THE “ALL YOU’LL EVER NEED TO KNOW” GUIDE TO DIY SEO SUCCESS AKA: DO IT YOURSELF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Aloha! My Name is Trevor. I am an Internet marketer, niche business fanatic. I graduated college in December 2011 and much to my parent’s dismay, did not get a job. I decided to move to Hawaii and try and start up some businesses! I soon found myself engulfed in the online world, trying to figure it all out and make some money (Hawaii is not cheap!). I started a niche business and website for my neurological enhancing study pills - Cerebral Success and a blog about starting niche businesses to document my journey. Soon after starting these sites, I realized I would need some traffic to make any money. There were two obvious options. 1) Pay Per Click with Google AdWords, and 2) SEO. The latter appealed to me because it’s much cheaper and has scalable potential. So I dug in and dedicated myself to becoming an expert in the field of SEO. The following guide is a collection of what I have learned and what works best for me. I tried to keep it simple and straightforward so that your time is not wasted. I hope this proves beneficial to you. Sincerely, Trevor Hiltbrand * Rather than charging a fee for my months of work, research, and experimentation, there are a number of links throughout the guide that I do receive small kickbacks from when clicking results in a sale. Please know that I only recommend products that I use myself and that have been helpful in my career. I would rather build lasting relationships and trust, than make a quick buck. Table of Contents What is SEO and Why Bother? What’s the Deal With Indexing? Overview Tips and Tools for New Websites PageRank Explained Understanding Is the Key To Success Analytics and Webmaster Picking Key Words Setting Up an SEO Friendly Website Is Your Content Relevant? Structure Your Site Properly to Optimize for SEO Page/Post Titles | Meta Tags | Permalinks | Headings |Images | Interlinks | Sitemaps | Footer | NoFollow Backlinks: The Heart and Sole of SEO – The Dominate Strategy Overview 2 DIY SEO Success Article Writing Primary Website Strong Direct Layer Web 2.0 & Blogs Premium Article Directory Guest Posts Mass Indirect Layer Mass Article Submission Social Bookmarking Social Networking Final Notes Warnings Closing Niche Weapons What is SEO and Why Bother? Among the Internet entrepreneurs, one acronym is tossed around more than any other. That acronym is SEO. I’m sure most know already, but for the ultra new, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, SEO is the art of improving your website so that it ranks better on popular search engine sites. - For this Guide, I will be referring to and focusing on Google, although most search engines work the same. Data varies on the subject, but it is estimated that 50% of searchers chose the first site displayed by Google. The second site commands about 14%, third 9%, and everything after that substantially lower. Bottom line is, you want to be 1 st , and if not, at least 2 nd or 3 rd . Ranking in the top three will generate substantially more traffic for your keywords. This beats the alternative of paying for Google Adwords because search engine clicks are free. FREE TRAFIC!. For a business who is used to paying $.50-$2.00 per click, free is awesome (an extreme understatement). What’s The Deal With Indexing? Overview A lot of people are confused on what indexing is and why it is important. It’s really a simple concept that is super important and critical to the success of your SEO efforts – without it, your SEO journey can not even begin. Popular search engines such as Google have crawlers (also called “bots” or “spiders”) that scan the web 24/7. They go from link to link, following the path and flow of information. When they come across a new website, that they have never seen before, they store that website in their massive index of recognized websites. Information like keywords, number of links to the site, etc., are stored so that search engines know which websites to display when certain keywords are searched for. Tips and Tools For New Websites A good source to manage the data viewed and stored by Google can be found and monitored by registering your site with Google Webmaster. This tool will help you understand the popular search queries that people have used to find your site, the errors and flaws in your website’s coding, which websites are linking to yours, and many more features that will help you maximize traffic. 