Site Structure By Yoast

Joost de Valk tackles Intelligent Site Structure for better SEO in his latest post and it is a great one. Yoast walks you through developing a good site structure, naming your sections and internal link structure. Such an easy to follow post with great images to illustrate the flow of the structure as well. Best thing about it it that it is nothing new as Yoast later reveals that the post was originally wrote in October 2007 for dev.opera.com. He says the only thing that has changed since is it's appearance and the adding of a few reference links. As you can see there is nothing magic, mostly common sense, but easy things like this are easily overlooked. Great post for a Friday. Have a great weekend everyone.

Cutts On SEO Misinformation

Stumbled across a video I missed on Matt Cutts where he covers some examples of SEO misinformation that is floating around at there. Meta keywords, links & etc. I always enjoy watching these as they are short and to the point and Cutts does a great job simplifying the subject matter.

Joost de Valk Video: Making Sure Your Content Is Found

I try to keep my eyes open for so many things and stumbled across a great video by Joost de Valk below from the WordCamp in Bulgaria back in October. The audio is a bit hard to hear and it is a long video, but I think you will enjoy it just the same. Joost or Yoast as he is commonly known is one of the people I follow closely in regards to SEO and Wordpress usage. He is the master at both. Enjoy.

SEO Moz On Site Age & Domain Name Registration Length

If you have 10 minutes, you will not be disappointed with the latest Whiteboard Friday video from Rand Fishkin of SEO Moz. Rand touches on site age, domain registration length and age of backlinks and his answers are very encouraging for those of you that may be new or just getting back into the swing of things. Rand points to recent chatter on the forums about these very subjects as the reason for readdressing these topics and talks in a very understandable manner. Rand is one of my favorites in the business to learn from and I owe quite a bit of my success to things I have learned from him along the way. This is a great video and dispels several myths at the same time.

SEOmoz - SEO Software

SEO Checklist For The Social Media Marketer

A bit under the weather tonight as the weather pops back and forth to warm and cold. I hate this time of year down South. I wanted to make sure I passed on this absolutely great post by jennita on SEO Moz in which she gives a complete SEO checklist for the Social Media Marketer. Read it slow as it might be tough to digest if you are new, but she does a great job explaining the why and the why nots. As you should already know by now, Google and Bing use Twitter and Facebook to influence regular search results. If you are using Twitter and Facebook in certain niches, especially ones you might be or close to authoritative, this will certainly help. I have to admit that I am using Twitter more and more as a search engine for timely updates of news and recent blog post. This is a great post and worth book marking.

How To Use The Twitter Advanced Search Feature Video

Wow! What a great video put together by Mashable on how to use the Twitter advanced search feature to return great search results. Well put together video. Gives me tons of fantastic ideas.

Yoast On Duplicate Content

If you have read my blog for a while you know I follow every word that Joost de Valk, better knows as Yoast, preaches. Today he has a super post for you to better understand the different causes of duplicate content, and how to find the solution for each of the causes. This is straight and to the point and something you will likely want to bookmark and refer back to. I also am a fan of his new SEO Wordpress plugin I have talked about recently. You will want to consider learning how to use it. He is a master of Wordpress and SEO and anything he puts out, I subscribe to. Make sure you follow him on Twitter @Yoast.

Boo! The Slashing Blekko Is Open To The Public

A new search engine has entered the arena as Blekko has finally opened to the public. This new way to search gives a surfer an interesting new way to slash or create vertical type search engine for any search topic. Blekko has several other new type features and as time goes on it hopes to improve search relevancy. When you get done with your trick or treaters and your belly is full of candy, take it for a spin. It has a long way to go, but has different twist. Who knows what the future will bring. They said Google would never last. Happy Halloween!

Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin Updated

Yoast has worked out a ton of the early bugs in his latest SEO Wordpress plugin. The newest free version has been released and can be downloaded from here. Make sure it is indeed version 0.1.3 that you install up update to. If you want to see what all is fixed, you can see the changelog here.

