As SEO professionals sometimes we forget that bigger is no always better. Niche blogs are excellent sources for links because the traffic coming from these links tend to be more focused (interested in your product or service) and more likely to convert to sales (people who are visiting a niche site are generally looking for specific information on that particular field – so you automatically clear out all the clutter that many links tend to bring). Sure, you might only get 10% of the traffic, but the conversion rate for that 10% may be far higher than the other 90% of the traffic you’d get from more general links!

Of course the big question is how do you find niche blogs and sites that you can form a relationship with? Generally speaking the best way to find them is to be involved in the community they are in. If you are an avid knitter, no doubt you already know where some of the best knitting sites area. When you start to develop content and sites that fit into a niche it’s a good idea to go out there and see what others are doing. Search engines are a good way to find content, of course, but be sure to narrow it down. For example, don’t just search for knitting, but rather search for the specific type of knitting you might be interested in – such as “knitting sweaters with 100% cotton”.

Niche sites also tend to stick around longer than other more general sites. The reason is that for many niche sites it is their passion – or at least their hobby. Anyone can talk about tech, but it takes someone with a real, genuine interest to talk about collecting old railroad memorabilia or discussing alternative educational models for science and math.

When you find sites that you’d like to strike up a relationship with, make sure you adhere to rule #1 on the SEO world: don’t spam. Strike up a conversation, get to know the site owner and make sure you spell out the reason for your contact in the email. If they are interested, they will follow-up with you. If not, then move on. Some niche blog owners are passionate about their topics and don’t accept advertisements or link exchanges from anyone no matter how good your content or product is.

By finding your niche you may find that you deliver less traffic, but the traffic you do get converts into meaningful dollars and cents. It’s a great way for SEO firms large and small can work to help promote their clients by focusing in on the areas and subject matters that will generate the best return on investment and not just eyes and clicks.

The most immediate impact of the Bing/Yahoo announcement on July 29th is that the playing field for search engines just got a lot smaller. We will now be left with two major players in the marketplace: Google (the leader) and Yahoo/Bing (the up and coming). The other search engines, while out there, really don’t show up on the radar screen at this point. So is this a big deal? It really is, and it does mean that content is going to reign supreme for a long time to come. When you only have two major players in the marketplace, you really have only one way to differentiate yourself from the other 1 billion+ web sites in your niche – content.

Of course, SEO professionals were already aware that content was an important part of any search engine placement strategy. So this one won’t come as a surprise to many – just a gentle reminder to keep the content relevant and fresh.

The bigger concern is of course what happens over the long haul. Right now most of us apply techniques that favor Google, which makes sense since they hold 60% plus of the market. However the newly combined Bing/Yahoo represents an opportunity to start exploring this up and coming ‘niche’ if you will. After all, 20% of the market is pretty big. You might not be #1 on Google, but what if you could get to be #1 on Bing. That’s a lot of clicks!

It’s no secret that Bing has been getting good press as well – even the critics seem to like it. It could be possible that Bing starts being a real challenge to Google. If it continues to erode market share from them then more and more of your clicks could be arriving from Bing. SEM strategies that worked with Google may not work as well with Bing – after all, every search engine is different.

So what can you do to prepare for the Bing/Yahoo merger and prepare for the “what might be” of the future? Simple – keep practicing good SEO strategies.

As long as you practice the tried and true techniques many of you won’t have anything to worry about. It wouldn’t hurt to go ahead and join Bing’s webmaster program just so you know what is going on – but for the most part, its business as usual.

Nothing is as certain as change – and someday instead of telling people to “Go Google It” we may saying “Just Bing It!”

If it only it were that easy for the rest of us.

When it comes to marketing your blog, product or idea online one of the first things you need to think about is your domain name. For many of us our domain name is also our brand name – so we need to make sure it represents not only our product, but also is easily recognizable. The problem is finding a good domain name is next to impossible – and if it’s in the dictionary, you can probably bet it has already been taken!

In the early days we only had to worry about .com, .org and .net – and it was the gold standard that you had to have a .com name, otherwise you were invisible. Today there are hundreds of extensions you can choose from around the world, .com still rules the world, but there are a lot of other domain extensions that have become a part of our “Internet vocabulary” such as .ly (bit.ly) and .url (tiny.url).