3 DIY SEO Success For new sites, it sometimes takes a couple weeks to even months for Google to first crawl your site. However, the more links that point to your site, the faster your site will be indexed. You’ll soon find that backlinks (or outside – not within your site links) are the key to the whole SEO puzzle. You can also submit your site directly to Google to be crawled here. However, popular opinion is that this does not work very well and you would be better off simply finding ways to get backlinks. Couldn’t hurt though… It is good practice to include internal links – or links within your site that point to different pages or blog posts. This helps the Google crawlers more thoroughly scan and index your site. You probably spend a lot of time creating great content for your website, so it is important that you get Google to scan all of it so that you will come up in relevant search terms. To check if your site has been indexed or not, go to Google, Bing, or Yahoo, and type in “site:www.yourwebsite.com” into the search area. You can also check sites like Alexa.com to see your websites popularity. Alexa.com is also a great tool to check the popularity of sites you want to have backlinks from. In general, anything below a million is a good site. PageRank Explained People commonly confuse PageRank with what page their site rank for their chosen keyword. We will get into keywords and their rankings later, but if you are looking for a quick solution, I recommend Market Samurai. PageRank (PR), however, is a number between 0-10, assigned by Google, to reflect the overall importance of the website. The number of backlinks a site has pointing to it is directly related to its PR. Also, the higher the PR, the more powerful the link is. So for example, if you have a bunch of PR10 sites pointing to your website, you will climb the SEO ladder fast and eventually obtain a healthy PR as well. I would not stress over this. If you follow the proceeding steps, your sites PR will increase naturally. Understanding Is The Key to Success Hundreds of people have been busted in recent years, including the famous Martha Stewart, for insider trading. Insider trading is, more or less, acting upon information that is not public knowledge, for your own personal financial gain. The more information you have, the better decisions you can make. In the financial world, people who have more information, or quicker access to information, tend to have the most financial success. This principle of the value of information is the same in Internet marketing. The more information you have, the better able you are to make important, financially beneficial, decisions. I recently noticed through my Google Webmaster account, that I had a number of issues with a link on my site. The contact email address was actually not set up as a link and was basically ineffective. I would have had no idea if it weren’t for Google Webmasters. Analytics 4 DIY SEO Success Another important tool – also free by Google – is Google Analytics. Here you can track the type of people that visit your site so that you can make better - more informed decisions on your marketing efforts. Google Analytics is incredibly dense and has enterprise level capabilities being useful for the largest of sites. So basically, it will grow with you and you will probably need nothing else. Google Analytics will help you understand where your traffic is coming from. Whether it’s from natural organic searches (meaning as a result of free search results from SEO), social media referrals, backlinks from other websites, etc., Google Analytics will know. Use this information to focus on the areas that are working best for you. Cut the fat. If you spend a lot of time on Facebook, but no one is visiting your website from it, something is wrong. Either fix it or cut it. Research Keywords Before You Choose Keywords are words or phrases that people search with using popular search engines like Google. They are not confined to just one word, but can be long phrases as well. Choosing appropriate and realistic keywords is a crucial step before beginning your SEO efforts. This is one step that people often overlook. Just because your website involves making money online, does not mean that I will try and get to the top of Google for the keyword, How To Make Money Online. That keyword has over 800,000 monthly searches and there are hundreds of websites that already have a solid (if not killer) footing with the keyword. How do I know this? There are a number of applications that assist in keyword generation and overall market research. The best tool that I have found (and it is extremely popular among Internet Marketers) is Market Samurai. Follow this link and download the free trail. Upgrade within the first 5 days and receive a 35% discount. It’s totally worth it. Other free alternatives (although hardly an alternative because of the limited features) include Google’s Keyword Tool. This tool is a quick and easy way of seeing how many people search specific keywords a month – but that’s really all its good for. Market Samurai however, allows you to analyze competition. Update: I have had many people ask about the Google Keyword Tool competition meter, trying to inform me that this is just as good. This is misleading on Google’s Part (and previously confusing on mine – sorry). The competition meter