Good-bye long-tail… hello Tiger-tail! Ok, now I’ve seen it all…lol! It seems all the demand for up-to-the-second information on Tiger Woods has caused Google to use something I haven’t seen before – a scrolling box on the Google search results page that is automatically updating with Twitter “tweets” and newly found web content on the topic of Tiger Woods. Anything new on the internet, that Google finds “seconds ago”, is showing up in that scrolling box as you sit on the Google search results page. Unbelievable! Seems Google had to find a way to keep up with Tiger Woods!

Latest Results from Twitter and Other Web Sites in Google Results

Go ahead, try it…. Google “Tiger Woods” (no need for quotes, Google knows EXACTLY what you mean…lol) and see if a scrolling box shows up that displays latest tweets and web pages that were just found by Google.

Here is a screen shot of what I just saw:

How’s about that? Google had to find SOME way to keep up with the overly-dynamic, ever updating, constantly changing trend of Tiger Woods and all the stuff that is surrounding him now.

How big of a sudden trend IS this Tiger-phenomenon on the internet?

The Tiger-Tail Effect

Let’s take a look on Google insights and see the change in web search interest since all this stuff broke in the news:

Wow, huh!?!? That graph represents the web search interest for Tiger Woods since 2004. In case you live under a rock, Tiger Woods has been in the news and done MANY MANY news-worthy things since 2004, but his web search interest has remained pretty level for the most part.

Until the end of November 2009 – all this stuff about him has shot web search interest through the ROOF…and Google had to find some way to keep up and keep offering their users the most relevant and up-to-the-moment results. Quite a task, but what an interesting way to handle it.

Just a note: When I use FireFox and search Google for Tiger Woods (not signed in to Google), I see this scrolling box at the top of the results. Now, my hubby, in the other room (not signed in to Google either) is using Internet Explorer (ugh) and his scrolling “latest results” show up more towards the bottom of the first page. Not sure why, but thought I’d mention it in case your “latest results” are not in the same place as my screen shot…. or you don’t see them at all.

Anyway… I thought this latest coolness in the Google search results was really interesting. Sure shows the effect the “Tiger-tail” has on the search results, doesn’t it?

Oh, and just a fun fact… I don’t see one of the “latest results” boxes when I search on Google for Obama…. but, hey, he is “only” the President of the United States…why in the world would we people want up-to-the-second info on The President? (sigh).

PotPieGirl Edit - (8 Minutes after originally publishing this post): Looks like I made the “latest results” scroll bar in the Google results for Tiger Woods…lol!

personal note from PotPieGirl - this post is intended to discuss the effect the Tiger-tail has on Google from a SEO-perspective and to encourage further discussion on that one subject. I am NOT welcoming any comments that have to do with the current Tiger Woods situation. While I respect that everyone, myself included, DO have personal opinions on this situation, I do not feel that my blog is the place to discuss it. So please… please…resist the urge to discuss your personal thoughts on Tiger Wood’s personal situation. Thank you.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Google Can’t Keep Up With Tiger Woods?!?

Anyone seen the new snippet links in the Google search results? Some folks call them jump to links – I’ve also seen them called section links – but regardless, they are quite cool and make your Google listing stand out by offering the searcher another link to exactly what they are looking for on that one web page. While you can get snippet links to show in Google for any web page, they are really easy to get in Google with a Squidoo lens.

What Are Snippet Links?

When I first noticed these links showing up in the Google search results, I called them “jump to” links because, well, because that’s what they SAY in the Google results – but when you hold your mouse over them, it seems Google is identifying them as “section links”. However, Leslie Rohde calls them snippet links so I’m gonna go with that (what? do you think I’m gonna argue with Leslie Rohde? Do I look stupid? Ok, don’t answer that).

In short, these snippet links make another link inside the description area of your web page listing in the Google search results. These snippet links link to a specific part on THAT same page/lens. Don’t confuse these with Site Links which link to OTHER pages on your site. These snippet links are deep links to content on the same web page.

Google Announces Snippet Links

Google announced these snippet links on September 25, 2009 –

We just announced a couple of new features on the Official Google Blog that enable users to get to the information they want faster. Both features provide additional links in the result block, which allow users to jump directly to parts of a larger page. This is useful when a user has a specific interest in mind that is almost entirely covered in a single section of a page. Now they can navigate directly to the relevant section instead of scrolling through the page looking for their information.

We generate these deep links completely algorithmically, based on page structure, so they could be displayed for any site (and of course money isn’t involved in any way, so you can’t pay to get these links). There are a few things you can do to increase the chances that they might appear on your pages. First, ensure that long, multi-topic pages on your site are well-structured and broken into distinct logical sections. Second, ensure that each section has an associated anchor with a descriptive name (i.e., not just “Section 2.1″), and that your page includes a “table of contents” which links to the individual anchors. The new in-snippet links only appear for relevant queries, so you won’t see it on the results all the time — only when we think that a link to a section would be highly useful for a particular query.

Posted by Raj Krishnan, Snippets Team

Thanks, Google – these snippet links work wonders for my Squidoo lenses =)

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What Does a Snippet Link Look Like?

Since I tend to always use my worm farming lens for my case studies, I figured I’d use it again here.

This is what my Squidoo lens description looked like in Google BEFORE the snippet link:

And this is how it looks now WITH my snippet link:

See that link the red arrow points to? That is a snippet link (or a ‘jump to‘ link…. or a ‘section link‘). That link in the Google results description links to a certain section on my lens.

And it’s been really good for business =)

Just a note before you go rushing off to see if your lens has snippet links in Google. When I am signed in to my Google account, these snippet links do NOT show for me so if you’re not seeing them, make sure you are signed OUT of Google. And just for the record, you should never be signed into Google when you are doing ranking checks or anything. That ol’ personalized search can really skew your results.

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How To Get Snippet Links For Your Squidoo Lens

Good news! If you are familiar with making Squidoo lenses at all, you should be able to make these snippet links show for your lens. It’s not hard to do tho you might have to tinker with it to get these snippet links be as effective as they can for you.

Google Snippet Links Instructions

The Short Directions

Here’s my short instructions for getting snippet links:

1. Use the Table of Contents option in your intro module – NOT the individual Table of Contents module(see image below). Why? I believe it is because the links in the intro module table of contents are do-follow while the links in the Table of Contents module are NO-follow. (however, to note: I also tried making straight html links actually IN my intro module content that linked to individual modules on my lens and I couldn’t seem to get it to work – I’ll keep trying tho). Regardless, Google seems to love that “Contents at a Glance” area of a lens.

2. Get Google to re-cache your lens.

Yeah… that’s really all there is to it. Google is using the the titles of your modules that are included in the intro module Table of Contents (ie, “Contents at a Glance”) to show as snippet links in the search results.

But…. truth is…there is more to it in order for them to be EFFECTIVE (oh, and actually SHOW in Google).

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Optimizing Your Squidoo Lens for Snippet Links in Google

Here’s what I did to make these snippet links more effective for me (oh, and yes, to get them to actually SHOW in the Google search results…lol).

I took a long look at my Squidoo lens traffic stats – specifically, the most popular terms my lens was found with in Google. Why? Because if I am getting good traffic for these terms already, why not up the stakes and get MORE traffic for it? People are already searching for those phrases… I am already ranking for those phrases…. so why not make my lens description in Google even more attractive and clickable to get MORE traffic for those phrases?

So, I pulled up my top organic search terms for my lens for as far back as Squidoo gives me stats for (or for as long as YOU have stats for) and came up with this list:

And then I made those exact phrases my Module titles on my lens:

And now that Google has re-cached my lens ( or recrawled….reindexed…respidered….same difference kinda sorta), I get cool little snippet links like this whenever someone searches for that specific keyword phrase:

So, do you think someone who was looking for worm farm plans and then saw that snippet link with exactly what they were looking for as the text of the link would be happy with the search results? Above all, do you think they would click it?

I do. The traffic to my lens is up…. especially for those specific phrases. Now granted, I’ve only been testing this for about a week and have tweaked and made all kinds of changes to see what works best, so this is not a guarantee your traffic will be up or that it will make an ounce of difference at all….. but, I am seeing improvements. I won’t be able to ever know for sure the impact these snippet links have on my lens traffic once this post goes live since people will be going to Google and searching my phrases and going to my lens and all that fun stuff (and yup, I’ll probably end up having even MORE competition in this market, too) – so naturally I’ve got other lenses out there quietly testing for me so I can get some sort of stats on this.

I’d love to know if it works for YOU tho =)

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Snippet Link Tips

First off, these snippet links need to be keyword specific. If my module title was “Tip #1″ and then my module sub title was “worm farm plans” – it probably won’t work.

Make your module titles short and keyword specific – then “dress it up” with the module sub title. It seems shorter module titles work best, but I’ve managed to get some long snippet links to show if I forced it.

Naturally, I had to FORCE that one to show by searching Google for that exact phrase as it shows on the lens – and who the heck is gonna search for THAT? lol! But, my point is, if you have a longer keyword phrase, don’t be afraid to use it.

Snippets Aren’t Showing

Now, I imagine some of you have already rushed off to Google to see your snippet links since you know you’ve been using the table of contents option in your intro modules…. and when you searched – Surprise! You ain’t got no snippets!

Why?

Remember – this is NEW with Google. If your lens has not been cached by Google recently, then your snippets will NOT show in Google (remember to be signed OUT of Google, too, when you check).

You need Google to recrawl your lens. To check when Google last cached your lens, search for your lens in Google, find your listing, and then click “cache” under your listing. Google will give you the date they were last there. If Google was just there (like in the last day or 2), and your snippets still aren’t showing, try tweaking your module titles a bit. Also, make sure you are searching Google for your exact keyword specific module title (don’t go searching for “My Story” or something vague like that – it won’t work. Besides, why would your module title be so vague anyway?)

If the snippets still won’t show, be patient. Google does what Google wants so that is the best explanation I can give.

How To Get Google to Recrawl Your Lens

A simple way to do this that seems to work more than it doesn’t work is to go to your lens, make your module title changes, republish, and then go straight to SquidUtils.com. Sign in, go to your advanced dashboard, and click “ping” next to the lens you just changed. You cannot ping if you have not edited your lens (you’ll get an error message)…and please, don’t go pinging more than once a day. If you have any problems or questions about SquidUtils.com, check with TheFluffanutta (the site owner) – he’s a really smart guy and tons of help.

How To Get Butt Ugly Snippet Links For Your Lens

Yes, I said “butt ugly”…..lol C’mon, what would YOU call this snippet link and description?

Isn’t that butt ugly? I told ya so!

If you have a module that is pulling data from another source (ie, an RSS module, a product feed module, an Amazon module, etc), you had BETTER be SURE you enter some relevant text into the module description area. In this case, I have an eBay module there and had left the module description area empty – therefor, it was a really, really butt ugly snippet link =)

Ok, that’s all there is to getting snippet links in Google search results for a Squidoo lens. Just please keep in mind, these snippet links do not happen overnight in Google…it might take some time.

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Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Google Snippet Links For Squidoo

I was checking the stats and rankings of a few of my Squidoo lenses tonight and found one I wanted to do some work on. As I was about to make changes I thought, “Wow, this would make an awesome search engine optimization tutorial post for my blog!”. So, I took a few extra hours (on something that would have taken me all of 5 minutes to do) to take screen shots and walk through all the steps I take to get to the actions I take to make my Squidoo lens rank better in Google. Grab a cup of coffee because you are about to take a long trip inside the brain of PotPieGirl (be afraid…be very, very afraid…lol)

I Want My Squidoo Lens to Rank Better in Google

Tonight I found a lens of mine that needed some love. It’s not a money-maker, but it ranks well, gets decent traffic so I figured let’s see what I can do with it to make it rank better, get more traffic, and maybe see if I can’t turn it into a money-maker (which probably will NOT happen now that I am about to spill everything here on my blog…sigh).