Now some of you may be wondering why you can’t just go register the first thing that is available and let your content push your domain to the top of the listings. There isn’t anything wrong with this approach if you have killer content – but, surprisingly enough, there is an SEO reason for having a good, branded domain name and not just a random collection of letters with any available suffix.

The search engines, particularly Google, place some weight on the fact that someone is searching for a brand and a domain name that matches the brand. So, for example, if I am searching for Kmart the fact that Kmart.com is out there is very favorable in the rankings. This effect is even more apparent when you start talking about proper names. A domain name that matches the name of the person you are searching for nearly always bubbles to the top in search. This is why many PR firms nowadays recommend that people register their names as a .com.

SEO aside for a moment, another reason you don’t want a jumble of letters is because it is hard to remember. If Kmart had named their online presence “kmartbluelightspecialdepartmentstore.com” not many people would remember that. You have to keep your domain name simple, reflective of your brand and easy to remember – something that isn’t always easy in today’s competitive domain name marketplace.

It’s also a good idea to stay with from hypens and numbers. It’s impossible for most people to remember a hyphen and if you use a number, such as “2site.com” people will not know if they are to type in the number or spell it out. It’s an SEO nightmare, especially when you are trying to get people to link to your site.

So what’s an SEO professional to do when trying to recommend the best domain strategy to their clients? Focus on the brand, the products and be creative. Depending on the client you may recommend they engage with a professional marketing firm to help them lock in a domain.

In the online world a domain is worth a million clicks, and then some. What does your domain say about you?

It’s the same thing in the SEO world. Try as we might to get good rank using tried and tested methods, sometimes it’s tempting – perhaps even a bit necessary – to engage in risky SEO behavior to see if you can’t fool the big guys – namely Google. We know what will happen if we get caught buying links or buying placement, but it all comes down to a risk vs. reward structure: How much risk am I willing to take given the reward (placement, conversions, etc.) I get?

So we are adults here, so let’s be honest – we all engage in this risky behavior now and again in the SEO world. It’s just something that – well, it’s something every SEO professional does. The question is, how can we engage in this behavior with the least amount of risk?

Link buying, paying to have posts (especially negative) removed or altered and buying hosted content are the three things that rate high on the SEO risk meter. So let’s talk about how to put some distance between you and what you are trying to do.

First, when you engage in this type of activity keep in mind that some sites may turn around and report you directly. Lesson #1 is never reveal your domain or who you are until you’ve felt out the contact on the other end. Find out if they are interested first, then worry about the details (like who and what) later.

Second, don’t try this with the big guys – this type of behavior is better suited for niche markets, and not for the Internet Top 10. As you work in your market space over time you will get to know other players in the market, and can use that information to build relationships that help you push the envelope a little. Just remember, it has to be beneficial to both parties!

Finally, if they don’t respond to your request (you did use a generic e-mail right, such as a @gmail or @hotmail account?) or they turn you down, then cease communications there. Do not try and get other sites to change their minds or go back every few weeks and try again. This is a sure fire way to get them upset and for you to find yourself in hot water with the search engines if they report you and they can figure out what domains you are with.

While I certainly don’t encourage anyone to engage in risky SEO practices, I do realize that sometimes it is necessary for certain reasons. Just be sure to keep some distance between you and the other sites so you always have enough room to plausibly deny being involved. After all, it only takes one time for you to be exposed to send your domain into a nosedive with the search engines.

#1 – Don’t Play with Fire

We all know of the backdoor tricks and ways to “game” the search engines, especially Google. Some are legitimate, but some are like playing with fire. Sure, you may build rank today, but what happens tomorrow when Google wakes up and delists your site completely? Before you try something look around and see who else is doing it – if nobody else is chances are you shouldn’t be either!

#2 – Don’t Confuse SEO with Conversions

For some reason many firms confuse sales with SEO. Proper SEO is going to drive traffic to your site, but it’s up to you to complete the sale. If you don’t have good content and good sales material you aren’t going to generate sales. SEO can’t force people to buy your product.

#3 – Don’t Low Ball Yourself

SEO work is hard and the companies you are doing for will reap huge rewards when it is done right. Don’t sell yourself short and work for pennies. Being the cheapest SEO firm in town isn’t a blessing – unless you like working 3 times as hard for half the pay.

