site over another or that they are listed in order of value. Finally, all the sites listed below are targeted specifically to real estate professionals.

The following blogs are written by individuals who are in the real estate field, yet who also have become experts in the SEO realm. While some blogs focus specifically on SEO, other blogs contain a category that holds their SEO articles..

OnTheAvenues: Bonnie Burns provides web site analysis and search engine optimization services specifically for real estate web sites and shows her expertise through her blog.

See the complete list of Real Estate SEO resources here

How Your Website Pictures and Online Videos Can Gain You Top Rankings

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:47:37 -0600

Here are two things you can do easily that could get your site listed on the front page of Google's search results quickly. I have seen it work in a matter of hours.

#1. Put up a video (or several videos) on http://www.youtube.com/ and include your URL and keywords in the description and Title. This is the technique that I have seen land a site in Google's top 10 within a matter of hours. Remember, Google likes video (after all, they paid 1.6 Billion dollars for YouTube recently).

If you have never posted a video on YouTube, go to YouTube's website and their instructions will walk you through everything.

#2. Be sure all of the images on your site have Alt. text in the link to the picture and have your keywords in the Alt. text. Google is showing a lot of images in their search results now.

Most people don't use either one of these techniques. That's what makes them so useful to the webmasters who do use them.

OnTheAvenues has been providing Search Engine Optimization services since 1998. http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/ Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Meeting the Website Visitor's Needs First

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:46:26 -0600

Meeting the Website Visitor's Needs First

When creating new content, you probably have a clear objective for your Web page. What action do you want your visitor to take after they read your content?

When researching your customer search trends, try and identify their interests and needs FIRST, instead of being always focused on your objectives. Every Web page should have an objective to be fulfilled but sometimes you can get tremendous conversion improvement if you put "your objective" to the back. It does not have to come first.

Stop and go back and consider meeting the visitor's needs FIRST then offer them something that compliments their circumstance or provides a solution to their circumstance.

OnTheAvenues has been providing Search Engine Optimization services since 1998. http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/ Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Value Of Website Content. Value Of Blog Content

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:44:01 -0600

When is the last time you added value of your website content or Blog content.

Far too often we are thinking only of those search engine spiders. The good news is that fresh new content that is created to be of value for your website and blog readers, also makes EXCELLENT "spider food."

Do a little research and watch for some topic areas that you think would be in high audience interest reading.

Then write some brand new, original fresh, content based on:

1. Your audience's true interests.
2. Something that has a genuine value or "useful quality" for your readers.
3. Do a mild re-write for optimization purposes.

Try creating a series of 10 brand new articles, tutorials, interviews, FAQs or whatever you feel would benefit your website readers based on your research.

BUT Do not put all 10 articles online at once.

But begin to put each new article or page up (one per week for 10 weeks.) Pick a specific day of the week and add one new article each and every week consistantly on that day.

Not only will you notice more people finding your Web site, but watch what this does for improving the regularity of those spider visits. You are stepping up the quality of your content for your readers, but because of those fresh, original and engaging articles that you have written, you're giving the search engines a buffet of delicious spider food. Steady, consistent updates over a period of time produces frequent spider visits.

OnTheAvenues has been providing Search Engine Optimization services since 1998. http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/ Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Optimizing for Secondary Supporting Keywords

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:38:27 -0600

Optimizing for Secondary Supporting Keywords

Optimizing for secondary supporting keywords can be a golden mine because when everybody else is optimizing for the most popular keywords, there will be far less competition (and probably more hits) for pages that are focused on the minor words or synonyms.

For example, "real estate in Mississippi" might have much less action than "real estate" by itself, but if you are operating in Mississippi, you could get less volume in traffic but considerably more refined traffic. Also do not under estimate the value of working with acronyms. For example "real estate MS" or for example "Victorian homes in NJ" short for New Jersey

We see real estate sites that achieve top rankings in a few shport weeks by using secondary supporting keywords. For example, a site we did for a realtor in Phoenix AZ that receives over 400 page views a day for such terms as:

modern camelback corridor lofts
westgate az living
biltmore court phoenix
price per square foot for a condo in phoenix
44 monroe
encanto district homes phoenix
chateux on central
urban mansion arizona
chateaux on central
44 monroe phoenix
biltmore phoenix homes
biltmore arizona new upscale high rise for lease
modern camelback corridor lofts
zips codes of historic districts in pheonix
condos on central in phoenix
paradise valley mls search
downtown phoenix, az zip code fq story
encanto historic district arizona zip code
summit condos phoenix
real estate for sale f.q. story
historic phoenix
biltmore townhouses phoenix
palmcroft in phoenix arizona
az mls free
phoenix mls
arizona new homes/cave creek
free arizona mls
central phoenix home search