I have this lens about worm composting. I made it in February of 2008 and hadn’t touched it since April of 2008 (yes, I have not “freshened” the lens in almost 17 MONTHS).

This is why I am always all about telling my One Week Marketing followers to get their lenses out there and simmering.  Once a lens ages and gains some Page Rank of it’s own, it has real power and it becomes a resource that you can leverage.

Sooooo…how has this lens been doing in all this time being left alone?

Let’s take a look at the traffic stats for the last 30 days:

Not too shabby, huh?

BUT, it can be better.

Next stop is to see how my lens is already ranking (I use a little online tool for this that I will link to – as well as other tools shown – at the end of this post)

Not too bad.  I know there are more keyword phrases I can work for now that the lens is older and more established.

Upon examining this, I see that I rank #1 for how to start a worm farm, but I am about #4 for how to make a worm farm.  I wonder which phrase is better… Could changing one word make a big difference in search volume?

Let’s hop on over to the Google keyword tool and see:

Well dang!  Changing just one word in that phrase could mean four times more traffic if I rank #1 for it!

I’ve read in a few places that a #1 ranking in Google means that you could count on about 40% of the search traffic, but for me, it never works out that way.  Seems 20% of the exact search volume is more like it for my lenses and other web pages so I stick with that number when I am “guess-timating” potential Google traffic.

In fact, 20% is about right for this lens, too.  Google indicates about 480 searches per month and 20% of that would be about 96 visits per month from that keyword at #1 in Google.  My actual Squidoo lens stats for the last 30 days say:

Yup, that’s about right.  I rank #1 in Google for that phrase and got 98 visits in the last month for that search phrase.

Based on that, if I could increase that Google ranking for how to make a worm farm to #1, I could guess-timate that I could potentially get 20% of THAT search volume which would be about 320 visits a month.  To me, this is worth looking in to!  A nice boost in traffic would be sweet!

I also decided that it was time to work this lens for a bigger and more competitive keyword search phrase. It’s well-established, sits on an authority site so why not? After poking around a bit, I came up with worm composting.

8100 searches a month… Yup, that’s what I’m talking about!  I’d like 20% of that search volume, too!

BUT – How Hard Will It Be To Rank?

This is the BIG question.  It is cool to pick keyword phrases you’d like to rank #1 for, but how hard will it be to get there?

This is where experience comes in for internet marketers to help us identify when something is “do-able” or not…and how much work it will take to achieve that ranking.  We stop looking as much at the results for a keyword phrase in quotes and look more at the sites we want to out-rank.  This comes with time, experience, and some good tools.

Starting out searching Google in quotes for the phrase competition is a great way to learn and to see yourself rank a web page.  If you find keyword phrases that have less than 10,000 competing web pages in quotes, odds are good that you will be able to rank your web page IF you target that one keyword phrase and learn to optimize properly.

This is not a part of your learning that you rush through.  When you’re new and you try to optimize one web page for lots of keyword phrases out of the gate, odds are good that your web page will rank for nothing worth talking about…and you won’t see results…and you’ll give up.

Start at the beginning and learn to do it properly.  Then, the sky is the limit!

The great thing about using Squidoo is that most of the work for on-page optimization is done for you… and the part you need to know I am about to share with you here in this case study.

Now, what I am about to show you might totally boggle your mind if you are new to all this.  For some of you, it could very well be an “A-Ha” moment where you can really see how rankings happen.  Now, if it boggles your mind and you don’t “get it”, that’s ok!  Really, it is perfectly ok.  No one is expected to ‘get it’ at first.  This is what learning is for  =)  Just keep all this in the back of your mind and then one day you will say, “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh…. I get it!”

Google Rankings and SEO Analysis of a Web Page

So, I wanted to know how hard it would be for me to get my lens to rank #1 for how to make a worm farm.  I used another tool I have to check out what it going in in the query space in Google.

Take a look at what I found out (you can click the image to see it bigger if you want to):

Highlighted in green you can see my worm farm lens.  What I am looking for are opportunities to optimize my web page for this keyword phrase and do it better than those above me.  Things that have a green check mean yes, that page has that – a red x means no, that page does not have that.

Now, one of the cool things about a Squidoo web page is that the Squidoo.com site is already listed in the DMoz directory and the Yahoo directory.  How much this really affects ranking, no one knows for sure – but this is a factor that most SEO analysis programs will look at.

Also, there are a LOT of back links to the Squidoo.com site, so all I really need to work on are links to MY page on the Squidoo site.  Remember, web pages are ranked individually in Google based on their own strength.  What site the page sits on has it’s benefits tho – especially when the web page is new.

What I am seeing from this analysis is that I need my keyword phrase in my title, my H1 tag, and in my description.  Then, all that is left is building links TO my lens with my target keyword phrase in the anchor text (the clickable words in a link).

My lens already has a nice Page Rank 4 – which is because I built links to my lens and have links to my lens on the Squidoo site…and let it “simmer”.  Based on the Page Rank of the web pages that currently rank higher than I do, Page Rank is not a problem for me here.

Main thing I am looking at is Back Links to the web page of the ones that rank above me.  Can I beat that?  Without going too in-depth into back link analysis, the answer for me is yes, I can beat that.

What About My “Bigger” Keyword Phrase?

Then, I took a look at my bigger and higher volume keyword phrase that I’d like to start targeting.  How tough will THIS be  (especially since I don’t rank in the top 20 in Google at this time)?

Let’s take a look:

Hmmm… this one will be tougher. I did take a look at the back links for the web page that is currently #1 and there aren’t many (maybe one or two) links to the site with the anchor text of worm composting. I also noticed that a lot of links show because they have a few sidebar links on blogs. This means that every page of the blog links to the site and will show like a lot of links.

So, based on that, and on the potential rise in traffic, and based on my sheer stubbornness and my love of a challenge, I’ll give it a try.

Optimizing Your Web Page For Better Google Rankings.

We talked about what I need to do ON my lens to help with the on-page ranking factors.  I need my targeted keyword phrase in the title, the H1 tag, and in the description.

Squidoo makes this VERY easy.

This is how my lens looked before I made any changes to it:

The title you give your lens is also used as the H1 tag for the lens as well as what is put in the tag for your lens.

If you right click on a lens, then choose “view source” you can see the code that Google reads.

The < title > tag is here and is taken from the title I give my lens:

And then the title I give my lens is used again in the code as an H1 tag:

The description is taken from the first sentence or two that I add into my lens intro module:

…and just for fun, the keywords are entered into the lens code from the tags I choose:

All of this comes together to make my listing in Google:

So, a good title, a good opening sentence or two in your intro module, and some good tags can really, really, reallllllllllly help the Google ranking of your lens when it is mixed with good back links TO your lens.

My Lens After Making Changes For Google Rankings

So, I went in and changed my lens up.  I got my two targeted keyword phrases in the title, in the intro module and in the tags.  I also used a modified version of the keyword in an anchor text link.  I think that Google puts a little more weight on words it finds as a link on a web page so I do this on my web pages.

Here is how my lens looks now with the changes:

So, wonder how that made the SEO analysis of my web page look now that I made these changes?

Take a look:

Green checks, all the way across – perfect!

Next, I will take a little bit of time making some links TO my lens with links like how to make a worm farm and worm composting.

Now What?

After that, I leave it alone. Google will need to “read” the changes on my lens and they will need to find the new back links. It takes time for all this to happen and for it all to work together so I let it simmer and work on something else.

If this was a One Week Marketing campaign, I would print out my Mind Map and write the one keyword that each part is individually targeting and be sure to link TO that page with that keyword I wrote down for it or for that phrase with a modifier.

For example, I am now targeting worm composting, so I would make links to my lens with phrases like -

worm composting for beginners

worm composting for profit

learn about worm composting

etc, etc…

As you can see, the phrase I am targeting is still exactly in order in all of those phrases, but I added words to it so Google doesn’t find ALL the same anchor text for ALL my links. Make sense?

People ask me all the time what is the best way to keep track of your One Week Marketing campaigns. For me, it is by simply printing out a Mind Map for each one and writing my campaign details on it. Log ins, keywords for each web page, urls… the whole thing. You can keep track of your rankings over time on the back.

With the help from the tools I used here, you can also print out some reports to keep with your Mind Map so you have everything together. When it comes time to take your One Week Marketing campaign to the next level (ie, start using more than free sites to make money online), you can simply pull out your file and know where everything is when you get ready to make a niche website.

Get Better Google Rankings For Any Web Page

There you have it – inside my little pea brain. What I’ve shown here will work with any web page – not just a Squidoo lens. Thing is, Squidoo makes it easy for this to work, but once you ‘get it’ you will be able to apply this to getting any web page to rank higher in Google.

Tools I Used

I used the Google Keyword Tool. I always switch it to show me the “exact” search volume. I feel this is more accurate that the default “broad” results.

I used this software for the SEO Analysis. This software is really cool and does lots of great stuff – and, it’s FREE. Now, the paid upgrade is awesome and enables you to do so much more, but you don’t have to pay for anything to have the basics of this multi-purpose SEO tool.

I used this tool to see what my web page ALREADY ranks for. To me, this is one of the best tools I have. Being able to enter a url of a web page I own and see all the phrases my page ranks for is so great. And, for reverse engineering a niche or a web page that is ranking higher than you, being able to enter THEIR url and see what THEY rank for is absolutely PRICELESS. Here is an example report you can look at to see all this program can show you.

If you’ve never used Squidoo or have tried, but got too confused to actually make a web page there, you can click here and get my Free Squidoo 101 Guide – I’ll walk you through it =)

If you have used Squidoo and are wanting to take your earnings to the next level, take a look at my One Week Marketing Action plan here.

Hope this info sheds some light on how you can improve the Google ranking of your Squidoo lens or web pages. Guess this post coulda been an ebook because it is SO long and SO in-depth, but hey, why not put it here on PotPieGirl.com so everyone can see it and learn from it?

Any questions? Post them here in the comments area please. I’ll be out of town this weekend, but will try and answer and moderate comments as soon as I can.

If you liked this post or found it useful, please feel free to “tweet” about it or link to it. It would be greatly appreciated!

Have a great day!

(edited to add: You can click here to read the results of this Google Ranking Case Study )

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Squidoo Lens Google Ranking Case Study

As usual, I was poking around Google last night and I cam across something I’ve never seen before on page one of the Google SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). While Google has always offered to show more results for a website (that opens in a new Google search), this new option allows a searcher to click and expand to see more results from one website on the first page. This is cool! Watch this video and I’ll show you what I am talking about.

More Results From One Website Being Shown By Google

Ya know how when you’d search for your keyword, or just do a casual search on Google, that the first page would show only one, maybe two pages, from one website?

Well that’s all changed.

Take a look at the new Google search option:

note: It’s a little easier to see the results I am showing if you watch the video in full screen mode (its an option on the bottom right of the video player)

As I said in the video about the new expanded Google search results, I had a hard time forcing this to come up for search queries. I had to poke around and see where it came up. As you also saw in the video, just the change from the word “your” to the word “a” changed the “show more results from” expanded results option (ie, it was no longer available).

Personally I think this will not only be a great enhancement to the user experience for Google searchers, but I think this is an awesome way to offer more relevant pages from one website on the first page of Google search results.

What are your thoughts about this new Google search results option?

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Google Offers ‘Show More Results’ (Video)

For anyone working online in the organic market (the “make money online FREE” market), it is imperative that you understand back links and utilize an effective and an efficient back linking strategy.  I can’t tell you how many emails and forums posts I read with questions about this.  Bottom line is – if you are going to make web pages on the internet, you MUST understand links and how they work… and most importantly, what they mean to Google.

Back Links and Google

Here is a VERY common scenario, whether it is a forum post, an email to me, or anywhere within the internet marketing arena…

“I made a great Squidoo lens.  It’s really good looking….reads nice, too.  I spent a LOT of time making it, but it still won’t rank in Google!!!  What did I do wrong on my web page??”

