Well, there is a rather simple way, although it is not guaranteed to work. What you must do first when developing your website, make sure you omit any commercial references. Make sure your website is informative and not for profit. When you have your website good and ready, full of valuable content (make sure that there is no broken links and under construction pages), you can submit it for review in Yahoo! Dir. Non-commercial websites can be submitted for free. If you’re lucky and your listing is approved, just wait a little bit and update your website with whatever you held off on to retain the non-commercial appearance.

When submitting your non-profit website to Yahoo, I would suggest trying to get a link from the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) as well. Getting DMOZ to post your link is rather hard (that’s a material for another article altogether), so posting you website while it is still in the informative-non-commercial stage can increase your chances of getting your submission approved. Before you “commercialize” your site, you might want to do some research to find any other directories that give links to non-commercial websites (or are more favorable towards them) and do as much free link harvesting as you can. This approach may give you a good start with your link building efforts and jump start your website in the search engines.

Hope this short post helps you in your SEO endeavors!

- Konrad

Burger King Facebook App

What happens when Burger King decides to use Facebook as its base for a new online marketing campaign? 233,906 people lose their friends… not real ones of course – the ones on Facebook.

What’s this all about – Burger King launched a promotion for US only, where you could install a Facbook application developed for Burger King which gave you a coupon for a free whooper after you deleted 10 friends from your list. You could of course add those friends right back on, but the idea was to show that you are willing to sacrifice friendship for a whooper (uhmm… yeah right).

People at Facebook apparently didn’t like this (surprise, surprise..) and disabled the application – after 233,906 friendships were “lost”.Weird story? – Yes, Maybe.  Stupid? – No, of course not. As much as I don’t like Whoopers, I have to admit that the marketing team at Burger King had a great idea for an online campaign. Not only did they prove a point (to some degree in a corrupted sort of way but still), they also generated lots of buzz around their company and their main product.

Apparently, the amount of buzz was big enough to get the attention of the Facebook team, which decided to pull the app. That of course generated even more buzz in an online community – think all the bloggers (hello!) writing about it and sharing it with their friends (I got this from a co-worker – thanks Jeremy!).

And that’s how we arrive at a viral marketing at its finest – hats off. Just please don’t make me eat that monstrosity of yours!

Come to think of it, this is not the first time Burger King is taking advantage of another company for its own marketing purposes. McDonald’s kind of comes to mind when BK made a TV ad with fake protests against the Big Mac, because Whooper is so much better (Yeah, and Pepsi tastes different than a coke!). Campaigns like this may work, but think of your branding guys and gals… or maybe that’s the whole point?

-Konrad

Link Building

Everybody wants back links. Everybody wants QUALITY back links that will generate relevant traffic and increase their rankings in the search engines. Here’s my list of 10 fool proof ways for link building that will bring results. Don’t expect a turn-key golden solution that will do everything for you. You’ll have to spend time and possibly money as well but you WILL get results doing things this way.

Yahoo! Directory – Getting listed in Yahoo! directory can give you a valuable link and additional traffic from people that are using the directory. Cost – $299 per year for commercial websites, otherwise free (inclusion not guaranteed).

Press Release- Press release, if done right, might get picked up by news websites and can greatly increase traffic and guarantee inbound links with anchor text of your choice. Cost – $200+ per release – you can use a free press release website, but to get most of it, I suggest using a paid solution, such as that of Marketwire. Be sure to get the SEO package ($75 at Marketwire). If you’re only concerned with links and online package, you don’t have to get the national distribution option, the local one submits it to all online media, difference is in TV, radio, etc.

Wordpress Template- With a little knowledge of web design and PHP (just the basics really) you can develop a theme for Wordpress.org. Your theme can be submitted to wordpress.org theme directory and include a link back to your site (both in the footer and the description of the theme. If the theme is of high quality its popularity may increase virally and secure a significant amount of back links from bloggers that choose to use it. You can submit more than one theme and update them in the future. Cost – free + designer’s work ~10-20 hrs per theme is my estimate, although that depends on how much time you want to spend on the design and development process.