provided by Google pertains to paid advertising competition through their Adwords program. That is why Google made the Keyword Tool in the first place. It does not reflect SEO competition in any way. Market Samurai goes in depth showing the competitions Domain Age, Google Page Rank, backlink progress from other sites (broken down into 5 categories). It also helps you chose keywords based on the topic of your site or niche, and analyzes the effectiveness of the keyword. Bottom line is - if you’re serious about SEO and Internet Marketing, you need this tool (or a tool that has these features). This information will help you effectively choose profitable and an available keywords. Be sure to review your competition before you start working on your keyword’s SEO. If reaching one of the top 3 spots is not possible, look for a different keyword. Do multiple searches on keywords with both large number of hits and small so that you can get a feel for what you can handle. 5 DIY SEO Success The sweet spot for me is around 10,000-30,000 searches a month. This to me says that there are enough searches to get significant traffic to my site, but not so much that big companies target it. In other words, it is a niche. I then check the competition, focusing on how many backlinks my competitors have and how long they have been around for. My list of possible keywords usually gets narrowed down until I have only 3-4 keywords… a great start. Remember, do things logically. Have a purpose and be well informed before spending a lot of time and effort on a project. There are some really great websites out there, with awesome content, which get no traffic because they are not being optimized correctly for search. Understanding your audience AND your competition will put you on the path to success. Setting Up an SEO Friendly Website Is Your Content Relevant? It’s a common notion in the world of SEO that content is king. Ensure that your content is unique and relevant to the key words and phrases you hope to attract. Separate different content and label it correctly. Keep it organized. You wont fool the search engine crawlers by repeating yourself over and over again. Make a good website that people will find value in and good page ranks and traffic will follow. Structure Your Site Properly to Optimize for Search The majority of websites nowadays are built on WordPress, Drupal, or some form of content manager. Having very limited coding and html experience, I like to use WordPress because no technical knowledge is needed… seriously. If you are using a freely hosted service like Blogger or WordPress.com, I highly recommend spending the small amount of money and purchase your own domain and hosting. The difference is more customization, a professional looking web presence, and a more SEO friendly website. For $5.95 a month you can get great hosting and a free domain with Bluehost. I use them for all my sites and I love them. They have great customer service, super reliable and fast hosting, and the easiest WordPress install I have ever used. *The following tips and suggestions are specifically for WordPress sites, but the principles apply to any site, the “how- to” just might be a little different. Page and Post Titles These are the easiest and most important elements to get right. Titles have a lot of influence on search results so be sure to include your keywords and phrases in them. The titles are what will be displayed when your site shows up in search results so make sure they are relevant, but also understandable. The first few lines of the content will also be displayed, so remember to include your desired keywords early in the page or post. An easy solution for managing this is the All in One SEO Plugin available for WordPress. A good tip is to alter the default setting for Post Title within the plugin settings (Settings >> All in One SEO). 6 DIY SEO Success Post Title: %post_title% By default, the plugin is set to include the domain name with the title of your post. This is redundant and unnecessary. Your title will be more SEO friendly if you make the switch as recommended above. Do not spam or repeat yourself here or anywhere! You will be caught and penalized. Meta Tags – Descriptions/KeyWords Google no longer crawls this information, but it can still be helpful for improving relevance. Prior warning definitely still applies here. Other search engines may still crawl these so it doesn’t hurt to throw it in. There are options to include home keywords and post/page specific keywords using the All in One SEO Plugin. Meta descriptions should be no more than 150 characters and only one or two sentences. Limit Meta keywords to 4-5 phrases with the most important listed first. More is not better. The All in One SEO Plugin listed above also manages the Meta Tags. Permalink These are simply the URL’s for your pages/posts. By default, WordPress will make posts look like smartnichebusiness.com/? p=92. This