Did you know that getting a web page to rank well in Google takes about 20% effort ON that page and 80% effort OFF that page?  Yes, you have to get OFF your web page or lens to do things to help your lens rank highly.

So, let’s back up for a minute, ok?

Let’s all STOP being internet marketers for a moment.

You are now a restaurant owner

POOF!  I just waved my magic wand and made you the proud owner of a brank new Italian restaurant ( for the record, I am using an Italian restaurant here because I am hungry and I am SO in the mood for spaghetti and meatballs! Yum!!! ==>>>>)

So, you have your business plan, you hired a contractor to build you the BEST Italian Restaurant EVER.  It is a FABULOUS eatery with all kinds of whistles and bells…. great service…the whole she-bang.

You open the doors on your Grand Opening day and…

No one shows up.  Yup, total ghost town with tumbleweeds blowing by and all…

Well what the heck happened?  You spent all this time making the best restaurant EVER…and no one comes to eat?  How can that be?

Even in the “real world” you have to get OUT of your place of business and go TO the customers….or else they don’t ever know about it.  For our example restaurant, we’d probably put something in the paper, advertise in other local publications, call our friends, put flyers on cars, and maybe even doing a neighborhood mailing, too.  You have to get out there and TELL people about your business or else they will never know it is the best Italian Restaurant EVER – and then tell OTHERS about you.

Now, if you can follow along with my weird way of thinking here….  each ad you placed, every phone call you made, every flyer you put out and each postcard you mailed is like a LINK to your restaurant.  It enabled people to know about you…to FIND you…. and,best yet, to be able to tell OTHERS about you.

I can’t tell you how many SEO clients I have talked with that have spent 10’s of thousands of dollars for someone to build them a FANTASTIC website…..and it’s gets absolutely NO traffic.  These clients think their web developer ripped them off or something when nothing is further from the truth.

Just like you would hire a contractor to build your restaurant, you hire a web designer to build your website.  Neither the contractor nor the web designer is in charge of getting customers for you, right?  Right.

Ok, Now.. Let’s Talk About Google

If you’ve ever read the history of Google (and you SHOULD read this), you will learn some things about the original intention of the (now-called) Google algorithm and it’s patented Page Rank formula.  I want to point out one very important little snippet from that history:

“Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine”

Google is a very fancy, and very complicated, popularity contest.

So, answering why your lens or web page isn’t ranking well in a very simple way…

You don’t rank well because you’re page isn’t popular enough in the eyes of Google.

Ranking Well in Google

If you want your lens or web page or article to rank well in Google, you gotta get some back links.    Here is a simple rule:

1. Think of the keyword phrase you want your lens or page to rank for in Google.

2. Build links TO your lens or page with those words as the anchor text (the words someone clicks to get TO your lens or page).

If we take away everything complicated, it IS as simple as that.  Build a page, put 20% of your effort into that page.  Get OFF your page and go get some back links.

How Many Back Links?

Naturally, the next question is… “How many backlinks do I need?”  Sorry, but there is no ONE answer for that question.  Every single individual search query has a different answer.  As I talked about in Keyword Research – How I Do It, when doing my keyword research I find out who my real competition is.  Then, like I showed about in Did Google Drop Your Lens?, I let you see how I figure out how many back links I will need to rank well for a specific search query (keyword phrase).

I do it like this:

1. Keyword research

2. How Many Links Do I Need?

3.  Make Lens

4. Get Links

5. Move on to next project

Yes, it is that “simple” if you don’t over-complicate it….and if you’re patient.  Very little happens over-night in Google-land.  Set your pages up and let them “simmer” while you work on something else. I can 100% pinky promise you that staring at a lens, staring at Google, or cleaning up your lens over and over will NOT work to make anything happen faster.

I Uncovered The Bigger Problem

Thing is, I say how “simple” this is… and tell you to “go get back links” and many, many of you are still lost.  The basic fundamental understanding of backlinks is missing.  This is absolutely necessary knowledge to cut it in internet marketing – you must understand back links – all the types of them.  You must understand WHY you are doing them and how to do them properly.

Terms like:

1 way links

2 way links

3 way links

Natural Links

Web Directory Links

Link Exchanges

Social Bookmarking Links

Article Directory Links

Blog Network Links

Buying Links

Press Release Links

Link Bait, and

Linking Services

should ALL be part of your vocabulary – and you need to know which are good links… and which are BAD links to have.  You also need to really understand anchor text and deep links and internal links.  I can’t even put words on how important it is that you have this education.

It will carry you a LONG way and make ranking in Google so much more understandable….and easier.

Best Way To Learn About Back Links

I went on a hunt to find the absolute best resource for learning this very important information so I can be assured that all my readers have access to it.  Nope, I can’t make you read it…and I can’t make you learn it, either…haha!

BUT, if you email or contact me asking:

a. Why won’t my lens/web page rank in Google? , or

b. How many back links do I need?

I will simply refer you to this post  =)  So, if you got this post as a response from me, know two things – one, this is the answer to your question, and two – the solution is right here.  Up to you what you do with it.

I found the best link information I could get my hands on – something that takes you from basic understanding all the way through how to do it properly, and you can get it right here in this link building report.

This is knowledge you must have.  I can’t make it anymore clear than that 

No matter WHAT kind of web pages you are putting online – whether it’s Squidoo lenses, blog post, articles, or your own websites, you need to know this in order to succeed with Google.  And, considering Google has what, 85% or so of the online search market, you need Google.

If you’re doing all this as more than a hobby, get the education you need.  I PROMISE you that it will make a world of difference!

Get the link building report here.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Links, Links, Links…

One day your lens is in Google, next day it’s gone. Sound familiar? While we’ve talked about why your lens falls out of Google before, I think it’s time we talk about it on a deeper level. I’ve hesitated doing this mainly because it is a more advanced topic – but also because Google does what Google wants. There is no absolute understanding of Google – and I don’t want anyone to obsess with trying to do just that. But, let’s talk about ol’ Googlebot and your web pages.

Rule #1 – You Can’t Understand Google

Cold, hard fact is this… it’s Google’s search engine and they’ll index however the heck they want to. They do not WANT us to totally understand how it all works. Heck, I read that last year (2008), Google changed their algorithm over 450 times! That is at least one change every DAY.

There is no “code” to crack with Google. Whatever the “code” is today WILL BE different tomorrow. The sooner you accept that, the better off you’ll be.

Rule #2 – The Definition of Insanity Is TRYING To Understand Google

Seriously, the more and more you try and “figure out” Google, the crazier you will make yourself. All my men readers – C’mon guys… how many times have you looked at your wife or girlfriend and thought, “I am going crazy trying to figure you out!” ???

Honey, we women have NOTHING on Google. Google is the most temperamental “woman” you will EVER come across. Worst yet, Google has absolutely NO desire for you to figure out a THING about her. Ironically, the most temperamental woman in the world was developed by two men in a dorm room. (makes me laugh a little)

How Google Indexes Web Pages

With all those disclaimers and warnings out of the way, let’s talk about Google and web pages. Did you know it is Google’s objective to index every page on the web?

This is a HUGE job.

They also take it one step further by trying to rank these web pages in order of relevance to a search query. Just think about all the information that is processed in that 0.15 seconds it took to give you your search results! It’s amazing to me – astounding!

Now, Google also wants to find all the newest and freshest online content and get it in their index asap, too. Yet another HUGE under-taking. Just think how many people are publishing blog posts and articles and lenses and videos and ALLLLLL that every single second of every single day!

Google’s crawlers (GoogleBot) are out on the web all the time looking for new content, updating older content – just spidering the web like crazy.

In fact, GoogleBot actually has two types of crawlers – FreshBot and DeepBot (no, I am not making this up…lol)

Meet FreshBot and DeepBot

Freshbot has one job – find all the newest and the freshest content as it can and get it in the Google index.

DeepBot has a monthly job – to deep crawl all the web pages on the internet, follow the links, evaluate the web pages, and then completely re-update the entire index and get it to all the Google data centers.

Let me use my blog as an example -

Good ol’ FreshBot is hanging around here or at least waiting on me all the time. I love FreshBot! Within minutes of me publishing a new post, here comes ol’ FreshBot. He grabs it and gets it in the Google index within about 30 minutes. Then, he will tell ol’ DeepBot to get over here to PotPieGirl.com and be sure to do a deep index of my site each month.

DeepBot also “remembers” to come do a deep crawl here by finding my blog from other links all over the internet (remember how important I said back links are???)

FreshBot finds you and gives you a bonus of getting in the index quickly. DeepBot decides what to do with you. In other words, DeepBot checks your back links and ALL that stuff that FreshBot could care less about.

What Does This GoogleBot Activity Look Like?

Now I want to show you an image from inside my Google WebMaster Tools. This is an image of the number of pages that have been crawled per day in the last 90 days here at PotPieGirl.com.

As you can see, ol’ FeshBot is in here daily checking for new content, new posts, new comments, etc etc. But, see that BIG spike there in the beginning of December? That is DeepBot coming in for a BIG look at my site. I’ve recently had two more big scans. I first realized this was happening here at PotPieGirl.com when I got a nice little “Warning!” message about my bandwidth usage from my hosting. Yes, DeepBot can eat up some bandwidth. The better your Page Rank, the deeper they go….and the more bandwidth they use.

I can only imagine what the big sites with high Page Rank go thru! You know, sites like Squidoo.com

FreshBot, DeepBot, and Your Squidoo Lens

Ok – now Squidoo has a nice high Page Rank of 8. FreshBot hangs around there A LOT- probably all the time. He KNOWS there is constantly new content to crawl on that site.

Problem is, sometimes he misses stuff when crawling the Squidoo site. This is why we get some links to our new lenses to help FreshBot get there. Or we could do some edits and republish helping to remind FreshBot that we’re there. Even if we do all that, he still might miss. Hey, he’s a computer program…give him a break…lol

OR, FreshBot DOES find your new lens and you are in that Google index in a matter of hours – or minutes! Awesome! BUT – then days go by and DeepBot hasn’t been….and your new lens falls out of the index.

OR, FreshBot DOES get to you and DeepBot does, too – BUT, ol’ DeepBot didn’t find or wasn’t aware of any back links TO your content – and your lens falls out again. Remember now, just because YOU know there is a back link to your lens does NOT mean that DeepBot knows about it yet. And also keep in mind that you may SEE your back link in the Google index, but that could be the work of FreshBot – not DeepBot.

Regardless, it’s Google’s party and they’ll crawl if they want to =)

Bottom Line

When your lens is new and if appears to be struggling with Google, keep it fresh. I’m not talking about major updates – just a little sumthin-sumthin and republish. Also, keep making those links TO your lens (preferably from places that FreshBot hangs out).

All this with FreshBot and DeepBot applies to article marketing and blogs and ALL web sites. I know it’s confusing, but the best tip I can give to understand all this is to simply accept that you will never completely understand all this.

Good content that is well-optimized with links pointing TO that content WILL come back into the Google index. The higher the Page Rank of the site your content sits on, the better your odds of being found and STICKING in the Google index. The only thing that WON’T work to bring your lens back into the Google index is obsessing over why it’s not in the Google index. As I always say – KEEP MOVING FORWARD =)

Just for the record, I do not KNOW all this. Nor do I personally KNOW anyone at Google who has told me all this. These are my observations and the results of my reading and testing. You can read more about the GoogleBot and all her buddies here.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

How Google Indexes Your Web Pages

I can’t count how many times I get this email or message at Wealthy Affiliate… “My new lens was indexed and was doing great in Google and now it’s GONE!” This is usually follower by “What did I do wrong?” or “Why does Google hate me?” or “HELP!!!!!!!!!!” So, ok, let’s talk about this. Why does you lens show up one day in Google and then disappear?

