1) Determination of the status quo

• SE traffic
• Sources of error (404, breach of Google guidelines,…)
• Inbound Links / Google Pagerank
• Various On-Page factors

2) Evaluation of the status quo

• Illustration of the flaws

3) Definition of objective targets

• Target keywords/phrases (factors: relevancy, competition, expected traffic)

4) Optimization

• Elimination of sources of error
• On-Page-Optimization
• Off-Page-Optimization

5) Performance Analysis

Random practical example: Notesbrowser.com (partially retrospective)

1) Determination of the status quo with

1. Google Analytics
2. Google Webmaster Tools
3. Digitalpoint’s Keyword Tool

• SE traffic (low)
• Sources of error (none)
• Inbound Links, Google Pagerank (many, 4)
• On-Page factors (no keyword optimization at all)

2) Evaluation of the status quo

• Illustration of the flaws (missing keyword optimization)

3) Definition of objective targets

• Target keywords/phrases for which (relevancy*expected traffic/competition) = max

1. organizer software
2. to-do-list
3. memo software
4. notes manager
5. desktop calendar

4) Optimization

• On-Page Optimization

Creation of separate pages with the filenames

organizer-software.html
to-do-list.html
memo-software.html
notes-manager.html
desktop-calendar.html

Creation of internal link structure with the keywords as anchor text

Implementation of the keywords/phrases into website titles

Implementation of keyword-related text using html elements like (h1, h2, … , strong, italic, alt)

• Off-Page Optimization

Creation of links from external websites using the keywords/phrases as anchor text:

1. organizer software
2. desktop calendar
3. memo software
4. to do list
5. notes manager

5) Performance Analysis

• Currently, Notesbrowser.com is ranking

#19 on Google.com for “organizer software”

#13 on Google.com for “memo software”

#88 on Google.com for “notes software”

But we’re just getting started - let’s see if Notesbrowser.com manages to reach the Top 10 or even rank #1!

The Wordpress SEO theme is XHTML compliant and extremely light-weight due to the use of CSS design and maximum image file size reduction through the use of background image repetition for all repeating patterns. Of course it is also capable of being used with the dynamic sidebar feature which the latest versions of Wordpress do support.

Visually, the SEO theme is aimed to look stylish and minimalistic, so as to withstand that type of critical eye which is getting annoyed by looking at the same things again every day.

I’ll let you know when the theme is ready for download!

What is “Google Bowling” aka “reverse SEO“?

“Google Bowling“, also called “reverse SEO” is a technique, based on the simple fact that there is a second way of getting on top of the Google search results:

- increasing your own rank
- decreasing your competitor’s rank

Google Bowling is an SEO technique that is capable of decreasing a competitor’s rank in the Google Search Engine.

How does “Google Bowling” aka “reverse SEO” work?

Is it really possible to decrease a competitor’s rank without touching his website? - Yes it is possible.

Google Bowling exploits the ranking penalty algorithms that Google applies to websites that are playing against the rules by spamming other websites with inbound links.

To bowl a website from the top of the Google results, an opponent needs to spam a huge amount of other websites with links to the target website in a short amount of time, to trigger Google’s Anti-Spam algorithms. If the efforts are successful, Google will think that the target website is trying to illegitimately increase their rankings through spamming and apply a ranking penalty to that website, dropping it from the top search results or even making it completely dissapear from the SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages).

Due to the huge amount of spam links needed for a successful Google Bowl, I believe that it is impossible to Google Bowl manually. From what I have heard, Google Bowling is mostly done with automated website spamming software which targets forums or blogs with comment spam.

Is Google Bowling easy?

I haven’t done Google Bowling myself and I am not planning to do it, but from what I have heard and from my knowledge about the Google Algorithms, it should not be an easy task due to the huge amount of successful spam needed within a short period of time.

Is Google Bowling legal? Should I try this?

No. Do not try to Google bowl your competitors. This is definately an illegal activity and you might get sued for this. You have been warned…

Protection against Google Bowling

At the moment, I cannot think of any useful protection against Google Bowling except that Google finds a way to adjust their algorithms to make Google Bowling impossible.

I can imagine that it is also hard to prove Google Bowling as a victim, but if you should have any evidence that a competitor is trying to Google bowl your website, I would recommend to contact your lawyer to take care of this.

I have created numerous webdesigns in the past and also worked on a lot of SEO related projects - right now I am utilizing both webdesign and seo by working on a wordpress seo theme (a search engine optimized wordpress theme for the popular wordpress blog software) .

What will make the SEO Theme search engine friendly?

• use of div layers instead of tables
• external css to reduce html code
• light-weight graphics
• search engine optimized site structure
• … some additional optimization details under development
  

Additional features of the Wordpress SEO theme:

• wordpress sidebar widget compatibility
• clean, modern design
• valid xhtml and css for optimized accessibility
• … some more under development
  

SEOing the search engine friendly Wordpress?