Company Blog – A frequently updated blog with relevant, quality content may drive traffic to the website, score back links, and increase rankings – especially for long tail keywords. Additionally, a blog is a good venue for releasing link baits and viral content. Cost free + time to update ~1 – 1.5 hr per article.

Article Announcing – Relevant articles of high quality can be submitted to industry e-zines (www.itworld.comis a great example) and score backlinks. This is a budget version of press releases. Cost free + time to update and convince editors to include a given article on their e-zine/blog ~1.5 – 2 hrs per article (make sure to write quality content, not just a general description – offer something interesting or an industry secret).

Social Media Submission- Submitting quality content to social bookmarking websites (Digg, Technorati, Stumbleupon, etc.) can create traffic and links. This can be done both manually and by utilizing share-this type of buttons on your website and blog. Cost – free.

Directory Submission- submitting to quality industry directories, such as DMOZ, can gain you inbound links. Although this type of link building is falling out of favor, it can certainly gain you some traction when starting a new website. When submitting, try to focus on relevant, industry specific directories, and don’t use automated submission software – sure it might gain you links but of really poor quality! Cost – free, although time consuming.

Micro-Blogging – Established micro-blogs, such as twitter, can be leveraged in viral marketing campaigns to initially announce new viral content/link-baits, such as articles on the blog. Cost – free.

3-Way Link Exchanges- If you can acquire high PageRank web pages, you can use them as link resources, where other webmasters would give you a link to your website in exchange for links from your resource pages – effectively providing you with one-way inbound links. Cost – free + possible cost of acquiring the resource pages (buying existing websites, domains, or creating your won).

General Link Building- There are many general link building techniques to be used. The classical approach is to email webmasters and ask them to put up a link to your website. This is also known as “Link Begging” and is very time consuming – you might email 100 people and get one link in exchange. If you choose this path, I’d suggest offering the webmasters some incentive (something in return) to give you a link and ALWAYS write personalized emails including the webmasters name (if you can find it) – don’t just copy and paste! Believe it or not, you can always tell if a message is unique or not!

There are many other techniques, such as link buying, link exchange and a whole score of Black Hat techniques, but the ones above seem to work the best (at least in my humble opinion). Of course, they might take time and money, but they do work. Combined with good keyword research and smart on-page optimization you have all the tools to succeed at Search Engine Marketing.

Hope this helps and I don’t get dissed for giving too much away Let me know if you have questions or comments – I’ll try to address them promptly!

Thanks for taking the time to ready my thoughts on the subject!

- Konrad

Google Analytics New Features

On December third, I went to a Google Analytics seminar in Google’s Chicago office (a very NICE office I might add). I always thought that I was getting close to a 100% from Analytics – boy was I wrong! That’s especially true in the light of recently added features, such as motion graphs and advanced segmentation.

I think every internet marketer, SEO or a webmaster should take a closer look at Google Analytics and what it can do for you. First of all it is a free, web-based service that gives you very in-depth data about your visitors. You can find out exactly who, when, and how got to your website and more importantly what was it that hey did while on your website.

Google Analytics can help you understand both sides of the story – how the got there and what they did there. Knowing what keywords or keyphrases got you the traffic, you can make educated decisions on which keywords to target for your organic and pay-per-click campaigns. Additionally, defining conversion goals, such as a lead, sale, subscription, etc. can help in increasing revenue fro the traffic driven to your website.

The new features can give you an even greater understanding of your visitors, their needs and behavior. Motion graphics, for instance, give you a great way of comparing variables over time – think seasonal PPC campaigns for instance. Motion Graphics add more dimensions and historical comparison to your analysis. Below, you can find a short video describing this new feature.

Advanced Segmentation allows you to divide your traffic into subsets, such as paid traffic or converting traffic, and create completely new, customized ones based on your needs. Best of all you can analyze historical data, which you might have analyzed before. Now you can go back and re-do your analysis with greater amount of detail and new tools readily available.

Another new feature are the custom reports. You can now create 100% customized traffic reports with the exact data you need. You can also schedule the reports to run at predetermined times, and send the results as an email attachment to a specified address. If you are an SEO, then this is a great way to keep your clients up-to-date and let them know that the service provided by you is in fact worth their money!