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

It is VERY VERY common for web pages – ALL web pages – to come and go in the Google search index. This is not just happening to Squidoo lenses or Ezine Articles… it happens to all web pages.

I am going to try and give a very basic and quick explanation of what is happening. Yes, I said “quick”. I know brevity is NOT my specialty, but the SEC College Football Championship is on soon and I gotta go! (Roll Tide, baby!)

Let’s start at the beginning.

Google indexes web PAGES. Every entry you see within a Google search return is a web PAGE. Even if the listing takes you to the main/home page of a site, that is still a web PAGE.

Each web page has to be deemed relevant to a search and has to stand on it’s own for that search.

On the other hand, Google gives web SITES authority. Many sites (usually those with a high Page Rank) are considered a ‘trusted’ site by Google. In turn, Google is in those sites crawling and looking for new content all the time.

So, you make a new lens. Google indexes it and puts in in the index. It very well might rank well for your targeted keywords. Your new lens is given this special treatment so-to-speak because Google found it on a trusted, high-authority site.

This is why sites like Google and EzineArticles are used a lot by marketers – the content gets found quickly (usually) and tends to rank well right out of the gate.

Your lens is doing well because of the site it is on.

Now, a little time goes by and things change.

Your lens NOW has to stand on it’s own and prove it’s own worth as a web PAGE. What site your page is found on matters less and less – the worth of your PAGE matters more and more.

How do you prove the ‘worth’ of your lens for a certain keyword? By building links TO your lens using the words you want to rank for as the anchor text of those links.

To Google, these links TO your lens with those words as anchor text (or variations of those words) count as a ‘vote’ for the worth of your web page.

But I Built Links To My Lens!

I imagine many are thinking, “But I built links to my lens!”. Yes, you did, but this does not mean that Google found them yet. It does not mean that Google “counts” them (another topic for another day)….and it does not mean that it is ENOUGH links to get a top ranking (ie, the top ranked web pages have MORE links).

Ok – here is another question/frustrated comment I get…

“I checked my lens with the health check tool and and it says I don’t have ANY back links… but I do!”

Yes, you probably do.

Here’s the thing about that (and something I wish these Health Check tools would point out). These backlinks are being reported from a search on Yahoo – NOT Google.

Why? Well first off, Google doesn’t like automated queries of their search engine. Secondly, Google relies heavily on links for their ranking algorithm and they simply don’t SHOW all the links they find. If they did, they would open up a big can of worms and make it very easy for webmasters to game the system.

So, back link tools tend to search Yahoo. But, Yahoo is slow as Christmas. Hmmm, bad analogy seeing that Christmas is sneaking up quickly! Ok, Yahoo is slow as….. as…. Well, they’re slow.

In order to be able to see the backlinks you have on these health check tools or back links tools, Yahoo has to find them first. And that can take a while.

Bottom line….

When Google first finds your lens, your lens is safe in the “nest” of a trusted site. After that, you are pretty much kicked from the nest and must be able to fly on your own.

You need back links TO your lens in order to build authority for your web page/lens. It takes time for all these things to “take” and be found and be counted. If you stare at it everyday, you will go nuts. (Been there, done that! haha!)

Wanna stare at something that will help you MORE than scrolling thru looking for YOUR web page? Watch the top 10 Google listings for the keyword phrase YOU want to rank for! How often do those first 10 results change? WHY are those page in the top 10? How many links TO their web pages do they have? What anchor text do they use?

WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR YOU TO BEAT THEM?

Determine that, and then work on DOING that.

Do *I* do that? Hell yes! In my opinion, where my page IS does not matter as much at first as doing what I need to do to get it to where I want it to be.

I look at the Top 10…. do back link checks on them. See what anchor text their links are using. See where their links are coming from. Take a look at the SITE that web page is sitting on. I do all that good stuff.

Also, by watching the top 10 for my targeted keyword phrase, I also get a good idea of how dynamic that market/query space is.

However, this takes a good bit of time if you let yourself get carried away with it (as I usually do because Google search returns fascinate me…lol).

Now, I have a tool that does it for me. I enter my keyword phrase, the tool checks the links TO the current Top 10 (or however many sites I am taking into consideration). It checks back links to that web PAGE and also lets me see back links to that SITE. I also get to see in one glance what the Page Rank of those web pages it, too.

Better yet, I can click a result and it will show me the anchor text those web pages have as back links, too (very valuable).

Example Back Link Check

So, lets use an example. Say I want to make a lens that ranks highly for the phrase ` Fat Loss 4 Idiots. I would plug that phrase into my tool and I would see this:

There are the current Top 10 listings when you Google search Fat Loss 4 Idiots. The #1 result is the vendors site. And look at that, the #2 and the #3 are Squidoo lenses.

Right away you might notice that the #2 (a Squidoo lens) has more back links than the vendors page at #1 – why is that? Well, most likely it is because the vendors page has the phrase Fat Loss 4 Idiots in the achor text of their back links more often than the #2 (Squidoo lens) does. Also, Yahoo counts ALL links it finds… this does not mean that Google will count them, too.

For this example, I can tell it will take a good bit of effort to get a lens of my own into one of those two spots from Squidoo. It would also takes some time so my lens would also get some Page Rank seeing that #2 and #3 from Squidoo have a Page Rank of 3 and 1 respectively.

Obviously, that would be a tough one and I’d probably pass on trying to get a lens to rank for that keyword phrase.

How about an easy example?

This what it would look like if you were trying to rank for a simple term…. ie, one with little competition. I tend to use `purple banana hats as my silly example, so let’s use that one:

Easy! And a big LOL at me sitting at #2 there! hahaha! I am a SEO- GENIUS! hahahahaha!

Summary

So, that’s what I taught myself to do. I stopped obsessing over where MY page is (or isn’t) and instead, worked on doing what it will take to get my page where I want it to be. I accepted that it takes time and it will not happen over-night.

I have web pages falling out of Google all the time. I also have web pages that are being picked up by Google all the time. Best part is when I get a sale or see a traffic spike from a site or a lens that I have barely even thought about lately.

You can’t control Google, but you sure can waste a lot of time trying!

Ok… time for football!!!!!! Got to get the Alabama flags on the car and get to our friends house to watch the game. (yes, we are THOSE kinds of fans that put those flags on their car….lol!)

Have a great day and an even better weekend!

::edit to add:::

Ooops! Forgot to tell you what back link tool I use to get those pretty reports! Sorry!

You can find the backlink analysis tool here.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Did Google Drop Your Lens? Know Why?

It’s getting harder and harder at times to get our lenses indexed, isn’t it? I’ve gotten a few emails from folks who have been following the One Week Marketing “secret” steps to getting Google to index your lens…and Google still won’t do it! Darn Google! So what’s going on? Why are many lenses indexed within hours…and some sit there and wait…and wait… and wait. Worse yet, why do lenses jump into the Google index FAST and then drop back out just as fast? Is Google out to get you?

Google and Squidoo

Naturally, no one but the mystical Google algorithm knows for fact what exactly is happening with each individual lens. However, I have my theories and since I like to ramble endlessly, I thought I’d share my theories with you.

Squidoo is a BIG site. Reality is, Google most likely will not keep all pages focused on a certain topic within their index. Why would they? Think about it? Wouldn’t you keep the most relevant and have them on hand for those that search for those topics?

“Most relevant” – Now that is an interesting phrase. What IS “most relevant” to Google? Google scans your page and decides what it is about so it stops there, right? Oh no, Google relies on sites outside of Squidoo to tell them which web pages are “most relevant” and important to a certain search.

Google likes when other web pages “vote” for your lens =)

So, how does another web page “vote” for your lens in a way that makes Google feel your lens in “most relevant”?

Back links.

When another web page links to your lens using your focused keywords as the anchor text for that link (ie, the clickable words), Google sees that as a “vote” for your lens to be “most relevant” for that term.

Naturally, that is the short and condensed version of how all that works, but that is the gist of it.

So, even in the best case scenario that we get our lens indexed within hours, it could drop out of the index just as quickly because Google hasn’t found any ‘votes’ for it yet. Now, this doesn’t mean that you haven’t made any ‘votes’/back links… it just means that Google hasn’t found them and processed them yet.

After time, those votes will be found and your lens will come back IF your lens is MORE relevant than the other lenses on that topic/keyword search term. Build your links, be patient, and it will come back 95% of the time IF it is ‘most relevant’ to that search term.

So, What About The Lenses That Are Taking FOREVER To Get Indexed?

I’ve been keeping my eye on an odd little trend that is going on with Google and Squidoo lenses as of late. To “test” my little theory, I made two lenses. One was on a new “trendy” topic and the other was on a more established topic that Squidoo has quite a few lenses on already.

These lenses were made here in the last 3 days. One is in the Google index, one is not.

The lens that was on the more unique trendy topic got indexed and was showing in the index within 8 hours. To all you One Week Marketing followers – all I did was the first little easy part of getting a lens indexed, too! Google scooped it up. Why? They NEED web pages on this topic. It is a new and time-sensitive topic and they need all the info they can get.

The other lens…. yeah, well, it appears Google has said “No, thank you” to the first peek at it. Squidoo already has a good bit of lenses on this topic AND the url for the lens is very, very similar to the urls of OTHER Squidoo lenses.

I did all the steps within One Week Marketing to the letter…and to the extreme to get this lens indexed. I knew it was a bit of a saturated topic within Squidoo and also knew it would take more effort on my part – both to GET it indexed and to KEEP it indexed.

So, How Did I KNOW This?

How did I know that one lens would be harder than another? Simple, I asked Google!

For the sake of this post, I am going to share these lenses with you.

The “trendy” lens is about how to buy inauguration tickets. Pretty new and time sensitive topic isn’t it?

Look what is already in the Squidoo site for that term:

3 pages on Squidoo for that term. That is NOT competition…lol! As you can see, Google got my lens quickly (I made that lens yesterday). My lens is the first listing and as of this writing, it was indexed 22 HOURS ago – and kids, this is a NEW lens! Remember, I only used one little copy/paste technique that we use in One Week Marketing.

Now, my other lens is on a more “pressing” topic – loan modification.

Let’s ask Google what I am up against if I want this lens to do well.

Well, 161 lenses all focused on the exact phrase of “loan modification” within the Squidoo site ALREADY. Yikes!

Yes, that lens will take work – and I have done a LOT to get that lens indexed. So far, nothin’ honey. Also, the url that I chose for my lens is very, very similar to lenses that already are in the Google index.

It’s gonna take time for that lens. Time for Google to find the back links that are already out there, and time for it all to “simmer” together for Google to even begin to think my lens is “more relevant” than other lenses.

But, That’s Ok With Me

Yes, it’s ok with me. My lenses are made and I am moving forward. I can’t control Google. I did everything I need to do to get BOTH lenses indexed. Now, I wait on one, and for the other, well, I get to start seeing what that lens will do.

But I am not going to watch – I am going to keep working. Yesterday I also made two new websites … TWO… complete websites with blogs and landing pages for PPC… AND I set up the PPC campaigns, too. AND, I was using some techniques and tools in all steps that are new to me. (Just for the record, I had a BLAST doing it and can’t wait to share all that with you when I have some feedback and results).

Anyway, I know Google will probably find my lens eventually… I also know Google will probably drop either or both of them like a hot potato before long, too.

It is the nature of the Google organic listings business – the business many, many of us are in.

Google is not out to get me. I know my lens is relevant to the topic I chose.

Wait, how do I KNOW my lens is relevant?

Again… simple, I asked Google.

Yes, ASK GOOGLE if they think your lens is about what YOU think it is about. Now, this that I am about to show is not a fool-proof guarantee, but it sure can tell you from the git-go if your are even on track with the content you have ON your lens.

So, let’s ask Google about my loan modification lens.

Go to the Google AdWords Keyword tool, and choose the “Website content” option… then enter the url for your lens and let Google scan it.