In short, generic terms are not always the best. Look outside the box when selecting keywords
If you need your real estate site optimized to achieve better rankings, be sure to contact OnTheAvenues

SEO Secrets Revealed By Top Google Staff Video

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 12:01:58 -0600

SEO Secrets Revealed By Top Google Staff Video From blogging to site content, links from other sites, sitemaps, Google webmaster tools, meta tags, Google base, indexing and more. This is a nice 10 minute video interview with Matt Cutts 'the Google guy'

SEO Tip: Getting Your Web Visitors To Buy or Call

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:42:50 -0600

SEO Tip: Getting Your Web Visitors To Buy or Call

Once you pages are ranking well, you may want to fine tune your "call to action" so that once your vistor finds and reads your message, they follow through to meet the objective and actually take some kind of action. Tips on improving your call to action: If your "call to action" is to get the visitor to make a phone call, try describing the action you want them to take. Example: Here's all you need to do to find out why your website is not performing well. Walk over to the phone and give us a call right now at 1-623-242-8437 Also try increasing the size of your Phone number and make it real easy to read. Sometimes little changes make a huge difference in response.

OnTheAvenues has been providing Search Engine Optimization services since 1998. http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/ Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Value Of Website Content. Value Of Blog Content

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:38:21 -0600

3. Do a mild re-write for optimization purposes. Try creating a series of 10 brand new articles, tutorials, interviews, FAQs or whatever you feel would benefit your website readers based on your research. BUT Do not put all 10 articles online at once. But begin to put each new article or page up (one per week for 10 weeks.) Pick a specific day of the week and add one new article each and every week consistantly on that day. Not only will you notice more people finding your Web site, but watch what this does for improving the regularity of those spider visits. You are stepping up the quality of your content for your readers, but because of those fresh, original and engaging articles that you have written, you're giving the search engines a buffet of delicious spider food. Steady, consistent updates over a period of time produces frequent spider visits.

OnTheAvenues has been providing Search Engine Optimization services since 1998. http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/ Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

SEO Tip: Title Tags

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:36:35 -0600

SEO Tip: Title Tags

Have a look at the most recent page you are working on. Can you identify just one single benefit that your content is offering? Whether it might be a "special low cost" or perhaps the product you sell is a "time saver." Think about how you can possibly move whatever the benefit is, right up into your Title tag where you will have it visible within the search results. The result should be a Title that includes your keyword phrase but also reads well and compels the reader to take action and choose your link over other competing links regardless of where you rank in the top 10 results. By highlight a benefit or trigger into your Title tag, you can increase your click through ratio for the page. Write in a compelling fashion and try to get your triggers and benefits right up in the Title for searchers to see.

Top 50 Real Estate Marketing Bloggers

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:34:20 -0600

OnTheAvenues Makes Top 50 Real Estate Marketing Bloggers

Click here to see the top 50 real estate marketing bloggers

Every real estate agent and developer is different, and each one believes one form of marketing works better than another. Word of mouth, or viral marketing, represents just one method of marketing. Others include print, radio, television, Web sites, and blogs. This marketing “to-do” list can grow, and it would take a ’superperson’ to take advantage of every marketing situation - let alone to use each one to its peak performance. This is where marketing bloggers can come to the rescue. The list includes bloggers who focus on general and online marketing, including blogs. More specifically, the list focuses only on real estate marketing, a necessity that can prove both very expensive and time-consuming unless you learn how to get around those obstacles. Click here to see the top 50 real estate marketing bloggers Please note that the blog numbering is not meant to be a ranking, as each blog topic is listed in alphabetical under five different categories.

You will find that OnTheAvenues has been selected as one of the top 50. Find us under Marketing Tools

If you want to know how to get high search engine rankings without offending search engines, take a look at OnTheAvenues.

SEO Tip: Keep Your Real Estate Web Site Sitemap Current

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:31:03 -0600

SEO Tip: Keep Your Real Estate Web Site Sitemap Current

Put links to new pages on your site map. Make sure you link to your site map from every page of your Web site.If there's a corresponding page on your site that you can use to link to the new page, do so.

Mention the new page on your blog. Do you have a directory associated with the particular topic dealing with the content of this new page? Add a link on that page.

Just make sure that you give the search engines multiple ways to find all of your most important pages and never assume that a search engine robot will always find you through your home page.

See more seo tips at http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/

FYI: Free Website Magazine. Know More Than Your Competitors

Bonnie Burns (OnTheAvenues) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:39:04 -0500

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By providing a broad scope of informative articles about sound, proven Internet business practices and emerging trends, Website Magazine will help website owners develop, design, maintain and promote their online endeavor more efficiently and effectively - that is our mission. In essence, Website Magazine is taking a closer look inside the online world.

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