helps inform the reader what the post will be about but perhaps more importantly, these portions of the URL will be highlighted when matched to searches. To change your WordPress Permalinks, go to Settings >> Permalinks and chose custom. Fill the empty field with / %postname%/. This will result in your post URL looking like this: http://www.smartnichebusiness.com/how-to-pick-a- niche/Images Headings Headings are another important element to SEO. Content that is bolded using the H1-H6 tags are given emphasis visually and structurally. Be sure to include your keywords within these headings. Use them like an outline, in order if possible. It is recommended to try and limit the H1 heading to once a page/post. Images Images are a great way for you to engage your readers and boost the esthetic quality of your site. Google also loves pages/ posts that use images. However, because search engines cannot see and process the quality or content of a picture, you must be sure to utilize the ALT attribute. Use accurate descriptive words to describe the picture – or if the picture is an image of text for visual appeal – translate the words. Search Engines use the ALT tag to figure out what the picture is. Be sure to also utilize the name of the image to squeeze in relevant words. I have found that it is okay for the image name and the ALT to be the same. Interlinking Interlinking is the process of placing links in your posts/pages that link to other post/pages. This helps the search engines crawl your site more thoroughly. I also like to make the linked phrases my keywords that I am targeting – if it fits naturally. 7 DIY SEO Success This is useful for both SEO and directing your readers to your other great content. Sitemaps Sitemaps are pages of static text links that maps out the different pages on the site. It provides a visual layout of the sites structure that is both beneficial to human visitors and search engine crawlers. Google advises to split the sitemap into multiple pages if the total amount of links exceeds 100. These can be made manually, or there are easy plugins that will make them for you automatically. I like the plugin called XML- Sitemap for WordPress. It creates a sitemap that can be found at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml that can easily be submitted to Google Webmaster. Footers Footers are another great way organize and link to content in your site. You can basically have second, more descriptive word links to your content that help with those page’s SEO efforts. NoFollow Certain Links Having more links to your site is the best offsite strategy for SEO. But we will get into that later. NoFollows were first introduced to stop spamming comments. By default, all comments containing links posted on your WordPress blog are automatically given the nofollow tag. This takes the SEO credit away from the link. Having to many outbound links on your site (without the nofollow tag) can actually hurt your site. However, many websites make their income from having outbound affiliate links on their site. The key to having outbound links but still being SEO optimized is placing the nofollow tag in your HTML. E.g. <a href=”http://www.cerebralsuccess.com” rel=”nofollow”>Study Pills</a> There is also an awesome plugin called TInyMCE Advanced, which allows you to select the nofollow option within word press so that you don’t have to edit the code directly. Backlinks: The Heart and Sole of SEO – The Dominate Strategy Backlinks are becoming the number one most effective strategy in off site SEO. Google says openly, “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.” It is important to note the high-quality portion of this quote. You don’t want a bunch of links that don’t even get indexed. The higher the quality the site the more powerful the link will be in terms of SEO. See Appendix 1.0 for a detailed diagram of the Backlink Strategy. I will also explain each step in detail, but it may help to reference the diagram as we go along. Overview Obviously, the Primary Website hexagon from the diagram is 8 DIY SEO Success the main website that we will be focusing our SEO efforts on. From there we will build 2 layers. 1) The Strong Direct Layer that points directly to the primary website. 