Well lookie there….looks like I am kinda on target. Lots of good foreclosure words (another focus of the lens), but not enough loan modification words. (Interesting… wouldn’t some of those keywords Google shows me that GOOGLE thinks my lens is about make some pretty nifty Squidoo tags? hint hint)

Perhaps I need to improve the keyword focus/density for my main word?

Hmmmm….body is 3.6%… that’s not too bad. (and before anyone asks me how I did that keyword density report… if you read One Week Marketing, I already told you….lol)

But…I think I will let this lens be for right now and see what happens.

And keep moving forward.

THAT is the “secret” to all this – KEEP MOVING FORWARD. Stop micro-managing your lenses and campaigns. Get them out there, do what you’re supposed to do…and move on and create MORE. I push everyone hard in One Week Marketing to keep working…keep creating…keep trying. Why? Sure seems like a lot of work – why not just make one campaign and work it to death?

You could do that….but what if that campaign is a bomb? You just spent all of your most precious commodity – your TIME – on that campaign and it’s not doing a lick of work for YOU. With MANY campaigns, you have MANY streams of potential income AND many web pages out collecting intelligence for you.

Why is that important? Because you may not believe it right now, but someday you will start to have money coming in and you will be ready to expand your online efforts. You’ll want to know WHAT markets to focus your expansion on…..and you will have a SLEW of campaigns to choose from that will show you exactly what you need to know. No starting from scratch – simply expand what is already working.

That sure takes a LOT of pressure off when you start paying for websites or PPC, trust me!

Get those campaigns out there. Make them quality, focused content….but they don’t have to be works of art. If those campaigns show you that they are worth your TIME, then you can ALWAYS go back and add more content or more lenses or more whatever….

Just stop wasting your precious time.

Each moment you spend staring at your stats… each moment you waste beating yourself up with statements like “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not smart enough”, “I’m not cut out for this”, etc etc etc is time wasted.

The most frustrating statement I hear is this -

“This doesn’t work for me”

Sadly, this usually comes from those that have made half a campaign and within a few days they haven’t seen results…so, it must not “work”.

No, THIS doesn’t work for YOU -

YOU work IT.

If your lens drops out of Google – don’t sweat it, it will come back with the right steps. Besides, if you are constantly moving forward, that one lens or web page out of Google temporarily won’t matter as much in the BIG picture because you have LOTS of web pages that are still working.

Very few things in this world work FOR you. Heck, even that neglected vacuum cleaner of mine doesn’t work FOR me – I still have to push the darn thing. But, when I DO push it, it does a pretty nice job (if I remember correctly). But staring at the vacuum cleaner won’t work….. thinking positive about the vacuum cleaner won’t work….and telling myself and others that I am just too stupid to make a vacuum cleaner work won’t cut it either.

I also can’t push the vacuum cleaner half way and expect a complete result.

If it gets clogged, I un-clog it and get back to vacuuming. If the belt breaks, I take the time to fix it….and get back to vacuuming.

Just keep pushing that internet marketing vacuum and suck up ALL the keyword marketplace that you can!

You can do this!

BUT, you don’t need anyone to TELL you that you can do this….

You’re too busy DOING IT!

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Getting a Squidoo Lens Indexed

Google came out and offered some inbound link advice yesterday. Google mentions how links TO your web page are one of the many ’signals’ to Google that decide on the importance of your site (or web page). Also included in those “signals” is the actual content found ON the web page. Ok, got that. Content and inbound links…. Not really a newsflash there…but ok. But then the Google blog post talks about WHO is linking to your web page. They don’t want links TO a web page from “spammy sites“. Okayyyyyy… I have some questions about that.

The Importance Of Links TO Your Web Page

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I love Jason Lee Miller’s articles over at WebProNews. His writing style is amusing and interesting to me and he usually has a unique view point of the topic at hand. He manages to offer me at least one valid point and one much-needed giggle in each article.

Anyway, last night I read one Jason’s latest articles at WebProNews talking about Google’s latest advice on inbound links. I was a bit excited as I began reading his article with the hope that Google would at least hint at some answers to questions many of us have about links coming into our sites, web pages, lenses, etc.

I was disappointed. Turns out, it was a great post full of non-answers. In fact, the post didn’t ANSWER a thing for me, but it DID leave me with MORE questions.

What Does Google Say About In-Bound Links?

According to this recent Google Blog post by Maile Ohye (Developer Programs Tech Lead) -

“Inbound links are links from pages on external sites linking back to your site. Inbound links can bring new users to your site, and when the links are merit-based and freely-volunteered as an editorial choice, they’re also one of the positive signals to Google about your site’s importance. Other signals include things like our analysis of your site’s content, its relevance to a geographic location, etc. As many of you know, relevant, quality inbound links can affect your PageRank (one of many factors in our ranking algorithm). And quality links often come naturally to sites with compelling content or offering a unique service.”

Ok, Google likes links made TO a web page that are voluntary. They like good content. And, as “many of you know”, relevant quality inbound links can affect your PageRank. These things combined effect how our page comes up in the Google search returns. Content and links. Got it?

Well, ya see, while this may be a new concept to some reading this, reality is, this “advice” is NOT news to many of us that have been around for awhile.

Content Is King – But Who Is The Power Behind The Throne?

It’s been said ALL over the internet – “Content Is King!” – meaning that all good rankings START with the content found on your page. Now the term “quality content” is deemed by Google’s analysis of your page, not by Google’s opinion of your content or whether you made Google laugh when they scanned your page.

So Google analyzes your page and decides its relevancy by a computer algorithm – there is no opinion about it. It is all based on specific metrics. Google counts on in bound links to that web page to give the opinion side of “importance”. Based on this, it is quite possible that opinions about a web page can improve the ranking of a web page even more than the algorithm can, isn’t it?

Google may deem your web page not that “important” to a search query, but if ol’ Queen of Links comes into play, she can push King Content to the top.

Women are the heartbeat of everything, aren’t we? =)

Now, read what the Google blog says NEXT about inbound links:

“Let’s say I have a site, example.com, that offers users a variety of unique website templates and design tips. One of the strongest ranking factors is my site’s content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources — however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking.”

One link is from a “spammy site”. Google doesn’t WANT links TO a page from a “spammy site”.

At first glance, that makes perfect sense. Who DOES want a link to their web page from a “spammy site”??

But upon further reflection, I have to ask….

What IS A “Spammy Site”?

There is an algorithm that determines quality content, so what is the algorithm that determines a “spammy site”? Is a “spammy site” also considered even MORE “spammy” by the links TO that site (or lack of)? Now, we all have our opinions on what a “spammy site” is – but what are the Google FACTS that determine this?

Anyone?

And more importantly…

Google, Please Answer Me This -

How in the WORLD can I STOP a “spammy site” from linking TO me? If “spammy sites” link TO me, then those non-important “spammy sites” have now BECOME important because they link TO me? In turn, this makes MY web page LESS important?

Uhhhhhhhh…. Your Honor, I Object

I know this has been re-hashed over and over again, but doesn’t this reconfirm that there is real power to game this ‘advice’ on inbound links and really hurt your competition?

Wow, lookee there, Joe Competitor’s site is now ranking higher than me. Hmmm… better go find or go build some ’spammy sites’ and link to Joe’s so Google sees his site as less important.

Does anyone else have a problem with this?

Did Google just tell us that “non-important sites” really ARE important?

Why do “spammy” sites even get an opinion?

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Gee Google, Thanks For The NON-Answer

Step One

The first thing I read online was a little free ebook from Travis Sago. It is about an online marketing technique called “Bum Marketing“. I have to say that reading this was a big “A-Ha” moment for me. His guide was clear, concise, and stuck to the topic at hand without running me all over the place. In Bum Marketing, you learn how to write articles to promote affiliate products and make commissions. His technique does not require your own website… In fact, it doesn’t require any financial investment at all.

To this day, Bum Marketing is one of the best reads for anyone new to internet marketing. Find problems people search about online, give them part of a solution, then refer them to the main answer. That process translates into keywords>>>content>>>affiliate program (and then, hopefully, a sale ).

Step Two

Next, I needed to understand how search engines, like Google, work. I wanted to know WHY a certain web page ranked higher than another for certain keyword phrases. I wanted to know HOW to make a web page optimized the best it could be to give it every chance to BE the highest ranked page for a certain search query.

I have to say, if you do not understand the bare basics of what is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short), and you do not understand the bare basics of how a search engine works, you are going to make internet marketing VERY hard on yourself. I can tell people all day long to make sure they optimize their title tag, but if they don’t know what a title tag is, or how to optimize it , or even WHY it needs to be optimized, they will feel lost in a total fog of confusion. Learning the basics of SEO helps clear the fog and leads to a bit of clarity.

If Google does not love your web page, your work online will increase to a point that it will just plain be exhausting. When Google DOES love your web page, Google works FOR you… and YOU work LESS.

If you need a basic over-view of Search Engine Optimization, watch this 5-minute video from Matt Cutts at Google (found here if the video doesn’t show for you). Other than that, take the time to learn the how’s AND the why’s of SEO. It will benefit your online business more than you can even imagine.

Matt Cutts on Basic SEO

Step Three

Step three of all this ‘tying it all together’ process is actually an on-going process. In the past few months, I have read two fantastic ebooks that both focused on no-cost to low-cost ways to make money online. The best part of these two guides was that it all really can help it ‘click’ for folks. Yes, each guide is specific to a technique, BUT when all these techniques are applied together, magic happens.

For example, Bum Marketing is about article marketing. BUT, you can apply those same techniques and principals to writing the content on your Squidoo lens or on a blog post. My point is that while each system is solid and works on its own, when you take the information and dump it into the blender in your brain, your OWN system is developed.

Ultimately, THAT is your goal. To have your own profitable system that you can rinse and repeat.

One of the guides I read was at NicheSiteInstructions.info. This guide focuses on techniques for niche blogs and sites. It also focuses in on OWNING your own niche sites. BUT, the system and techniques are MIGHTY effective for any no-cost marketing platform.

The other guide I read was Squidoo Cash Machine. Yup, the guide focuses on Squidoo, and I have had great results applying some of the techniques to my lenses, BUT it is also MIGHTY effective when you apply the concepts to your entire online marketing efforts.

Now, I will be honest and say that I already had a fairly profitable and effective system of my own when I read these two guides. However, I was still able to read them from the perspective of someone who is new to all this. What I loved most about each guide was the potential each gave for others to form their own system and gain greater insight into how all this works.

If you toss Bum Marketing, SEO info, Niche Site Instructions, and Squidoo Cash Machine into the blender in your brain… and you DO the techniques you learn … you will make money online. Heck, I don’t know how you CAN’T make money online if your follow these things. And I don’t care if you ever own your own website or not. It won’t be long before I prove that =)

In Closing

While you read and learn and do… you will also be picking up new little tips and techniques. You will also learn that it is ok to test your own techniques – even if you’ve never heard anyone speak of them. After you learn the basics to all this, you will then have the foundation and knowledge needed to succeed online. Then, you will know one very important thing about making money on the internet…

When in doubt, test it for yourself.

If you wonder if it will work, test it for yourself.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

How I Made Sense Out Of Internet Marketing

Keyword Research – From the Beginning

When people come online and want to find out information, they will go to some sort of search tool. These search tools are referred to as search engines. Common search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, AOL. I have no doubt that you have used a search engine many times – you may have actually used one to find this page you are reading right now =)

The words you typed into the search bar of the search engine are called keywords. Keywords are the word or the phrase that people use to find the information they are looking for through a search engine.

The Importance of Knowing Your Keywords

Here are some internet usage stats for you. There are 1.4 BILLION internet users in the world – that accounts for only 21-22% of the population (naturally, this number will increase). Research shows that 84-85% of internet users will use a search engine to find the information, websites, or products they are looking for.

84-85% of 1.4 BILLION people are using a search engine to find information online – to find information YOU put online.

