Wingnut SEO

Using the badassness that is the iPod Touch wi-fi abilities… can you make some program much like a buddy list, or chatroom like deal so I can see people who have an iPod Touch around me/in my area and what they are listening to?  Maybe even able to hear what they are listing to?  An added feature would be to IM other iPod Touchers in your area and say something like “Great song.”

It would be cool.

Any of you developers out there… come Feb I want to see this if Apple doesn’t do it first and charge for it.

On news of Apple opening up it’s fancy iPhone and iPod Touch to developers - the first thing I did was go out and register a bunch of domain names that I hope to capitalize on.

One of these names, to my delight, instantly started getting direct traffic and clicks and has brought in a whopping $30 in the couple of weeks I have had it up on my parking service. For those wondering -  the domain that is doing so well is iTouchGame.com

(I also have iTouchGamers.com and iTouchPrograms.com and several others…. I will do something with them as well… probably network them all and try and rank for “ipod/iphone games/programs.” Best part about it, I’m pretty much promised a front page listing on Digg thanks to the word ipod well maybe not, but a solid post.)

I could leave these sites parked like this. Making a few dollars a day - but I know I can make more with just a simple site, an affiliate program and some Google ads.

As I found out later “iTouch Game” is one of the most popular iphone games at this time… so I lucked out with the name… why not take advantage of it. As of yet I have not had much free time to build even a simple site pulled from OSWD, hopefully I can do that this weekend.

Point of this post you ask? If you have a great idea to make money with a site - register the domain name and park it even if you have no time to do anything with it. Domains are cheap, less than $10 a year and just by parking them you can bring at least that in a few months. (Well most of the time anyway - a friend of mine is bringing in about $70 a month with gocandle.com just with parking not much… but gocandle? The hell is that?)

Google BLAH BLAH BLAH bastards!!! BLAH BLAH BLAH Pagerank is BLAH BLAH ASSHATS!

Seriously blah blah blah! You shouldn’t worry about blah blah because of blah blah blah blah…. Love them or hate them blah blah blah they are blah blah when blah and blah.

And another thing blah blah blah who else you going to blah blah blah with?

Blah blah blah. I for one, don’t care and am not going to change a blah.

So just recently… about the time I started this blog almost a month ago…  I have been slowly taking over the first page on Google when I type in my name, Dave Winget.

With less than 200k results found with “Dave Winget” in the search - it has been easy.  Already the first 4 spots are mine, and that’s without trying.

I put nearly no time into it… other than writing for this blog. I guess I never really thought about how easy it is to be ranked for something that no one else is trying for….

So after this I wanted to test how easy it really is to start from nothing and compete with something slightly more difficult and find out exactly what it takes for more competitive words (using the scientific method, or at least a bastardization of it… like the kind creationists use).

I chose “storage” and “moving” in Phoenix, Tucson, and Arizona. Not an impossible task under 10million results for each of these . So I made 2 sites (starting small again as little effort as possible - designs lifted from OSWD) linked them together and just put up a lot of content about moving and storage in Phoenix, Tucson, and Arizona in general. Not even 2 weeks later and one of the pages is ranking for “Tucson Storage” and “Tucson Moving.” (just under 2million results for each of these) it isn’t my main goal but was a side goal… but it just happened with my content/descriptions and such.

This page is not on the first page yet, far from it - it is on the 9th. Well shy of the top three… but for putting very little effort (only adding it to few free directories) not a bad start.

I will keep an eye on it and let you know how far/fast it moves up or what other real tactics I try.

(Note: The link to these sites from my blog counts as a no effort tactic)

When I was a young SEOer, small-time, freelancing my way through life - charging a set fee for one or two sessions with the client to do what I could optimize their sites in as little as time possible - things were great. They were happy, I was happy - life was grand. They would come back to me a few months down the road and ask for more help… good times. Then things changed when I took on a full time job with an agency.

All our clients pay monthly for SEO X amount of hours per month with no real set end date - of course the process is set to continue forever - and this isn’t bad because link building never technically ends and you always have to make small changes to the site to optimize as time goes on - to keep up with trends and new algorithms etc.

What happens though, every client eventually thinks they don’t need the SEO or that they can’t rationalize paying monthly for it. They either cut hours back or decide to leave and do SEO in-house completely.

This is especially true because my company believes in educating the client so what we do becomes less magical as time goes on. This is fine.  Clients like us for it because we do good work and teach them how SEO works.

It just makes me sad every time… But I suppose it’s just the great circle of SEO life.