Yes, Wordpress is by default a quite search engine friendly blog software. One of the nice built-in features is a mod-rewrite function that enables you to change the layout of your wordpress blog’s permalink structure. It’s accessible through your admin panel: select “options” -> “permalinks”. For example the link structure I am currently using is achieved by specifying a “custom structure” which is /%category%/%postname%.html

From an SEO point of view, Wordpress is fairly nicely coded - however, most wordpress themes are not made to be search engine friendly - and the few ones that are search engine optimized tend to have a rather boring design.

That’s why I started to think about creating a search engine optimized wordpress theme.

When will the SEO friendly wordpress theme be released?

I think that it will be ready in a few weeks, that depends on the amount of other work I am going to have to finish though.

As soon as the SEO theme for Wordpress is finished, I will release it to the public to let everyone use it for free.

Where will the Wordpress SEO theme be available for download?

The Search Engine Optimized Wordpress Theme will be downloadable from Optimized-Promotion.com - the exact url will be published as soon as the theme is finished.

A “social bookmarking website” is a website that allows their users to save their bookmarked websites online and share them with other people. The typical social bookmarking website then lists the most popular bookmarked sites, sorted by the quantity of bookmarks and divided by category.

The importance of social bookmarking websites as marketing tool

Social bookmarking websites have reached an immense popularity - several of the most popular social bookmarking websites are reaching 1 million visitors per day or more.

Social bookmarking websites as Traffic source

If your website becomes one of the most popular bookmarks, most social bookmarking sites put your link on their front page - sending you up to 30k of traffic (visitors).

Social bookmarking websites as Source for inbound links

A second, in the long term even more important benefit of reaching the front page is the huge amount of inbound links (usually up to 1000 inbound links) your site is getting afterwards from other sites using you as link reference. From an SEO point of view, this is probably the most efficient way of increasing the link popularity of a website at the moment.

Social bookmarking websites as Viral marketing campaign epicenter

The combined power of traffic and link popularity growth also makes social bookmarking websites an ideal media platform for launching viral marketing campaigns with link baits.

The most popular social bookmarking websites

Source: Search Engine Strategies Conference 2007 New York

1) Digg.com

• 2 million+ visitors daily
• 50-100 votes required for front page
• 10-30k visits on average after front page listing
• 1000+ links after a few weeks

Add Digg social bookmarking functionality to your site here.

2) Del.icio.us

• 1 million+ visits daily
• 20-30 votes required for front page

Add del.icio.us social bookmarking functionality to your site here.

3) Reddit.com

• 500k visits
• 20-40 votes required for front page
• 4-10k visits average
• ~600+ links after a few weeks

Add Reddit social bookmarking functionality to your site here.

4) Netscape.com

• 250k visits daily
• 20-40 votes required for front page
• 4-8k visits average
• ~300+ links per article

Add Netscape social bookmarking functionality to your site here.

5) StumbleUpon.com

• 3 million+ users
• 50-5,000 continuous visits
• ~25-250 links

Add Stumbleupon social bookmarking functionality to your site here.

From theory to practice: Link baiting for social bookmarking websites

What do you need to do to reach the front page of a social bookmarking website?

Create optimized content!

Publish content that meets the criteria of a link bait as defined here:

- “Something unique, something that is extremely useful or impressive, astonishing or shocking.”

- “…any kind of content and media: A tool, a text, a video, an image or any kind of service that fits the attributes described before. ”

Many of the social bookmarking sites, especially Digg, have a focus on tech/news/geek content, so take this fact into consideration when choosing or creating link bait content - to be able to reach a big target audience.

Optimize the webpage containing the content!

• Add social bookmarking links

Make it easier for your visitors to social bookmark your website: Add bookmarking links

Check your server hardware and connection

• Prepare your server for massive traffic

Ready to get dugg? When a lot of people are bookmarking your website on digg.com, your server and server connection will have to stand up to 30000 visitors per day.

Bandwidth consumption

Depends on the total file size of your webpage (including graphics).

For example if your webpage has a total file size of 360kb, 30000 visits will cause 10.8 Gigabytes of bandwidth consumption. If these 30000 visits occur within one day, you will need to provide 1 Megabit/second on average. However, keep in mind that traffic peaks will probably double or triple this amount and if you don’t want to lose any traffic, you’ll need to adapt your webserver connection accordingly. If you are unsure about your connection, ask your webhost on this.

Cpu and Ram consumption

Dynamically generated pages will consume more cpu and ram resources than static webpages.

To stand 30000 visitors per day, roughly estimated minimum requirements would be a 2 Ghz processor and 512 Megabytes of Ram, for dynamically generated pages using database connections, 1 Gigabyte of Ram might be needed - this depends on a lot of other factors and individual configuration as well though.

A dedicated server is definately recommended as most virtual/shared hosting accounts will not be able to provide the level of performance needed for a front page listing on the major social bookmarking websites.

Social bookmarking websites: Alexa traffic trends

Which social bookmarking site will be the most valuable one for promotion in future?

Let’s try to estimate traffic trends with Alexa…

Alexa.com tracks and publicly displays website traffic by measuring website visits with their browser toolbar. Due to the lack of equal distribution to the various groups of internet users and countries, the Alexa website rankings are in many cases extremely inaccurate. However, they can be used to roughly estimate traffic tendencies.