Now, there are a LOT of search engines available online, but there are only a few that are considered the big players in the search business. Out of all the searches performed online, 77-78% will use Google.

What does that mean to you and your web page? That means this:

For every 100 people that are looking for information you create and put online, 77 or 78 of them will try and find your information via one source… through Google.

Understanding Google

I’ll be honest with you, trying to understand Google is kind of like trying to understand your spouse =) Yes, day to day, you ‘get’ them…. but sometimes they totally throw you for a loop!

Exactly HOW Google works will never be made public… and how it all works is very complex. Simply put, Google is a computer program that has ways of ‘reading’ a web page, deciding what it is about, and then ranking it in the Google index. There are BILLIONS of web pages in the Google index. (Just for fun, go to Google and search for: .com – There are 25.5 BILLION pages that are in the Google index as a .com or have .com on their web page!) The pages that are in the Google index change in quantity constantly. The Google index is highly dynamic and ever-changing… just the nature of the beast.

When creating content online (ie, writing a web page, making a Squidoo lens, writing an article, etc), you will need to learn how to ‘tell’ the search engine what your page is about.

Enter Keywords

Remember that the search engines read your page with a computer program (also called a spider, or bot, or crawler etc). These programs read your page, but they don’t see pictures or videos — they read words. The words you put on your web page, and WHERE you put those words, help the search engines understand what your web page is about. In turn, when an internet user types their search words in Google search, your page will be returned for them to see. The closer to the top of a ‘answer’ from Google your web page sits, the more likely an internet user will click thru and read your page. ( The pages that are returned for a search engine search are called Search Engine Results Pages – or SERPs – and where your page sits on those pages is called your ranking. If your web page is returned as the first ‘answer’ from Google, you have a #1 ranking)

Remember all those 77-78 people out of the hundred that are looking for your information? Research shows that folks searching for information on Google will only look at the first page of ‘answers’ – maybe two. Therefor, in order to get the most of those 77-78 people to see your web page, you need to have your web page ranking as close to #1 as possible for best results and more organic traffic to your web page. Organic traffic is free traffic that finds your web page via a search engine. Organic traffic is good… no, it is GREAT. Organic traffic means you have a web page that is working for you. While you sleep, work on other things, golf, or hang out with the family – the search engines are still sending traffic to your web page.

Because the search engine bots are computers, they read your words fairly literally. Meaning, they don’t understand reference or implication. If you type, “It ran up the tree”, the bot does not know what ‘it’ is. However, if you type, “The cat ran up the tree”, the bot gets what you are talking about. Your goal is to make it clear to the search engines what your page is about while not messing up the user experience for your readers.

How Do I Know What Keywords To Use?

Wouldn’t it be cool if you knew what internet users were looking for online? And cooler yet, what exact words they were typing into Google to find it?

You can.

This is called keyword research. There are many tools available that can show you words that users are searching for, how many times a day they are typed into Google each day, and other phrases like it that searchers are using. By finding the words that people are really looking for, and having these words on your web page, you can greatly improve your chances of getting more organic traffic to your web page.

The Goal of Keyword Research

The main goal of keyword research is to find words and phrases related to your topic that internet users are using, and have these be phrases that don’t already have a large amount of web pages already in the Google index. For example, if you want to rank in Google for the phrase black bag, a Google search will show you that there are already 5.1 million web pages in their index that rank for that phrase. Also, black bag is very broad…. what kind of black bag? Be more specific. What about black bowling bag? A Google search for black bowling bag has just a little over 1 million pages for that keyword phrase. Now we’re getting somewhere. However, 1 million pages is still a lot of pages to be competing with – and we don’t even know if people online are looking for a black bowling bag.

While that was just an example off the top of my head, that was an idea of how this is going to work. The typical searcher online will use 3-4 words to search for the information they need. Internet users are getting smarter as the internet matures. They know that if they want to find a black bowling bag that they will not get the search results they want by simply typing bag into Google…. or even by typing black bag into Google. They will at least type black bowling bag into their search… probably even more descriptive such as black bowling ball bag, or discount black bowling bags. You get the idea so I can stop with the bowling bag thing now…haha!

Your goal with keyword research is to:

• Find the words people are using in Google to find information about your topic – these are your keywords.

• Use the keywords you find that have the least amount of competition in Google so you have a better chance of ranking at the top for a Google search – you will do this with your keyword research.

• Give the searcher who clicks thru to your page the information they were actually looking for. In the long run, you still have to have quality content for your web page to be successful AFTER a searcher gets there.

Keyword Research For Squidoo Lenses

Squidoo.com is getting to be a very large website. Many topics have been covered – and many topics have numerous lenses covering it. Google will only return two Squidoo lenses for a search request on the same topic. Proper keyword research, and proper use of those keywords, can give your lens an ‘edge’ that leads to more organic traffic.

If you are creating a Squidoo lens, you will take these steps:

1) Decide what your page will be about. Like the lens on a camera, your Squidoo lens will focus in on a subject. Don’t be all over the place… pick a topic.

2) Perform Keyword Research to decide HOW to word your content on your lens and where to put your keywords on your lens for best results.

3) Create good, unique content on the subject. Keywords will help get your lens found – relevant, useful content will help your lens be successful.

How Do I Do Keyword Research?

While typing this post, I tried very hard to go back in time and remember the things I didn’t understand when I first came into internet marketing. Hopefully, for those that are in that place right now, this post was a helpful introduction to how keywords work and why you need them. However, this post has become VERY long! So How To Do Keyword Research will be the topic of another post here at PotPieGirl.com – stay tuned!

(Note: when that post is made I will link to it here)
Added 6-18-2008

How to Get The Right Keywords for Your Squidoo Lens

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Keyword Research 101

This was an interesting situation to me, and also one that I feel quite a few lensmasters on Squidoo run in to. This prompted me to create some posts here on PotPieGirl.com to talk about this situation with Google and a Squidoo lens…and what can be done about it.

Help! No Traffic from Google to My Squidoo Lens!

In part one of the posts about a lens not getting traffic from Google, we did some basic research and trouble-shooting of her Squidoo lens to see what was going on. We found out that while Jackie’s intended niche, cloth baby diapers, was a good niche in Google, it was also a VERY competitive niche within the Squidoo site. Being that Google will usually only show two results from the Squidoo site for a chosen keyword, we had to figure out a way for Jackie’s lens to get “picked” by Google, and ranked in the Google search engine for her chosen keywords.

When we continued talking about solving this seo issue of no traffic from Google to a Squidoo lens in part 2, we SEO analyzed two of Jackie’s competitors in Squidoo that Google WAS ranking for her related keywords. Then I gave a list of suggestions that Jackie could make to the lens to help remedy this situation.

Jackie made the suggested changes I offered, and today… just 10 days later… I received a wonderful email from Jackie.

“My Lens is on Page 2 of Google!”

Hey Jennifer,
Just thought I’d let you know I’m page 2 on google for free cloth diaper pattern and page 6 for cheap cloth diapers. WOW. I just have to say thank you again!! I’ve only seen 6 visits from google, but I have learned so much I’ll know how to better put a lens together (and teach others) to make sure they come up on google from the beginning. If you have any other hints I’d be glad to hear them.

 

Jackie
The Natural Pregnancy Project ~
9 Months of Natural Pregnancy and Childbirth Research In One Place
www.InternetMarketingForMommies.com

Yippeeeee! So glad those few changes made such a big difference. Now we’re on to something and can really get this lens moving up in search engine rankings.

I did some quick checks on Google to see if the issue with Jackie’s lens was really corrected, and looks like it is!

The first time I ran this exact search for Jackie’s lens, I could NOT get Google to show HER lens. Other lenses that had “lensrolled” her were ranking, but Jackie’s lens was NOT.

Now look:

There she is… #1!!! And you also probably notice that is my blog, PotPieGirl.com, ranking at #3 and #4 for that search, too. haha! Go ahead and try and tell me that simple ON page SEO doesn’t work! =)

And here she is for one of her targeted keywords!

This is GREAT news and shows real promise for getting this Squidoo lens boosted in Google with some good off-page promotion. Off-page SEO works best when your Squidoo lens, or web site, is ALREADY ranking in the search engines.

Off -page optimization helps improve search engine placement….but not if you aren’t ranking at all (AND you ARE indexed). A nice round of article marketing could do the trick for this lens as well as other off page SEO for Squidoo lenses. Maybe I’ll get my ’secrets’ together and do a good reference post for ways to promote and OFF page optimize a Squidoo lens. I’m always testing and tweaking the various tools that are available…

Speaking of ‘testing and tweaking’ off page optimization techniques – I’d like to give a word of warning about using social bookmarking sites that ‘take’ ALL your content. When you give your entire exact content from a web page to another site, you may very well lose YOUR ability to rank for the keywords that content relates to – especially if that bookmarking site has a higher Page Rank than you do. When you ‘give’ your content to another site (or when you allow full RSS feeds of your site go out on the web), you are doing what is called “syndicating your content”. Use caution when doing this.

Squidoo Optimization Tip -

Do not use any social bookmarking site that you can NOT change the title tag to.

Optimally, choose sites that allow you to write a unique description AND a unique title when bookmarking your content.

Squidoo Tips and Optimization Lessons

For those that are interested, here are some previous blog posts to help you create better SEO optimized Squidoo lenses:

How to Create a Squidoo Lens

How to SEO Optimize a Squidoo Lens

How to Improve Search Engine Placement of a Squidoo Lens (part 1)

Topics that Squidoo will NOT Allow

Squidoo Lens Review

Well, looks like this Squidoo Lens review was a success! I would like to thank Jackie Lee for being the “guinea pig” and being so gracious through-out this whole process.

You’re a good sport, kid!

Squidoo Lens Problems

Do you have a lens that is having issues or needs some trouble-shooting? If so, send me an email (potpiegirl(at)potpieworld(dot)com) and tell me what’s going on with your Squidoo page. If I think I can help, and the lesson will help my readers, I just might feature YOUR lens for a future post.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Squidoo Lens Review | No Traffic From Google Part 3

Squidoo Lens Review – Google Traffic Troubleshooting

Well, folks, now we need to compare Jackie’s cloth diaper lens to the two lenses that Google has chosen for this search query. We need to find obvious differences that matter to Google, then we need to SEO optimize this lens to better her chances of being one of the two Squidoo pages that Google selects. Don’t forget, what we are doing now has nothing to do with Squidoo lensrank, or ratings left by visitors, or any ranking criteria that is internal to Squidoo. This is about Google.

In my previous post, I have labeled the Squidoo lens that is returned in the #24 spot on Google as Lens A, and the lens that is returned for the #25 spot on Google as Lens B. So now let’s compare some important factors to Google between Jackie’s lens, Lens A, and Lens B.

Squidoo Lens Analysis

We will be comparing the <title> tags of each lens (we remember how important our title tag is when SEO optimizing a Squidoo lens, right? ), the number of backlinks to each lens, the PR (Page Rank) of each lens, and current search engine ranking of each lens. I will also take a look at the use of <h> header tags and also the tags each Squidoo lens uses. The tags you chose for your Squidoo lens are also automatically chosen as your meta keywords for your lens. While not overly important, it’s worth taking a look at. Also keep in mind that Google uses over 200 factors when deciding the search engine placement of a web page…. this applies to Squidoo lenses, too. No single factor I am checking is an absolute. These things I am checking are indicators and can be a good guide to lead us to optimization edits.

The Google Algorithm is a mystery… a secret. … and worse yet, it is constantly changing. No one has the exact answer…we can only use the best proven SEO techniques and use tools to find indicators (clues) as to what is going on.

Just a quick note – I am linking out to the tools I used for these checks. Each of these tools are free and will open in a new window/tab.

Jackie’s Lens

<title> Cloth Diaper Resource</title>

Page Rank = 2

Yahoo Backlinks: 279

Google Backlinks : 29

Current Ranking Report shows that Jackie’s lens is not found in the first 50 returns for the cloth diaper query on Google, however she does have a #16 ranking for this same query on Yahoo!