If you do not know or are new to all of this, the plugin maker Joost de Valk , is a pioneer in optimization of Wordpress. This plugin is the one to have and I suspect most of the bugs have been worked out by now. Give it a try on one of your sites to test, it should more than fit your needs.

Free Wordtracker SEO Videos

Tonight I came across these great free videos done by Mike Mindel of Wordtracker that gives beginners a great overview of SEO. Mindel is the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Wordtracker.com, a tool that has been around for ages.

* SEO Your Web Page for Google - In the 1st video, Mindel shows you how to SEO your site, so you can rank for the keywords you choose and attract more traffic from Google.

* Discover a Profitable Niche for a New Website - This video is an overview of how to find a profitable niche market for a new site. Great to use at the start of your research process.

* How to Plan Your Site Structure for Maximum Traffic - In the last video Mindel explains how to plan out your site structure and why using category and content pages is the best way to do it.

These are not earth shattering, but they are great basics that often get overlooked.

Exact Match Domains To Be Penalized Soon?

What a great post today by Rand Fishin ON SEO Moz as he addresses the question of if exact domain matches are too powerful and if they will be penalized in the future. Some experts believe that Google is rewarding sites too much right now for exact domain matches and believe you could indeed see a shift in the next 6 months. Right now it seems to be highly educated guesses on this, but owning quite a bit of exact domain name matches, I will be watching a little more closer than normal starting around the 1st of the year. My view is that Google should be able to take other on page things into consideration instead of just throwing the baby out with the bath water so to speak. The best way to combat this is too build sites that do not suck and hopefully you and I have been doing it all along. Sure I have some more spammy than others and will get around to upgrading the quality as I get back around to them. Some great comments in that post as well and I highly suggest chiming in there as well to add to the conversation. Great post as usual by Rand.

Video On Basic Tips Of Image SEO

Happy Friday everyone, it is Friday and that of course means there was a White board Friday video posted up on SEO Moz, one of my all time favorite sites. This week, Danny Dover tackles the basics of image SEO and offers up what is being termed as experimental ways to SEO images that may prove useful now and in the future.

Easy Wordpress SEO & More On The Yoast SEO Plugin

Often times it is good to go back to the simple things to refresh what we do or do not know and what we may have forgotten. Such is the case with this post from Siobhan on the Wordpress & Multisite blog. This post is another great basic and easy to follow SEOing of Wordpress. You will also notice several plugins from Yoast included in this post as well as the WordPress SEO Presentation at A4UExpo London that he did a year ago. Also included is a video on how to setup the WP Super Cache Plugin For WordPress.

You may remember the new SEO plugin I posted about a couple of days ago that is in beta, well Daniel Haim has a flattering review of as well. He goes in further detail how that plugin eliminated 7 different plugins that he uses and you will definitely recognize them. GET THIS PLUGIN NOW!!! I do not know how much clearer I can be on this. Go over the SEO post as well.

Yoast SEO Wordpress Plugin Now In Public Beta

The day has finally arrived as Joost de Valk has released his long awaited SEO Wordpress plugin to a public type beta. I have followed Joost (known as Yoast) for a long while as he is an authority on making Wordpress dance and optimized to it's fullest potential. I highly suggest using this on a site of your own and read all of the post on it. This should become the end all, do all plugin for Wordpress heading into 2011. Get it downloaded and going today and make sure to subscribe to the Yoast blog and follow him on Twitter. He has helped me tremendously over the years as I have learned so much from him.

Using Social Network Profiles For SEO

I am getting caught up thisd evening on some blog reading and have not been to SEO Moz the last few weeks to see the Whiteboard Friday videos. I am glad I did though as Rand had a great video the first of the month about Using Social Network Profiles For SEO. In this video, Rand goes over five ideas for using these types of sites to help with your SEO strategy.