#4 – Start Paying Attention to Analytics

You don’t know how much your effort and work with SEO optimization has paid off without some metrics. Know where the site is starting from and then watch your metrics and third-party data collectors to know how you are doing. Sometimes even when we think we are doing something right, it can have the exact opposite effect on traffic!

#5 – Don’t Promise the World

Always undersell your abilities and then look like a miracle worker when you deliver results that blow them away. It’s a lot easier to deliver more than what they asked for (nobody complains about stellar results) then to be put in a situation where you have to make excuses for not delivering on what you said you could do. SEO is hard work, so make sure you aren’t promising your clients mountains before you climb up the molehill first.

#6 – No, You Don’t Know “That Guy”

Chances are that some of you know somebody that works at Google or Bing. However, don’t tell your clients that you can get them special treatment. That is setting yourself up for failure no matter how many people you might know. Do you think your “friend” at Google is going to risk his job just so your client can rank 2 places higher? I don’t think so.

#7 – Don’t Believe Everything You Read (Except This!)

Between the blogosphere, Facebook, Twitter and all the other social networks out there it’s a constant buzz of information flowing 24×7. Don’t believe every word of it. Even when things are 100% factual they may not apply to your client or your business model. Read often and share your ideas and thoughts with others, but also know how to apply what you read and be analytical about what you use in your business.

#8 – Tomorrow Isn’t Yesterday

You may be the #1 SEO firm out there today, but where will you be tomorrow? Never sit around and rest on your past successes. So many people get so involved in what they are doing they fail to notice the world around them changing. Can you believe that after a month some people in the SEO world still have no idea what Bing is? Yikes!

#9 – There is More to Marketing than the Web

Sure, you are an SEO firm and that is what you know best. However, traditional marketing is still alive and well. A good SEO firm knows how to talk with their clients about supplementing their SEO efforts with other marketing products – such as e-mail, PPC, etc. Don’t be a “one trick” pony.

#10 – Don’t Piss Off the Developers

Often times you are working with the backend developers on a site and it’s real easy to lose your temper and dismiss their work. These guys are doing their job and we all make mistakes. A few kind words to them can really make your life a lot easier, especially when you are fighting for development time to get your SEO changes in place!

#11 – Don’t Get Involved in Projects with Jerks

If you don’t like someone, then don’t work for them – you’ll end up not liking them even more and it could turn into a big disaster for you and your company.

#12 – Don’t Try To Know It All

None of us know everything about SEO. It changes on a daily basis. So don’t try to be a know-it-all. When making broad statements to clients be sure to let them know that there are risks as well as rewards and give them options. You’ll get a lot more satisfied clients that way.

#13 – Content. Content. Content.

You can apply SEO to all the crap you want, but in the end it will still be crap. Content is king – and if you aren’t talking to your client about their low quality content then you aren’t doing your job.

It really all boils down to the fact that SEO isn’t some mysterious trade that only a few gifted people can ever master; it also isn’t something that you need a degree in rocket science in order to master and comprehend. Search is only one part of the whole marketing puzzle – and as many people have found over the years, you can be great at SEO but still have a site that does lackluster in performance and revenue.

Most often people who are a quest for the secrets of SEO have failed to establish a solid business model for their websites. They jump right in with dollar signs in their eyes and don’t have a firm foundation onto which to build their sites. They will spend all day and night trying to get people to link to them and trying the latest SEO techniques on their sites and fail to realize that why it isn’t working is because their content just absolutely sucks!

Having said all of that, let’s focus in on a few of the essential pieces of SEO that every firm should understand:

• Focus on your market and keywords that fit your market. If you don’t know what your market is, then you need to stop right here and develop your business model.
• Make sure your site is able to be indexed by web crawlers. You’d be surprised how many sites are blocking some of their best content!
• Content, content, content – it’s what it all boils down to in the end.
• Build inbound links and outbound links.

Once you have mastered their four areas, most of the rest of what you will read about SEO is just icing on the cake. In fact, you’d be better off spending that extra time focusing in on your business strategy and your marketing plan. You’ll see much bigger return on investments. Just remember, if your business fundamentals are lacking or poor, no amount of SEO trickery is going to help.