SEO Mini-Scoring = score of 35 out of a possible 40 points with a keyword density of 5% for cloth diaper.

Lens A

<title>Cloth Diapers for Your Baby</title>

Page Rank = 2

Yahoo Backlinks: 327

Google Backlinks: 98

Ranking check : Not in Top 50 for this keyword (cloth diaper) on any search engines.

SEO Mini-Check Score: 18/40 with a keyword density of 1% for cloth diaper.

Lens B

<title>Cloth Diapering a Newborn</title>

Page Rank: 1

Yahoo Backlinks: 0

Google Backlink: 0

Ranking Report: Not found in the Top 50 on any search engine for this keyword phrase

SEO Mini Check Score: 15/40 with a keyword density of 0%

Ok – a question to the class… What SEO Ranking Factors stand out to you when comparing these three lenses? Can you see an opportunity for Jackie’s lens to replace one of these two Squidoo lenses that Google is already choosing?

I do. And now, as I go really look at each of the three lenses, I know she can (unless, of course, the other two lensmasters are reading this, too! haha!)

Squidoo Lens – Suggestions to Improve Search Engine Placement

For Jackie’s lens, I recommend the following changes:

1. <title> tag – The title of your Squidoo lens is SO important. Forgive me for this comparison, but do you remember the mullet hair style? Remember the saying about it?

“Business in the front, party in the back”

I want you to think “mullet” when creating a Squidoo lens. Business at the top…. party at the bottom. That title of your lens has got to not only tell the search engines as much about your web page as possible, but it also needs to be worded so that searchers want to click it. These words are what is shown when someone searches for your keywords on a search engine.

Whenever I am having any issues with a web page, I look to my <title> tag. If I could only change ONE thing to “fix” a web page, I would go to the title. Is the title truly relevant to the content on my page? Is it interesting enough that *I* would want to click it? Get your keywords in there and get them in at the front. Make it clear and make use of the space you have. All the words that go in that orange header of a Squidoo lens are BUSINESS.

Jackie’s current <title> tag is: Cloth Diaper Resource. Girlfriend, get your keywords in there…expand..elaborate…BRAG if you want to! You make great Squidoo lenses…get people there! They’ll be happy they found you!

2. Keywords/Tags – A quick check at my favorite free keyword tool at SEOBook shows me some great little keywords that people in the cloth diaper market ARE typing in Google to find information and products. Let’s use them.

Here is a quick list of keywords that stick out to me based on the theme of Jackie’s lens:

• cloth diapers

• cloth diaper

• organic cloth diapers

• discount cloth diapers

• folding cloth diapers

• cloth diaper change

• cloth diapers pattern

• washing cloth diapers

• cloth baby diapers

• cloth diaper covers

• how to wash cloth diapers

• patterns for cloth diapers

• fitted cloth diapers

Let’s get those keywords into your title. For example:

Cloth Diaper | Cloth Baby Diapers | Cloth Diaper Patterns, Covers and More

Just an example off the top of my head, but see how I am using the space and getting some of those long-tail keywords in there?

Squidoo Keywords – Where to Put Them For Best SEO

I’d also recommend using these keywords in your module titles. These module titles get an <h2> header tag and Google pays attention to header tags. Also recommended is to edit your text a bit and sprinkle these keywords into the content of your lens. Make a point to get a few of these keywords into your intro module. This module is also used as the “meta description” of your lens and can quite often be what searchers see for your listing on Google.

To help Google really understand what your lens is about, let’s get some well keyworded anchor text links within the content of your lens. I am a big fan of putting a “table of contents” for my lens within my intro module. You can see examples of how I do this on my Marine Boot Camp lens or my new Worm Farm lens … or if you look on my Home Energy Conservation Tips lens, you will see that I used a “blackbox” module to do it which turned out kinda cool =)

Anyway, give the search engine spiders some “spider food”…help them get all thru your content and help them to understand what your page is all about.

Building Backlinks to a Squidoo Lens

This brings me to my third recommendation, and it is a task I can see that you’ve been working quite hard on ….building backlinks to your Squidoo lens. Google LOVES links. Google also views links IN to your site or Squidoo lens as very, very important when determining your search engine ranking. Take your keyword list, and get out there (some more…lol) and make some anchor text links TO your lens using words from the list above. Article marketing is GREAT for this. Try to change up the words you use to link to your web page while keeping your targeted keywords in mind. Not every link you build will pass value to your Squidoo lens, but 99% of links won’t HURT, either.

Final Thoughts… For Now

Once these changes are made, ping your lens and watch your url in Google. Check the cache date to see when Google updates your listing. See if it makes a difference. Once this Squidoo lens starts being returned in Googles SERPs, then we can move on to help boost it to the first page. But first, let’s get Google to choose this lens from within Squidoo.

Hat tip to Jackie Lee for being a volunteer “victim” of this Squidoo lens review. Y’all show the love and stop by Jackie’s Cloth Diaper lens…or go see her at any of her fantastic blogs:

Which Way is Up? (recently moved, but still some great posts to read)

It’s a WAHM Life , and

Internet Marketing for Mommies

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Squidoo SEO – Why Doesnt Google Send Traffic to My Squidoo Lens? Part 2

Today we will learn the delicate balance of how to SEO Optimize Your Passion.

Squidoo Lens Review and Analysis

I received an email today from one of my favorite bloggers, lensmasters, students, and people… Ms Jackie Lee. I adore Jackie. She is an enthusiastic work-at-home-mom with an inspiring drive and an admirable faith in things working out (Yes, Jackie… I read your blog…lol). I admire her spirit and I love how her spirit transfers into her lens-making on Squidoo. Sadly, todays email from Jackie was a frustrated distress call. She has a lens that Google refuses to love.

“I have read Squidoo Profits System, and I encourage my blog readers to read it too. I have found it very helpful in building lenses. I’m just not sure where I’m going wrong with this one lens. I’m sure you get asked this all the time. I have a lens that is getting traffic from all the search engines but google. I’ve tweaked and changed some things and just can’t get any google love. Could you review my lens? You are welcome to tear it apart and use it for a blog post or even a report to sell. I would really appreciate it. You won’t hurt my feelings, I just really want to see the little google triangle come up on my traffic stats.

Thanks,
Jackie Lee “

Do I do Squidoo lens reviews? Yes! Allllll the time. I also do web site reviews…all the time. Heck, I analyze web sites and Squidoo lenses for FUN! I love it. I’m so addicted to web site analysis that I actually go into sites that recruit freelancers for SEO work. I read the needs and problems of someone requesting SEO help…and then go check out their site. Usually, within a few minutes, I can make a list of 10-20 things a site owner can do to improve the search engine rankings of that site. And yes, I do this FOR FUN. Go ahead…laugh. I have turned into some sort of geek…lol

HOWEVER, I have never done an analysis/review publicly here on my blog. I do them for fun and for practice as I finish up my professional SEO certification…and I do plenty of SEO analysis reviews for clients. But Jackie’s email with suggestion of using this as a blog post seemed like a GREAT idea to me (thank you, Jackie!). Besides, now many of you will see how I analyze a niche…and folks, it goes way beyond keyword research.

A quick disclaimer before we get started: It is truly hard to “know” someone online. Knowing how true that is, I would like to mention that I don’t have a cruel bone in my body. I, like others online, can tend to take my Squidoo lenses personally and would not appreciate harsh criticism. Any commentary or suggestions I give are from an objective, want-to-help viewpoint. The learning curve in this “make money online” business is STEEP and I have the utmost respect for anyone who at least tries. I KNOW how hard it can be. I’ve been there…and I run into that wall with NEW things to learn daily. I will be gentle, yet I will be honest with my input.

Ok – ’nuff said… let’s get to work!

Cloth Diaper Squidoo Lens Review

Jackie has a lot of great lenses. The lens that is giving her issues is her cloth diaper lens. (If you’re like me, the first thing you notice is Jackie’s adorable baby!)

Jackie’s main concern is that while she gets traffic to her lens from Yahoo! and other search engines, she isn’t seeing traffic from Google. So, the first thing I do is check Google and see if her lens is indexed. Yes, it is. Google has it and it also was recently cached on 2/12/2008. Ok, that’s good.

From Jackie’s <title> tag on her lens title, I can see she is optimizing for the keyword cloth diaper. So, again, I check Google to see what I can find out when I search for cloth diaper on Google. I see 216,000 results/competitors in Google’s SERPs (search engine result pages). This brings me back to earlier when I said that niche analysis goes beyond basic keyword research.

Why Low Competition in the SERPs Does Not ALWAYS Mean a Good Niche Market

Cloth Diaper only has 216,000 results in Google. One would think (even without looking at search volume for this keyword) that this would be an ‘easy’ niche keyword to optimize for. But let’s look further. The first thing I notice when looking at the Google returns is how many advertisers there are (the PPC AdWords ads)…and boy, there are a ton. This tells me that this is a competitive niche keyword. Quite simply put, why would advertisers spend money on a keyword that is not making them money? The amount of PPC advertisements also tells me that there IS a market for this niche (which is good), but the quantity of advertisements based on low search returns makes me a bit nervous. I’ll come back to this point later.

As I search on Google thru all returns for the ‘cloth diaper’ query, I am looking for Jackie’s Squidoo lens. I can’t find it. I narrow my search even more and query: “cloth diaper resource” (The exact, in quotes, title of Jackie’s lens). What I found intrigued me. I found 2 Squidoo lenses at #24 and #25 for this search..and neither were Jackie’s lens! Neither of these two other lenses even had ‘cloth diaper resource’ in the title (tho both lenses have a link to Jackie’s lens in their lensroll sidebar). Looks like Google is picking two lenses from Squidoo to rank for this keyphrase… and Jackie’s lens isn’t being picked. Worse yet, even when a Squidoo lens (or two) IS ranked in Google for this keyword, neither are ranking high.

Squidoo Lens – Google Traffic TroubleShooting

First step in this situation is to go back to Squidoo and see what is going on within the Squidoo site with this niche. Some quick checks show me 95 lenses within Squidoo that are using this tag. Out of these 95 lenses, Google is only choosing two. We need Jackie’s cloth diaper lens to be one of those two.

Now, Keep in mind that when Google “picks” two pages from Squidoo to return for a search query, Google could care less about lensrank, so let’s get all those ideas out of our minds. Google is choosing between web PAGES from a site based on a keyword query. Google seems to have already “picked” two lenses, and I will call them lens A and lens B for sake of this post. Neither lensmaster has requested a review, so I will not do an unsolicited review of their lenses (out of politeness, not selfishness…lol).

Now we have to examine Lens A and Lens B and see what Google sees that could possibly be effecting her search engine ranking.

Note: You may, or may not, have noticed that so far, I have done very little trouble-shooting from Jackie’s lens. I have looked at it, I noted her <title> tag, then I went to Google to start my analysis. While we WILL come back to Jackie’s lens with a list of recommendations, I want you all to remember that sometimes…ok, A LOT of times, you have to leave your web page to get a picture of what’s going on. If you don’t know what the outside issues are, how can you know what to “fix”?

Right now, I don’t need to look at Jackie’s page. I need to know what cloth diaper sites Google DOES “like” and see what they are doing. I need to see what these other web pages (Jackie’s competition) are NOT doing that Jackie CAN do. I already know the SEO basics of a Squidoo lens..I want to know her search engine competition.

In SEO…. Always “Know Thy Competition”!

Looks like I will need to break this post up into 2 or 3 parts. I am completely unable to type brief little 200 word posts! Beyond my “prolific” nature, this topic deserves a thorough analysis and complete explanation. That way, the next time YOU have a site or Squidoo lens that isn’t seeing traffic from Google, you will know how to trouble-shoot the issue.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Squidoo SEO – Why Doesn’t Google Send Traffic to My Squidoo Lens? Part 1

A quick review of what we’ve learned about SEO optimizing a Squidoo lens so far.