Google Analytics is a great and, I think, undervalued tool which provides many great insights to your traffic and is worth more than a passing glance!

– Konrad
http://www.kocisz.com

I also seem to be on the first page of Google and Yahoo! for “Chicago SEO” and “Chicago SEO Services”. I think that improving my rankings for those terms would require a little bit of additional link building. That might be hard, considering that I have a regular nine to five job that I have to attend to.

I think I will utilize some blogging skills at first and then focus on my link exchange (maybe eve post a video SEO tutorial on YouTube). For those who don’t know I have set up a link exchange page on my website, so feel free to utilize it if you are in a middle of a link building campaign.

Internet Marketing might be time-consuming and a little tedious at times but I sure as hell am enjoying myself when I do it! That is especially true when I see my or my client’s website pop up number 1 in Google.

I will post an update on this SEO campaign when something moves forward (suggestions are welcome!).

Any other SEO freaks out there? Or maybe potential link exchange partners or clients? If you feel like sharing something, feel free to drop me a line!

Thanks for reading! I promise I will make time to post some new SEO tips for you guys and gals within the next couple of days!

Cheers!

After we fix everything and have a 100% spam free website, we go to Google Webmasters Tools (www.google.com/webmasters). In the Dashboard, on the right hand side, we’ll have messages, and tools. Last on the list is a link called “Request reconsideration.” Note that previously it was called a reinclusion request, but since that was not really true – it’s more than just bans, but also penalties, delistings, etc., they changed it to what it is right now.

So now, how do we write the reconsideration letter itself?

Well, first of all be truthful. If you used an SEO firm, please do state so. I was fixing one site, ant the client had an SEO company do it first. They didn’t get him anywhere, actually they got him banned. What those brains from an undisclosed company did, was to put a PHP script on the bottom of every page (using a global footer) that would go into a loop and generate several hundred of 1px by 1px spacer GIFs that would be a link to one of the subpages and be totally stuffed with keywords in the alternative text attribute of their img src declaration tag. I’ve stated as much, and guess what? Within 4 days my client from ranking nowhere for anything, jumped into #1 position in Google SERP for his targeted keyword (and some other ones as well).

So yes, be honest, tell them what happened, tell them that you’ve fixed it. Also, you better be darn sure to state that you promise never to do that again!

I’ve noticed that some people tend to throw in some reference to their Google adwords or adsense affiliation, thinking that Google’s gonna let them of the hook because they’re doing business together. Well, that’s not gonna fly, so forget about this part.

That would be pretty much it, worked for me. Keep in mind that it may take a while (probably weeks) for Google to do something about your site’s status and if they do they might not even let you know about it. So yeah, monitor the SERPs for your keywords.

Quick recap of what to do when your site gets banned:

Remove all Black Hat practices.

Request reinclusion stating:

What happened?

What did you do to fix it?

Will it ever happen again (better not)?

Hope it helps, thanks for reading!

On-Site Optimization

• Choosing the right domain name

One of the first choices that you have to make when starting your website is the choice of your domain name. This is important because Google and other search engines look at your domain name when determining the relevancy of the search engine results page (SERP). It is therefore beneficial to have the keywords that you are targeting present in your domain name.

• Title

Title of your web page (specified with the use of the <title> tag) should be descriptive and relevant to the content of your website. It is beneficial to include some of the targeted keywords and/or keyphrases in the title of your site. Also, be sure to have unique titles for every each one of your sub-pages, as it is more descriptive and increases the amount of keywords that you can use.

• Keyword density

When writing content for your website, try to include all your keywords within the body of your pages. That way, when a search engine bot (crawler) indexes your website, it sees the keyphrases included in your copy, and thus can determine the relevancy of your website for a given search querry.

• Header tags

Divide the content of your site into certain parts and begin each with a relevant (keyword-rich) description bound by the header tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.).

• Links

Make sure that your site does not have any broken links, for it is frowned upon by the search engines. The anchor text (name that your link is displayed as) should be relevant, and keyword rich. If certain keywords are more important to you, you may increased their value in the eyes of search engines by using one of the bold and strong tags or putting them as a header.

