Matt Cutts WordCamp Slide Presentation

Google guru Matt Cutts gave a talk at WordCamp San Francisco 2009 recently and has posted the slide presentation on his blog. There will likely be a video of the talk released soon, but there is plenty of great information in the slide presentation alone. I highly suggest you go through them all and make sure you fully understand everything he is discussing.

Saturday Around The Web May 30th

I think now on Saturdays, I will post a round up of interesting items I have found around the week, but failed to post about. So much happens during the week that I find interesting, but never get a chance to post about as there is always something new happening. So here are a few items of interest from around the web that I found worth reading.

40 Exceptional CMS Enabling WordPress Plugins is another compilation post about great Wordpress plugins. Many I have mentioned before on this blog and many I have not. It is a great selection and great descriptions.

Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com joined Shoemoney this week on his radio show to talk about a recent blog post on The Search Taxonomy. They go all over the place and touch on many topics, but it is a good listen while you get some other work done.

Creator of Market Samurai, Brent Hodgson, did a great post on Using Market Samurai for Semantic Site Structuring. Market Samurai is turning into a must have tool.

Search Engine Land has a great post on New Google Advances In The Searchability of JavaScript and Flash. Most of the info comes from the Google IO conference. Might be over the head of some, but if you grasp it, it is well worth the read.

Let me know if you like this Saturday post format...

Information Overload And Where To Start

I received an email from a new BANS user saying that they are suffering from information overload. She is new to online marketing and website creation and has been trying to read a ton of everything to get up to speed. This is a very dangerous thing to do for both newbie and veteran alike. You can get so bogged down and pulled in so many directions that nothing will ever be done. Below are a few guidelines on what every newbie should be focusing on and the order they should do it in.

1. Know Your Platform: It does not matter if you use BANS, Wordpress with PHPBay, Blogger or straight HTML, you have to understand how to use the platform correctly and make it dance on command. This should come as second nature before you move on to anything else. You do not need to be a code guru by any means, but knowing how to use the platform is the cornerstone of which your foundation will be built on. I see several veterans in the business who use it wrong and I guarantee they suffer because of it. I have suggested in the past that one should have a test domain setup to practice using whatever platform they are using. Do not advance to number two until you master this.

2. Understanding Onsite SEO: Search engine optimization of your website is crucial if you intend to get any traffic from the search engines. From meta tags, to keyword usage to site structure. You must learn it if you want to succeed. There are various free sites and information on this very blog that will help you learn it quickly.

3. Niche & Keyword Selection: Before you tackle any site you need to know if the niche is profitable and what keywords you intend to target. Targeting a niche too wide early on is a common mistake made by newbies. The tighter the niche and the longer the keyword phrase you target, the more likely you can penetrate the niche in the early stages of your development of an online marketer. There are plenty of free and paid tools to help in this process. Most noticeable, Traffic Travis. Regardless of the tool you decide on, it is important to understand how to use it as well.

4. Onsite Original Content: The days of the thin affiliate doorway site are long gone unless you are buying targeted traffic. Even then, a surfer now wants and expects to be engaged before throwing their hard earned money around. You need original content and lots of it. This should be targeted as well keyword wise and goes hand and hand with onsite SEO. The thicker the site is content wise, the more doors into your site you will have for getting some organic traffic. If you can't write content yourself, pay for it. It is well worth the money spent up front and it is yours forever. If you choose to copy and paste, be prepared not to get any love from the search engines.

5. Traffic Generation: If you have confidently mastered steps 1-4, you are now ready to generate traffic to your site. This is perhaps the hardest process to learn and stay dedicated to. Learn how to build targeted backlinks to your site through article marketing, link trading, social networks and the other various ways of building backlinks. Great onsite content will build links naturally, but you must know how to and understand how to build your own traffic as well. There are tons of free traffic building articles and techniques to learn all over the web, but none should be tackled until your site is ready for the traffic.

6. Continued Learning: The online marketing business is always growing and changing. You should always be reading your favorite and trusted sources for learning more about online marketing, but do not let it eat up all of your time. All learning with no action is worthless. Do not get off on tangents. Learn what you are trying to learn and then implement it. Getting pulled in too many directions at one time is a certain death blow for online marketers.

SEO Checklist Cheat Sheet

I came across one of the better SEO cheat sheets in PDF format this afternoon while reading a post on SEO Moz blog. This is a must have for newbies and veterans alike. Make sure to print it out for quick reference. On a related note, a new post has shown up on the ebay partner network blog. It is part 2 of a 3 part SEO series by Wil Reynolds, founder of Seer Interactive, an industry leading SEO consulting firm.

Technorati Profile

Video On Using The Google SKtool To Categorize Keywords

Was browsing Twitter today and came across a great post on Noble Samurai. It covers some Latent Semantic Indexing talk and also the use of the Google SK tool to categorize keywords. Definitely worth a read and a watch.

Breaking Down The Awesome Backlinks

I was going back over some Whiteboard Friday Videos from Rand Fishkin and came across one I must of missed. It is called "How to Get Awesome Links" and Fishkin does an excellent job as usual explaining the different types of links and more importantly how to get them. As you see it is not earth shattering revelations, but when he diagrams and goes over each one, it is put in easier and learnable terms for those new to business. Watch it and know it.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - How to Get Awesome Links from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Save 15% On Best Of The Web Submissions

I’m a firm believer in using BOTW. BOTW stands for Best of the Web and they currently have a 15% off promotion running which will save you nearly 40 bucks if you purchase a year long link submission. BOTW is a trusted directory that will indeed help improve your rankings as I use it myself. Use the code below when ordering and you’ll get your discount. This current offer expires after May 31st so there is not many more days left. Follow the submission rules closely when submitting.

15% Off Coupon Code: MAYDAY