2) The Mass Indirect Layer that will contain hundred, if not thousands, of links that get funneled through the Strong Direct Layer. Article Writing This is a super important aspect of the strategy. Before I explain the layers and how to manage them, it is important to understand Article Writing. All of the links are going to need content to give the link relevance. We create that content by writing 400+ word articles. Be sure to write relevant articles that pertain to your Primary Site. They are really quite easy to do, especially if have an interest in your website’s topic – lets hope you do. Now, because we want to submit thousands of articles – as you will learn about in the proceeding headings, it is super helpful to use popular tools to speed up the process – although you don’t have to. The best tool for creating a bunch of articles is The Best Spinner. With this tool, you write 1 super good article, and then spin it using synonyms to create hundreds of other uniquely worded articles. This can be done automatically or you can manually select the synonyms for use. I always recommend doing this manually. Sometimes, the automatic versions don’t really make sense – although The Best Spinner is easily the best at it. This program also comes with thousands of pre-written articles for public use on various topics. A good alternative if you’re trying to save time, or just want a template for a good article. Hold on to your articles… You will need them in the next few sections. Primary Website This is your main website. Be sure to utilize all the tips described above to ensure the site is structured and optimized for SEO. I will not go into detail here because the steps are listed in the prior portions of this guide. If your website is a blog, than you can include the original articles that you write here for a good content boost. The Strong Direct Layer Here we want our strongest links. Some good quality and easy to obtain links to point directly to your site include: Web 2.0 & Blogs There are a number of sites that will let you set up free blogs and Web 2.0 sites. These are great and provide good quality backlinks with the protection and filter of a high PageRank website. Write 1-2 good quality posts and have a link back to your main site. Be sure to remember the links so that you can link to them from your Mass Indirect Layer. Some popular sites include: - WordPress.com - Tumblr.com - Blogger.com - Squidoo.com - Hubpages.com - Livejournal.com - Posterous.com 9 DIY SEO Success There are literally hundreds more… Just Google it to find more. Premium Article Directories Article Directories are everywhere. For your strong layer linking directly to your website, you only want to use the best directories. Some of these require human approval and can be quite difficult to submit to. But write good, unique content and follow their rules and you should be fine. Here is a list of some of the best: - EzineArticles.com (the best of the best – requires approval) - Suite101.com - GoArticles.com - Buzzle For these, I submit my original (unspun) articles. I will then have my mass spun articles, submitted through lower quality and easier article directories, linked to the premium articles. Guest Posts Write posts for other blogs and have them link back to you. This provides great SEO power, but also helps you brand yourself and obtain more viewers directly. If you are going to build on these links, be sure to do it to the specific page and not the blogs homepage. Some bloggers put the majority of their focus here and do very well. This is a win-win for both parties involved. To find blogs that except guest posts, just look around and ask. Do a Google search for the top blogs in your industry. Some will have links that ask for blog submissions or writers to contribute. If they don’t, hit up the author and ask. It can’t hurt. Of course, be sure to write your best content because this will be a reflection of your blog. The readers are most likely people who don’t follow you already so be sure to impress. Mass Indirect Layer The purpose of this layer is to build the quality of your Strong Layer Links, as well as protect by acting as a buffer to both bad links and link overload. It would appear unnatural for a site to suddenly have 10,000 links in just a couple of weeks. So, we funnel those links through stronger sites and pass along the SEO power to your website - indirectly. Tumblr has a PR of 8 and can handle the extra links. If a brand new site has mass links to fast, they could potentially be black listed by Google – and it can take months to work your way out of that. Mass Article Submission Here we want to submit all the spun articles you have made from The Best Spinner mentioned above. The very best of the best programs for submitting articles is the Unique Article Wizard (UAW). Here you basically will submit 3 articles and two keyword backlinks to your Strong Direct Layer. UAW will then submit hundreds and sometimes thousands of unique articles to their massive database of article directories. There is even settings that allow you to specify the speed at which they are submitted and publishes so as not to raise a red flag on your sites. The down side to this program is that its $67 a month, which is no small amount, especially to a beginner. An alternative that I have found to be very effective, and is what I used until I could afford UAW, is Article Marketing Robot (AMR). It’s a lot cheaper at a one-time fee of $97. These tools are not mandatory, but make a HUGE difference when you are submitting articles for SEO. There is no way that 10 DIY SEO Success any human being could