My last post “Top 4 ways to piss me off with your blog” to my surprise and delight went hot and made the first page of Sphinn today. This is one of the cooler things that happened to me this week/month/year/(decade?) especially because several bloggers that I read on a daily basis, and respect, were some of the ones who are reading and sphinning my posts. Thanks guys (*cries* You like me! You really like me!)

So now what? For me and this blog I’m going to continue to try and write good content and throw some link-baiting titles in, when I can, for good measure… but that’s it.

I think a lot of first time bloggers/webmasters who find some quick/overnight success try and make as much money off it as possible (and this could be why so many of the blogs out there piss me off.) They throw up tons of ads, affiliate links, etc… and forget about the people. I have seen it happen so many times.

A great site starts getting a little more traffic than what they are used to and BLAM it gets overrun by all kinds of crap that I don’t want/care to see and the content suffers - and in turn loses the traffic that it had from being a great site and fades from memory.

So to anyone who finds a little overnight success: It’s just one day/week don’t forget how you got there - so you can stay there.

I have been stumbling a lot with “blog” in the search. I have done this because I am rather new to doing a personal/work blog (although I have been telling clients to do them for years) and so it is research into how to make mine better. The bothersome part comes when I stumble to a blog that is doing something so annoying that it makes me want to vomit on my keyboard. I don’t have a very large following so I don’t expect this to reach the people I am talking about but if I can influence even one new blogger - to not do one of the following - I will see this as a personal win. So here goes:

1. Resizing my browser window:
-Why do you do this? Is it because your site design can only be seen when it’s in full screen mode? Java is fun, but seriously. There is a reason I don’t have a full size browser window… it’s because I don’t like it. I have a small screen, I’m not ashamed of this (it’s not the size it’s how you use it… right? right.)

2. Pop-Ups/Grey Outs That force me to sign up/in:
- I have only seen this on a few blog sites but as soon as it happens I hit the thumbs down and leave. I don’t read the content, I just leave. It could be great content that I would have signed up for if you didn’t force me to. Now I’ll never know and you lost me for good.

3. Top 5 - 10 - 15 - etc Lists that are exactly the same as the 20 we saw yesterday:
- I know topX lists are all the rage and can get lots of people to come…. and this actually could be one of those, I admit it…. We saw that list last week/yesterday, even if it was amazing/infotastic/new/funny then… the one you just put up isn’t. I’ll only read the first bold headline, maybe scroll to the bottom then leave. If it isn’t something new or at the very least an amazing new thought about it… stop posting them.

4. Google Ads EVERYWHERE:
- Making your site pay for itself is a good thing, in fact it’s awesome. When you put a few tasteful google ads along the side or at the bottom it’s fine… When you put Google ads EVERYWHERE (and even some kind of add that floats in front of my mouse until I figure out how to close it) it sucks. It breaks up your content with huge boxes and slows my loading down. Plus the ads don’t look good and if I don’t like the feel of your site I’ll stop reading and go elsewhere. Making money with your blog is cool… just don’t be annoying about it.

/end rant.

So I think I like Gooruze… Just not that much. I can tell it has some serious potential (and to validate my blog feed Wingnut.gooruze.com ) They are new and will be interesting to see where they go but if they don’t change some stuff up soon - I’m done with it.

The site navigation needs work. It’s rather unintuitive and takes too long to get anywhere. Overall the design looks like someone took a basic Joomla template and then ate some yellow crayons and then pooped all over it. Then for good measure (and maybe laughs) they made the default link text bright yellow so you have to squint from the glare and the rest so small you have to press your nose against it to see what news articles there are and what other things are going on.

Then just to be greedy (and piss me off and make me not want to go there) they put Google ads right at the top without even trying to make it look like it goes with the site design or be non-annoying. It’s supposed to be a site for online marketers IE the WEB SAVVY who the hell is going to click on these ads anyway? I suppose you get something for views… but come on. If you’re going to have money links at least make them better than shit Google Ads. Sell books about online marketing or something else - that would at least be useful.

It seems to be growing really fast but thanks to some major design flaws and annoying bits I fear it will burn out pretty quickly. If they change some stuff around it could be great

It has the most complex social media navigation I have ever seen - and as of yet I haven’t looked at any of the news articles because it’s too hard to tell what news there is/if it’s good.

The navigation is so bad it actually makes me angry trying to use it. They need to take a look at Sphinn or you know… any good social media site where you can actually tell what content is there and what is hot/new etc…

I have found the Q&A a bit helpful and actually would go to the site just for this. Makes for a great forum.

I’m far too addicted to Social Media these days and this is just one more thing that I’m going to be checking a couple times a day. Provided they change up the design.

What do you all think?