2nd Page Sniper WordPress Plugin Released

Todd Dickerson just released a new Wordpress plugin called the 2nd Page Sniper. I have only downloaded the plugin and plan to put it to work on a test site on Friday as I have way too much on my plate until then. The plugin goes hand in hand with this PDF he created called Beyond Link Building in which he describes his 2nd Page Sniping concept and introduces the plugin and how to use it.

In short, the 2nd Page Sniper logs all incoming search queries from Google, Bing and Yahoo to your website including the page that you are currently ranked on in that search engine. It will then display those links in the sidebar of your blog that it determines to be most likely to create significant ranking increases for with the greatest traffic potential. I should warn that with any plugin like this, you should experiment with it on a test blog before implementing in your entire network of sites. The concept is interesting, but once again I have yet to tackle it myself.

Google Updates SEO Starter Guide

The word is out that Google has updated their SEO Starter Guide and you can download the new 32 page PDF guide right here. The guide was originally released back in November of 2008 and was originally just 22 pages. The new guide has added content and features like a glossary of definitions and terms and more example images to illustrate the content in the guide. In addition they now give mobile device optimization techniques and easier understanding wording of the content so that it reads easier than the prior guide. The guide is also now available in over 40 languages. Make sure to refresh yourself and read through the new guide.

Do You Suffer From Main Keyword Tunnel Vision?

I helped a reader out today by looking at a few of his sites for him to point him in a better direction. He suffers from what so many of us have suffered from at one time or another and that is keyword tunnel vision as I like to call it. Keyword tunnel vision is when you focus too much on just one or too keyword phrases or just a small sampling of keywords as targets that you fail to reach just over your head and grab the easy low hanging fruit or complimentary keywords one would expect to also find on site.

Now by no means does this mean that you should not have a few primary keyword targets that have good search numbers and hopefully low competition, but do not let it end there. The more you target, the more you have out there that are likely to hit. The wider the site, the larger the funnel. Does this mean that five page sites or even one page sites can't earn well? Absolutely not, but the newer you are in this business, the wider you ought to be and the larger the cast net you should have. The better you get at keyword research, the better you will get at building narrower sites. Been there, done that and you will too. Don't get caught up in the old method of just targeting one phrase per page. Have a main target along with a few complimentary sub targets. Use common sense when deciding if it fits on the page, not search engine sense. Stay away from keyword tunnel vision as it will blind you.

SEO Certification Programs? Yeah Right!

I found the latest video from Matt Cutts entertaining that he even had to go this far into depth on SEO certification programs. SEO advice comes in all shapes and sizes. I have seen a ton of everything in my many years of doing this. The single best learning tool is trial and error and following basic SEO guidelines. It is not like there is just one magic secret everyone is hiding out there. Most good SEO is common sense mixed with basic practices. I have seen some sites overcome crappy SEO with great content that gets natural backlinks. Not everyone that builds websites is a SEO pro, they just want to build a site. I would find it hard to suggest anyone pay a SEO professional and would highly suggest seeing examples of high ranking work, legitimate references and site longevity, but hey, some folks will buy just about anything. I have said it many times, write great content and use common sense when in doubt. Track your traffic and work from there. You can always tweek things. It is how we all do it. You will never learn anything about SEO by merely paying someone to do it. The picture is much bigger than it appears on the surface.

OK enough rambling. Here is Matt Cutts.

Google Instant Has Arrived

In case you have been hiding under a rock, you should know by now that the new Google Instant is now live and running. Follow the link I just gave you for a run down of what it is and frequently asked questions concerning instant. In addition there have been several great post concerning the launch and I point you first to Matt Cutts and his take on Google Instant as he addresses it in relation to SEO. He does point out that over time people will learn to search differently and gives examples of it.

Search Engine Land has a complete users guide to Google Instant and how to disable it should you find the need to do so. Danny Sullivan pointed out the 2005 patent on what Google Instant does today. As you can see, it is trending today on Twitter as well and you can learn more by following some links here.