submit as many links as quickly without these tools. They separate the leaders from the wannabes in the SEO game. The professional SEO companies use these same tools but charge you 20 times the price… a month! Social Bookmarking Social Bookmarking is another important part of the backlink strategy. There is a free tool called Social Poster, which can help you quickly submit links on popular social sites. Once accounts have been made for all the sites, this tool saves a lot of time. Point these links back to your Strong Direct Layer websites in combination with the mass articles submitted through UAW or AMR. Social Networking 1 Facebook and Twitter are the two biggest and most important form of Social Networking to date, with Google + coming in fast. These tools should not be overlooked. They are free tools for keeping in touch and creating hype for you product or website. People also look to them for updates and key information. As these networks progress, people become more and more tide to them. Their importance grows with each new user. Create profiles, separate from your personal life, and link them directly to your Primary Site. This helps build your brand’s online presence. Make sure to link to your site with new updates and blog posts. 1 Final Notes Warnings Don’t try and trick the search engines. Some of the world’s most brilliant minds work on these search engines to catch websites that try and cheat the system. And when they do catch them, because they eventually will, the site will be penalized and sometimes even blacklisted. You don’t want that. Some common tricks people get in trouble for are hidden text, small text (like 1 pixel high), mirrored sites, and key word stuffing. Just focus on creating good, unique, and honest content and you will do great. Remember, search engines follow people, so create content people follow. Closing SEO takes time. If you are following all these steps and you are still not ranking as high as you want to with your keywords, keep trying, you will make progress. 99% percent of websites don’t follow these guidelines, which makes easier to beat them and rank higher. Patience is the key. SEO is not easy and can take a couple of months to see any real progress. But it is totally worth it in the end. You got this! Good Luck. Sincerely, Trevor Hiltbrand [...]... Plugin: Best plugin I’ve experienced for on site SEO Books: The 4-Hour Workweek: Best book ever Convinced me to be an entrepreneur and to pursue the life of the “new rich.” Moonlighting on the Internet: great tips for making money on the internet Email Subscription: Aweber: Best in the business opt in email marketing Your Mailing List Provider (YMLP): Free up to 3000 email subscriptions Nice if you cant... Only paid tool I consider a must have (except hosting of course) Website Creation Bluehost.com: Super Easy WordPress install and cheap, reliable hosting GoDaddy.com: I use for domains Super cheap Hosting too WordPress Plugins: TInyMCE Advanced: Advanced customization tools I use mostly for images but there are many more benefits XML-Sitemap: Creates a solid sitemap automaticly All in One SEO Plugin:... Cheaper alternative to UAW Works good and definitely worth the 1 time fee The Best Spinner: Super awesome, good quality spinner that also has free articles! Backlinks Social Poster: Great tool for quickly posting links to social sites Build My Rank: Super high quality, high PR backlinks Market Statistics Google Analytics: Free tracking tool A must have Market Samurai: The best tool for keyword and...11 DIY SEO Success Links for Building Niche Websites: Web Statistics Quantcast.com: Analyzes your websites customers Google Analytics: World class, free analytics Google Webmaster: Data about crawling, indexing and search traffic Monitor your SEO efforts Alexa.com: Evaluates and ranks websites popularity Article Marketing Unique Article Wizard (UAW): The best article submitting software on the market... Google Adwords: The most commonly used and highest reach form of paid ads Facebook Advertising: Better and more effective than you would think… if done correctly Microsoft (Bing): The second largest search engine Doesn’t hurt to through this one in to your campaign Favorite “Make Money Online” Blog: Smart Passive Income: The owner Pat is a great guy Super honest and personable 12 DIY SEO Success Appendix . as quickly without these tools. They separate the leaders from the wannabes in the SEO game. The professional SEO companies use these same tools but charge you 20 times the price… a month! Social. Google, to reflect the overall importance of the website. The number of backlinks a site has pointing to it is directly related to its PR. Also, the higher the PR, the more powerful the link. sitemap into multiple pages if the total amount of links exceeds 100. These can be made manually, or there are easy plugins that will make them for you automatically. I like the plugin called XML- Sitemap