With the open letter to Ron Paul supporters issued by Allen Wastler, managing editor of CNBC.com and the slurry of posts about it throughout the SEO blog community it seems perfectly clear that the future of political campaigns is changing - or at least adding to it’s armory.

This letter and the following blog storm it has caused will be noticed by the savvy campaign managers that are going to be looking towards online reputation management along with SEO to get their messages to the top of the search engines.

With an already huge and growing number of people getting their news from social media and online newspapers it would be silly to ignore what a little SEO (and perhaps PPC?) could potentially do for a political campaign. Think about it, a political party could bring the search engines to their Team’s side and make sure the people only see what they want them to see… I’m not sure how this will play out… will it be pure reputation management - making sure only good things about your party show up on the magical first three pages of search results - or will it be a twisted reputation mud-slinging battle that will make sure every bad thing about the opposing side pops up to the top.

Either way it should be a pretty bright (and possibly fun) future for current and up-and-coming SEO’s and pretty interesting for the SEO world in general. It may change the face of SEO (at least somewhat) from a competition against the numbers and faceless webmasters - to a downright brawl, king of the hill style, between SEO managers from each party.

I, for one, am excited.

Well… not really.  But it does make you look cool and you can totally impress the ladies with your badassness.  This is a pretty basic overview of what Meta-tags are and how you should use them.  Hope it helps.

1. Keyword Meta Tag

<META name=”keywords” content=”a, list, of, your, keywords”>
Before sitting down to write your meta tags, you must determine your key words, as the meta tags would be based on them. This would require some brainstorming. You need to think of words by which your web site should be found. You can check out the sites of your close competitors for ideas. Once you have a list of key words ready, ask your friends and more importantly your customers for more suggestions. This would help you come up with the more popular key words. It is a better strategy to identify a few important key words and focus your tags and content on them, instead of trying to coming up with every possible key word under the sun and cramming it in your web page.

Different search engines give different limits for the keyword tag. They range from 200 to 1000 characters. This means around 10 to 150 keywords. If your keyword limit exceeds the limit specified by the search engines, they would simply ignore the extra key words. However, do not try to repeat keywords, as this would be considered spamming. Use various synonyms of your most important keywords. Try to concentrate more on keywords that you have used in your web page content. This would contribute towards your keyword density.

Also include key phrases in your keyword meta tags. These would be a combination of keywords that the users may search for. For example, if you have an online jewelry store, you may want to include: handmade designer jewelry, online jewelry store, buy jewelry online. Someone who is searching for jewelry is likely to type in the above phrases, as a search for only the word “jewelry” would give too many search results.

Opinion is divided as to whether keywords should be separated by commas or not. If you don’t use commas the risk of repeating keywords is lowered. However, according to most search engine experts presence or absence of commas does not make a vast difference. Hence, inclusion of commas between keywords would largely be a matter of personal preference.

2. HTML Title Tag

<TITLE> Title of document </TITLE>
The HTML Title tag appears on top of your coded web page, and would also be seen by your web page readers. This tag is given extreme importance by almost all search engines when a web page is being ranked. Even search engines which ignore all the other tags like keywords, description and meta tag, definitely index the title tag. Therefore it is necessary to write your title tag very carefully.

Avoid using proper nouns (like the name of your company) in your title tag, unless you are a very well known business concern, and expect people to search for you by name. Instead make the title descriptive, including your most important keywords in it. Make sure that your title tag is placed right after the head tag, especially if you haven’t hand coded your web pages. Placing the title lower, would decrease its importance with the search engine.

Do keep in mind that inclusion of keywords in the title would have positive impact on keywords density and search engine ranking. Hence the title tag should be utilized to its fullest capacity. The search engines specify no word limit for title tags. However, to be safe and not to be accused of spamming, ten words (no more than 90 characters) would be a reasonable limit.

Don’t repeat your keywords more than twice in the title and don’t use all caps. Title case and lower case Title tags are seen to have a better impact on rankings as opposed to upper case tags.

3. Description Meta Tag

<META name=”description” content=”description of your website”>
The description of your website is extremely important. Not only would it be indexed by most search engines, it would also be used by directories in your website listing. Hence, searchers will use the description as a decisive factor to choose to visit your website.

The description must be short, typically 250 characters long. Do not use marketing slogans or hyped up language in the description. Instead, concentrate on telling the reader about how they would benefit from visiting your website. Try including as many of your keywords as possible in the description. Make sure that the keywords included in your Title tag are there in the description tag as well.

Get an idea of how your competitors are writing their descriptions, by searching your targeted keywords on the major search engines. Make a note of the most effective descriptions, and what you like the most about them. Try to incorporate those factors in your own description.