Just think about it for a minute – let’s say that you get to a site because it ranks #1 in a query. If the site provides nothing you want, or the pricing is more than what you would pay elsewhere, then why stay there?

SEO is more than just website techniques; it’s about business as well. The better you understand how business and marketing works, the greater your return on investment will be for your SEO efforts.

The first question you have to ask yourself when thinking of a domain name for your site is what is your site about – what are you trying to sell or provide information on? If you are creating your 50th site about Viagra, then, let’s face it, the domain name really doesn’t matter – we all know what we are after here and the domain is a “throw away”. Choose whatever you fancy!

For the rest of us, we need to ask ourselves some questions so that our domain name not only helps promote our product or service, but also helps us with SEO strategy.

Realize that traffic comes from everywhere. There was a time when traffic came from two places: a search engine or someone typing it in the address bar manually. Today, traffic comes from hundreds of places with more being added every day. Places such as Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia just to name a few. One of the best ways to get traffic to your site is to have someone mention you on a social networking site!

People can’t write about you or recommend you if they can’t remember you. Here is where our first tip comes in: make the domain name memorable, and writeable! Avoid hard to spell words or domain names that run on and on and on and …. Make it easy for people to find and link to you!

It’s all about the brand. As we talked about before, you have to have a branding strategy. However, many website owners only think about the primary brand and give up too easily when they find out that all the good names are already being used. Sometimes you have to go with a soft brand. Think about Microsoft’s Hotmail – the soft brand here is “mail”, with their own branding “hot” added in. You will find that you can often have great success with soft branding your domain, especially if you are in a crowded market already.

Just like real estate, good domain names go up in value. Most companies already know this, but their domain name is an asset just as much as the desk and chairs sitting in the office are. Good domain names appreciate over time as the value and familiarity of them go up. A good, well thought out domain name will only help in this area. You want people to not only visit your website, but eventually to wish they could have your domain name as well!

Exact Match Helps. It’s no secret that people click on the links that are not ads more often than they do when they are ads. So when you have a domain name that is an exact match to a query about a product or service you offer that is pure gold. Google and the other search engines give extra “credit” to domains who match queries directly, helping promote them to the top of the list. It’s essentially free PPC!

What it all boils down to in the end is that picking a domain name is a daunting task, but when you apply marketing and SEO techniques you can help build your business from day one instead of having to rebrand it down the road. Take time to investigate possible domain names and make sure they help you with your marketing strategy both now and in the future.

The first tool you should have under your belt is Google Alerts which tracks search results, Google Groups, Google News, Google Video and the blogosphere. This extremely easy to use tool will send you an e-mail summary every time your search term appears – the e-mail can be sent as it happens (in Google time), once a day or once a week. At the very least I recommend that every company be searching for mentions of the company name to keep track of what’s being said about them and by whom.

Next we’re going to talk about Twitter and tweets – no, this isn’t a new species of birds, but rather it’s the hottest tool out there for micro-blogging. Twitter lets people send short (140 character or less ) messages out from their computer, cell phone or other mobile device. Twitter is by far one of the products marketers far and wise have their eye on now for expanding their media presence. Searching is not as automated as Google but a new interface launched recently at search.twitter.com lets you search for topics and get updates as they happen. There are also a number of third party apps that tie into Twitter to provide this functionality as well – my favorite happens to be TwitterDeck.

What about the video and photos sites such as YouTube and Flickr? You may think you don’t need to monitor these, but remember the world is much more than static text nowadays. Many people are posting videos of their praise (or anger) of companies on Youtube, as well as participating in viral marketing. Some people even make their own commercials for their favorite companies and post them for all to see. Not only can you find people talking about your company through photo or video, but you can also find a wide array of video that might spark ideas within your company as well.

We talked already about searching blogs through Google Alerts, but I’d also like to encourage you to use Google Reader to keep track of bloggers that you enjoy and other topics of interest. Anything with an RSS feed can be put into Google Reader and organized for you. One of the best features of Google Reader is its ability to keep track of statistics of who is reading what and how many subscribers a blog has – valuable marketing insight for free!

