SEO in The Desert

By Wayne Barker

We all know that your inbound linking strategy is crucial to SEO and Internet Marketing – as well as being the most frustrating part of online marketing – and creating quality link bait should be high on your agenda.

Essentially link bait is just a form of content that will gently nudge website owners, bloggers and social media acolytes to link to your site. Matt Cutts himself said link bait is “interesting enough to catch people’s attention” – whilst this is true link bait should be something that is interesting enough for people to want to link to it.

How do you go about creating link bait?

The first step is to put yourself in the position of your potential fish (or audience) and ask yourself what it is they want. Usually the best link bait (or at least the link bait that is successful) can fall into a few simple categories:
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By Nick Lewis

Blogs are often maligned as websites’ younger cousins. However, they can actually be very effective in getting your message out. The crown jewel of social media is to become an authority in your particular market and blogs are a great way to do that. Guest blogging allows your reach to extend even further.

A good blog can be the centre of an effective social media marketing strategy, and, particularly if it’s hosted on the website you want to promote; can be an excellent way of driving traffic. Websites are fantastic for pushing your message out there, but blogs allow greater flexibility in staying up to date and demonstrating your specialist knowledge in your particular niche.

Not only that, but a well loved blog can become a platform for guest blogging, which will allow you to spread your genius even further into cyberspace. If you contribute a knowledgeable post to a well-respected blog, traffic will follow you back to yours, which will have earned extra kudos as a destination for decent information by virtue of your guest post.
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By Richard V. Burckhardt

My blog, The Web Optimist is a source of search engine optimization information for those new to SEO who want to get more informed on what works and what doesn't. I was recently asked what would be the top ten tips out of my popular 110 SEO Tips Even Mom Would Love article. It's kind of hard to separate them into single paragraph bites, so I am presenting them in a more categorized format below.

Understand that these are my personal top tips as an in house SEO. Another SEO would probably have a different list. You know how it goes, put two SEOs in a room and there's gonna be an argument! Heck, I even get arguments from my own SEO cronies!

Keep in mind that...

SEO is NOT Rocket Science

BUT, it is complex and an ongoing process that changes almost daily. There is no such thing as a permanent fix to magically send you to the top of the rankings for good. But here are some of the basics to look for when optimizing your site to drive more traffic, prospects and, hopefully, profit. read more »

By Richard V. Burckhardt

The CEO of Qualcomm recently admitted that the company’s FloTV mobile television sevice, which delivered a paid form of cable TV to mobile phones, has not done so well. Folks (like me) want the content, but why pay for it when there are so many ways to get TV services without the monthly fee?

I have been using my iPhone as a pocket TV for a couple of years and now that the iPad is here, mobile TV has come to a new level thanks to those wonderful apps, some free, some paid.

Here’s a rundown of some of the great iPad apps that let you take your TV wherever you have an Internet connection.

iTunes – Naturally this is included with the iPad. You can purchase or rent TV shows and movies and watch them through the Video app (also included). The videos look outstanding on the iPad screen. Yes, my first post iPad movie purchase was the JJ Abrams Star Trek. There is a reason it is used in the iPad promotions. It looks GREAT on the iPad screen! Free

YouTube – Again, this app is included with the iPad and the videos look great. Unfortunately, the YouTube app is just a viewer. It appears that you still have to go to the web site in a browser to favorite videos or share them. Even more unfortunate, you can’t access the new TV show and movie content that YouTube is now offering. They are in Flash. Get with it Google! Free

Netflix – This is my absolute favorite iPad app! I can stream available Netflix videos with terrific video clarity. Just imagine having video on demand wherever you can connect, something we only dreamed of a short time ago. Alas, the app isn’t perfect. You can play videos in your queue or browse through the catalog for stuff to play, but you still have to go to the site with your web browser to add content to your queue. Free
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In honor of Geek Week and the 30th Anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, I present the SEO team of FramesDirect.com with me (Richard Burckhardt) in the lead role of Geek Skywalker!

Enjoy!

Link to Geek Skywalker video.

By Lena Morrish and Dima Nikolayenko

With all the buzz about social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, many people are wondering whether emails and email marketing will be a thing of the past. This is highly doubtful since emails are still one of the most used forms of communication for both individuals and for businesses, which still leaves email marketing pretty high on the list of market strategies of today. The question is not whether you should use either emails or social network sites for marketing, but rather one of how to make websites and all of their tools work with social networking sites.

Whenever you are researching how to start and run an Internet business, you should include research into integrating your business with social network sites. There are many ways these sites enhance your email marketing campaign and drive traffic directly to your site. read more »

By Richard V. Burckhardt

Keep in mind that Google sees a URL with a / at then end as a totally different URL from one without.

Uh, not that kind of slashing!

Let’s say you are setting up your keyword rich links to point to a subdirectory. Should the link point to:

http://www.somedomain.com/subdirectory or to http://www.somedomain.com/subdirectory/ with a “/” at the end?

Most new SEOs won’t know the difference, thinking that if it gets the visitor there, it works, right?

There is a problem with this thinking. Let me introduce you to checking server headers. To do this, I’ll use my favorite server header tool over at http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp . You just pop a URL in the field and you’ll get a page back telling you how it did. Here are some of the possible results:

200 OK - This means everything’s cool.

301 Moved Permanently – The URL you typed in is properly being redirected to a new location.

302 Found – This means your URL has temporarily been moved and found at the new location.

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