• File names

Make sure that the file names of your web pages contain the targeted keywords. For example instead of calling your gallery page gallery.html, call it fast-cars-photogallery.html (for a gallery of sports cars). Remember not to go overboard with sticking too many keywords into one file name, because it may appear too spamy to search engines.

• Image alternative text.

Remember to include the alternative text for all your images (ex: <img src=”dogpicture.jpg” alt=”Picture of a dog” />). Alt text is important for a variety of reasons: it helps visually disabled people to read your website, helps when somebody is using text only web browser, it is standards compliant, and of course it is yet another place to put some more keywords.

• Meta Data: description, keywords

In your html code, be sure to put adequate, not too long, not too short description of your website and the list of your keywords.

• Url rewriting

Remember that you can manipulate your urls and make them more search engine friendly with such tools as .htaccess on an Apache server or the IIS on a Microsoft platform.

• W3C compliant syntax

Make sure that the html you are coding is compliant with the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium. You can check your site at validator.w3.org. Some people believe that having valid html helps with your SERP, some think otherwise. In my opinion it is a good prudent and proactive step to take; it won’t hurt, but it may help. I myself, try to always use valid strict xhtml (specified in the doctype statement in the top part of your code).

Off-Site Optimization

• Link building - you can submit your link for free to many websites such as:

• Yahoo & Google Locals

At these sites you can submit your business listing, and not only get a valuable link from an important, high PR site, but also increase your brand awareness and potentially land some business deals.

• Directories (DMOZ, Yahoo Directories (paid listing), etc.)

There is an abundance of online directories floating on the internet. Some of them are free such as DMOZ (very hard to get listed, but extremely beneficial to your SEO and eMarketing efforts), some offer paid inclusion (Yahoo directories, I think annual fee of $290), and some offer you a listing in exchange for a link back to their site. Be careful with linking to those directories because some might be treated as link-farms and will get you penalized by the search engines. If linking to a directory, find out if it is a legitimate website first. Also, try linking only to those sites that are related to yours in some way.

• Video sharing (Youtube.com, Google Videos, etc.)

If you have some skills at shooting interesting videos or making video tutorials (such as a SEO tutorial or a witty Photoshop technique tutorial) you can post them on a variety of video-sharing networks, and put a link to your website in the description of your input.

• Social Networking (MySpace.com, Facebook.com, etc.)

Social networking sites are a great way to show of your business along with your website to the world. A profile on MySpace or Facebook can gain you new clients, help to stay in touch with existing ones, develop business relations with other companies, and be a source of links and traffic to your website.

• Blogs (blogger.com, wordpress.com, etc.)

Blogs, similarly to social networking sites, are a good way of sharing information about your business/website with the world. By writing relevant content, you can gain links and exposure

• Message boards, forums
• Digg.com
• Wikipedia.org
• Google Pages
• Link Exchange

• Email Marketing/Newsletter

A company online newsletter can keep your visitors updated and in touch with your website. Marketing emails can also attract possible clients for your business. If you decide to engage in an email marketing campaign, keep one thing in mind: “Don’t SPAM!”

I will be posting new techniques and tips for search engine optimization, as well as discussing the ones contained in this article in more detail, so stay tuned!

Thanks for visiting my blog!

-Konrad

We all know that one of the major factor in Google SERPs is the amount of inbound links from external sites. So why not use what the guys at ‘Big G’ offer us and sign up for Google Page Creator and get a link from the Google’s server itself? Besides getting an easy incoming link, reasons why one would want to get an account are many. One, it’s free (that’s a no-brainer). Two, it’s easy and fast to use (Truth be told, it’s one of the best WYSIWYGs that I’ve seen so far. You can create a decent looking website with virtually no HTML skills whatsoever!). Three, it gives you additional exposure to your potential customers and can be a useful networking tool.

I just wanted to share this idea for link building with everybody. If you don’t already have one, you can go to http://pages.google.com to get one. I already got mine: http://konrad.kociszewski.googlepages.com/

I’ll be posting more link-building ideas and hopefully will put together some nice guide with all the links in one place soon. Till then, have a good one all!

-K