Finally, I’d like to talk about the social networking sites – Facebook, Myspace and the like. It’s important to get your business online and setup on these sites to interact with your customers and to find out what people are thinking about your company. Many companies from Sears to Kellogs have Facebook pages that let their customers interact with them and also provides a rich media channel for you to push material out to them and get feedback. Its part of that third generation of marketing we were talking about above!

So now that you know that your customers are talking about you and where, it’s time to get busy monitoring and participating in the conversation – you might be surprised at what you learn just by listening!

Think about all the search engines out there – and the ones you use on a regular basis. Chances are that if you are like a majority of the internet users out there your first destination for search is Google. However, there are others out there as well we are all familiar with – Yahoo, Ask and MSN to name a few. So why goes Google get the lion’s share of traffic? There have been studies that have shown when the users had no idea what search engine they were using the results from their search were pretty much the same across the board – there was no noticeable “benefit” in the blind study for results that were returned from Google.

So what is it about Google that makes them special? It turns out it’s their point of differentiation of their product combined with their stronger level of trust amongst their users. One of the ways you build your brand is to cultivate an environment that is always looking at how to differentiate their product from the competition – something Google has done very well.

You can see this in companies that you interact with everyday, and not just online companies either. Take a look at Wal-Mart vs. Kmart. Wal-Mart has a much stronger brand than Kmart even though numerous studies have shown that there is no significant price differential between the two retailers. Yet while Kmart slept, Wal-Mart built their brand and point of differentiation (Low Prices, Always) with their customers.

So how do you build your brand on your website and within your company – even if you are a company of one? First, you have to learn to step out of the comfort circle. Sure, you may have been the hottest SEO company two years ago, but times change and you can’t keep living in the past. So many companies (Kmart, Yahoo, Ebay) were once king of the hill and now find themselves being beaten up in the marketplace by competitors. Instead of adapting to a changing environment they wanted to cling to the past. Start by reading new blogs, and not just SEO blogs. If you are an affiliate marketer for the automotive industry start reading blogs devoted to automobile enthusiasts – you might be surprised what insight you can gain!

Second, don’t just mimic what the competition is doing – do it better. Social media marketing is the buzz now, and this is a perfect way to differentiate yourself from your competition by having a presence and community on the social sites. Remember the old Apple slogan, “Think Different!”

Finally, when it comes to pure SEO, stop complaining about Google and start working with them. Sure, it may be unfair that they control the search arena – but you can either complain about it or you can work to make your site take advantage of their quirks and specialties. This is especially true for those in the affiliate marketing arena.

Let’s start with the basics – how does your site generate revenue? There are really two ways you are getting money in the bank. Either people know about your site already (it’s printed in a catalog, word of mouth, etc.) and they are coming directly to you, or they are finding you through search engines and are purchasing from you after finding you. The second scenario is the most common for many (but not all) firms – a good example of a firm where this is not true is Sears.com, where they get a majority of their traffic through direct visits because of their brand name and offline marketing.

Most firms are leaving revenue on the table because they don’t effectively manage their conversions (where they find you through a search engine and make a sale). It is here where many SEO consulting firms can help your firm by focusing in on rank, optimization and keyword conversion.

The next area is traffic. Some SEO firms focus way too much in on rank – and the truth is, rank changes way too often depending on a multitude of factors. The general rule of thumb is that if you are on the first page of results you are doing well. Many SEO consultancies focus in on traffic instead of rank – how can you get more traffic to your site so that some of that traffic can turn into conversions? Most of this comes through basic SEO optimization and content analysis. Remember, at the end of the day, content is always king.

Best practices are something that all of us can use a refresher on now and then. If your firm is not engaged in SEO right now this should be part of any consulting contract. The goal here is to show you how to engage in the correct procedures and standards that will maximize your ranking. This often goes hand-in-hand with training, where the consultant will spend a few weeks (or sometimes months) with the firms employees showing them how to apply best practices. Once you get employees inside the company engaged in SEO then you will find the buy-in by the company will increase significantly.

Finally, look at the big revenue picture – or what we call in the business world ROI. This is the most important metric for any firm. Can you show an increase (or decrease) in revenue as a direct result of the efforts you put forth for SEO? Once you can measure it, then you can better understand how SEO affects everything from rank to conversion to organic keyword search. Make sure that any SEO engagement you take part in includes both a before and after analysis of the revenue stream so you know exactly what you are paying for.