As you can see, del.icio.us seems to be losing quite a lot of traffic, stumbleupon seems to be gaining some popularity, most others are maintaining their traffic. As said before, Alexa stats are not very accurate - however, they seem to confirm that Digg currently is and will in the near future most fortunately stay the leading social bookmarking site.

That’s why if you’re going to specifically optimize your link bait for the individual target audience on one social bookmarking site, I would recommend to target Digg.

Today I received an Email from Google notifying me of the new beta version of Google Analytics. Let’s check it out together:

Google Analytics New Beta / Welcome message

Google still leaves the option to use the previous stats interface:

Google Analytics New Beta / Dashboard

Google Analytics New Beta / Visitors Overview

Google Analytics New Beta / Traffic Sources Overview

Google Analytics New Beta / Content Overview

Google Analytics New Beta / Evaluation

You’ve seen the screenshots - the design of the new Google Analytics beta is nice, clean and neatly arranged. Unlike at the previous version of Google Analytics, graphs and stats tables are scaling with the surfer’s screen resolution to fit to the screen horizontally.

When compared to the old version of Google Analytics, the new Google Analytics beta doesn’t introduce any remarkable new features - however it seems more lucid which leads to an increased time efficiency when viewing the stats. In other words: With the new Google Analytics, you’ll find the desired information faster. I’d definately recommend to check it out!

The term “Viral marketing“describes a marketing technique which is using existing social networks to increase brand awareness by spreading self-replicating, viral processes.

In other words, viral marketing is a technique that attracts massive consumer attention by presenting something which is so fascinating by itself, that it makes the consumers recommend it to other people, especially by word-of-mouth recommendation. Accordingly, in a viral marketing campaign, each consumer is turned into a promoter unknowingly, with the result of a self-replicating consumer attention for the marketing campaign.

The word “viral” describes how strong the amount of consumer attention is rising during the campaign. Similar to the propagation of a virus, the amount of ‘infected’ consumers is rising exponentially when each ‘infected’ consumer ‘infects’ several others by word-of-mouth recommendation.

Using viral marketing on the internet for SEO: link baiting

“Link baiting” is a particular kind of viral marketing for SEO purposes, where the viral effect is created by consumers setting up links to the corresponding website. The more inbound links, the more consumers - the more consumers, the more inbound links.

Link baiting probably is the most efficient and successful technique for increasing link popularity at the moment. Are you interested in learning more about link baiting?

Read this article: Link baiting, fishing for inbound links

On may 1st, 2007, a groundbreaking step in the history of user generated content and web 2.0 has been made.

Digg.com, one of the leading social bookmarking websites with over 2 million daily visitors, was forced to surrender to the power of their users.

What had happened?

• A digg user had posted a HD-DVD AACS Processing Key number which allows anyone to crack the copyright protection of HD-DVDs.
• Digg.com management was forced to take this post down and forbid the key from being posted again, after they had received a cease and desist order from the companies behind the HD-DVD.

What happened next?

• Digg users started to revolt against this decision - 100s of posts containing the same decryption key were dugg, 1000s of comments were posted
• Digg started to delete these new posts and also deleted user accounts posting them

Finally, Digg surrendered to the power of their users - and announced that they will stop deleting topics containing the HD-DVD encryption key and instead face the legal consequences - the risk of being sued by the large companies behind the HD-DVD.

Is user generated content getting out of hand?

This decision definately is a milestone in the history of web 2.0 and user generated content - a victory for freedom of speech on one hand, but also warning for all other web 2.0 site owners.

User generated content is a powerful tool to build up large communities but digg’s example has shown that this power may get out of hand, leaving the site operators no choice but to obey the conviction of the community.

The future of Digg.com: lawsuits? fines?

Most fortunately, Digg will be facing lawsuits and sentenced to pay a heavy fine on this.

Let’s hope that the Digg users who were diligently posting and digging the stories about the HD-DVD decryption key are as diligent when it comes to donating to Digg’s lawsuit fines, because that’s what makes a great online community - when all users care for the well-being of the company behind the site as much as the company is caring for them.

Is Search Engine Optimization Blog a competitive key phrase?

Yeah, Search Engine Optimization Blog definately is a competitive key phrase (~1 Million results in MSN) and it’s quite rare for a two months old blog to rank that fast for a term like that. Let’s see what other kinds of key phrases we will be ranking for in future - we’ll keep you updated!

• Optimized SEO Blog: #2 on Google - (~ 900,000 results for that key phrase)
• Optimised SEO Blog: #1 on Google - (~1,000,000 results for that key phrase)

Evaluation of the key phrase rank for “Optimized SEO Blog”

Considering that this website was launched only 2 months ago, this is quite good news. However, the competition on these two terms (optimised with “s”: british - optimized with “z”: US) is not really strong so this result should not be over-evaluated. Let’s see how this SEO Blog will rank for more competitive terms like “SEO Blog” in future… We’ll keep you updated!