Earlier, we learned the steps to create a Squidoo lens. Next, we learned how to SEO optimize a Squidoo Lens and maximize our optimization efforts with correct use of title tags, headers and meta attributes. In part one of this current series, we learned how to analyze Squidoo SEO efforts on our lens and be sure we had our lenses the best they could be.

In part 2, we discussed the difference between Page Rank and Search Engine Rank and learned that we needed to stop focusing so intently on that silly green PR toolbar =) Finally, part 3 brought us to talking about, and learning how, to really analyze competition in the search engines . By analyzing our competition, we decided to focus on three keywords for our Squidoo lens and to rank those keywords in order of priority.

Whew! We sure have discussed a lot! Congrats for making it this far! All of that previous information is leading us to todays post on….

Building Links to Squidoo Lenses

See this little guy over to the right? That is the “perfect link”. Do you know what a perfect, ideal link to your Squidoo lens consists of?

Link exchanges? Forum Signatures?

The index of the search engines is built around links. Amazingly, all 8 billion plus pages in the Google index are all somehow linked together…and Google loves links. In Google’s “eyes”, links to your site are like votes FOR your site. Google values the power of recommendation of web users and how we, as internet users, naturally want to share good sites/pages we have found.

The “perfect” link is a one way link pointing to your web page. This perfect inbound link has a power-punch of anchor text that matches your keywords/page content….this link comes naturally within content of another web page… and best yet, the link comes from a site with a strong Page Rank that has very few outbound links within its content.

How MANY links you have pointing to your web page or Squidoo lens does not matter nearly as much as the QUALITY of those links. Many web pages have enjoyed high rankings in the search engines from just a few “perfect” links to their page.

Thing is, these ‘perfect links’ are tough to get, but we need them. Links are our means of getting our Squidoo lens higher in the search engines…links are our means to rise above our competitors. Higher exposure in the search engine means what? You got it! More organic traffic!

It’s been said that you should spend half your time optimizing your Squidoo lens, and the other half doing OFF site optimization – meaning…. link building.

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel here, I will show you some great resources on link building. These sites have good tips and great ideas (I especially like the query: “your keywords” “add url”…neat trick to build one way links. The BackLink Builder Tool does this for you)

Squidoo Link Building Resources:

27 Quick Tips to Top Search Engine Rankings

Backlink Builder (very neat tool!)

SEO-Theory Link Building Info

Add URL Pages

101 Link Building Tips

How to Improve Your Link Popularity

That is just the tip of the iceberg. Just get on Google and search… there is a ton on information out there on link building. Just remember, don’t get your url listed on any page that is only a list of links. If there are over 30 links on a page, the search engines may consider that page a ‘link farm’… and that is bad. Regarding reciprocal links, these don’t do a whole lot for Squidoo pages. Sites that have many pages can make reciprocal links work, but your single Squidoo page can not.

As for buying “150 backlinks for only $2.99!!” – pass on that garbage. Main thing is to get your site out there and expose it. The links you acquire will help with your link popularity, but they will also give more opportunities to even more folks to visit your lens. Since you already know that the best way to get one way links is to create content that people WANT to link to, you efforts of exposing your Squidoo lens will work even better.

Article Marketing for Squidoo Backlinks

People have asked me what I think about using article marketing to build one way back links and traffic to a Squidoo lens. Should you use article marketing for link building and traffic generation to a Squidoo lens?

YES!!!!!!

Distributing useful, high-quality content across the internet that includes an optimized anchor text link back to your Squidoo lens is a flat-out wonderfully fantastic idea. I do it all the time. The Squidoo lenses I am selling were just created recently and I initiated an article distribution program for them the next day. Already, I see those lenses generating decent traffic and enjoying improved search engine rankings for some competitive keywords. If it gets too much better, I may not even sell them.. haha!

Thing is, I have my own little system for article distribution for my Squidoo lenses, blogs, and web sites. It works quite well and it is painfully easy. To be brief, I start with a program that lets me automatically submit hundreds of unique copies of my article to article directories. I like the unique content part, but what I really like is that I can set it to also include a different resource/bio box with each article. This enables me to change up my anchor text to weight my three keywords I am focusing on as needed (you remember the three keywords you need for each lens, right? If not, read part 3).

This program does not submit out to really high PR sites, and that works for me. In my little mind, I like to build one-way back links to my site from medium sites BEFORE I manually submit to high PR sites like EzineArticles.

Why? Simple. I don’t want my syndicated/distributed content to rank higher in the search engines than the site I am optimizing does. So far, after using my system many, many times, I have yet to have a syndicated article rank higher than my site. And that used to happen to me all the time when I submitted to EzineArticles first.

Does that matter? I’m not 100% sure. I just know this works better for me, and my little system keeps working for me…the links keep building week after week after my syndicated articles get picked up in yet another unique version by even more sites. A little bit of work on the front side…and a whole lot of good results from there on out.

After some time passes and I feel it’s time to start the process again, Guess what? One click of a button and unique versions go out all over the internet AGAIN. Sweet! (and no, this is not some article spinner or whatever they call it).

What IS my article marketing system? Well….. I was going to do a review on this… really, really planned to…but….

Ok, I’m just not ready to have to compete with everyone else. In many niches, I know my system gives me a bit of an upper hand. If EVERYBODY uses it…well, I’m back to the drawing board trying to find a new point of difference between me and my competitors.

Point of Difference?

Yes, that thing that YOU do, that your competitors do NOT do. That ’sumthin’ that sets you apart from the crowd. This is my point of difference. If you like it, try it. There will be NO sales pitch for this product… It’s ok if you pass on it…lol! And if you’re REALLY creative, you will see what else it can be used for – a little something that really adds some bucks to my account each month

If you have a tough time writing articles and content, read the 3-step easy content writing post I have – it helps =)

I could type forever about link building to improve the search engine placement of a lens, or any ol’ web page…but I have already typed a novel.

Get out there, build some links….watch your lens improve in the SERPs.

It’s fun!

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Improve Search Engine Placement of Squidoo Lens – Part 4

After all my reading, and all my wandering the internet, I have come to a serious conclusion about a good bit of the SEO advice you can find online…

There is a LOT of crap SEO advice out there. Actually, TOO much crap and flat out wrong advice.

As I was making my notes for the intended Part 3 of this series on Squidoo SEO, I had a statement I read on my favorite SEO blog repeatedly come to my mind:

People don’t stop to think before typing things onto the Web.

Fact is, folks… I do not want to be yet another person who types crap about SEO online. The learning curve to SEO can be a real booger, no doubt, but when it is compounded by bad advice, it is even harder. People don’t stop to think before they type – they don’t realize that there are many people that are new to SEO that are utterly lost and confused and will, eventually, have to UNlearn all the crap about search engine optimization that they are being fed.

The SEO Puzzle

I am fascinated by the search engines – especially Google. Why one site/page ranks higher than another…. why a page that seems irrelevant to me ranks highly in the SERPs…..why a fantastic site gets lost on page 23…. it all fascinates me. It intrigues me. I’ll even admit that for “fun”, I will type in some random keyword into a Google query and look at the top 10 sites. I will SEO analyze site #10 and then do all I can to figure out what that site/web page has to do to beat out the 9 sites above it.

I ask myself, “If this was my site or web page, what would I do to get to #1?”

Yes, I do this for fun. Am I weird? Yeah, most likely. SEO is like a puzzle to me and the thing is, there is never an exact answer or solution. The search engine result pages are dynamic, constantly changing. The competition in your chosen niche is constantly changing. People who are doing the searching are constantly changing. What you do to improve your search engine rank could do a LOT of good…or it could be counter-acted by a competing site who got on the ball, too.

When we begin to try and optimize a web page, blog post, or a Squidoo lens, we have to look at our competitors and ask ourselves – if all else remains the same (ie, no one else changes their site, Google doesn’t change, etc), what do I need to do to get to #1?

Getting Your Squidoo Lens to #1

When I posted about how to create a Squidoo Lens, I mentioned that the ‘hard work’ was done BEFORE you create a thing on Squidoo. That “hard work” was your keyword research. A Squidoo lens is like the lens on a camera – it focuses in on a subject. In the case of a Squidoo lens, it focuses in on a very specific subject. If you’re trying to get a Squidoo lens to rank #1 in the search engines for something extremely broad like “music” or “insurance”…well…. sorry, I can’t help you =)

You want to narrow your keyword research down to three specific and highly targeted keywords/key phrases to your subject that have a track record of traffic (ie, people actually search for these terms). Ideally, these three phrases will have a good bit of traffic, but very few competing sites. BUT – your research does not stop there when it comes to really good keywords to optimize for.

When It Comes to SEO – Know Thy Competition

Just picking 3 keywords that show search volume but not that many competing sites is not enough. Type your keywords/key phrases into Google… look at the Top 5….make note of them. Now, I want you to become familiar with two search options on Google: allintitle: and allinanchor: Simply checking Yahoo for the quantity of backlinks a site has is NOT ENOUGH.

Allinanchor: for Squidoo Seo

The allinanchor: query is used to show you what sites have backlinks pointing back to their site or ranking page with specific anchor text. If your keyword/keyphrase that you are optimizing for is “purple banana hats”, go to Google and type:

allinanchor:purple banana hats

This will how you which sites are actually accumulating back links to their site with the words purple, banana, and hats in the anchor text. For sites that are using that EXACT phrase, type: allinanchor:”purple banana hats” and this will show the sites that are being optimized for that exact phrase with optimized anchor text links back to their site. Make note of the Top 5.

AllInTitle: for Squidoo SEO

allintitle: is used to show you which sites are using your keyword/key phrase in the <title> tag of their lens, post, or web page (You remember how to optimize a title tag on a Squidoo lens, right?) Again, you can use ”’ to find the exact phrase.

Make note of the Top 5.

Now you have lists of the Top 5 web sites you will be competing with. You will probably find the same sites or web pages within these lists. Now, really, really, LOOK at these sites. Go ahead and check their backlinks in Yahoo…see WHERE they are getting links from and HOW they are getting links. Can you beat them? With many long-tail keywords, it is quite possible that you CAN get to the top. Maybe not #1, but perhaps #2?

Keyword Ranking for Squidoo SEO

Now, I want you to “rank” your three keywords. Which of your three keywords is going to take more work to rank higher for in the search engines? That will be keyword #1. Your #2 keyword will be for the next “hardest”, and #3 will be your “easiest”. Now, create your lens with good on-page Squidoo SEO. If your lens is already created, get back in there and make sure your Squidoo lens is optimized for your 3 keywords.

Most importantly, make a lens (or web page, or blog post) that people will WANT to link to. That will do A LOT of the link building work FOR you.

In Part 4, we will start the link building process. We want to tell the search engines that our Squidoo lens is relevant to the search terms we are optimizing for. Link popularity….relevance….because other links on the web tell the search engines so… and this boosts the importance of your page, which in turn helps the Page Rank of a Squidoo lens (or blog post, or web page). Got it? =)

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Improve Search Engine Placement of Squidoo Lens – Part 3

In Part 2 we are going to begin the process of OFF-page optimization. Did you know that what you do OFF your Squidoo lens can be as important….. no wait, it can be MORE important than what you do to the Squidoo lens itself?

Before we begin, lets start with these two terms:

• Search Engine Rank

• Page Rank

They’re the same, right? That little green PR bar is an indicator of how well your site is ranking in the search engines….right? And when you lose PR, you MUST be losing high-ground in the search engines, too?

Right?

WRONG!

Did you know that where you rank in the search engines has to do with two things:

Your ON-page content and SEO

Your OFF-page optimization and SEO processes.

So, what the heck does Page Rank mean?

PR (Page Rank) is an indicator of your back-links. Yes, it is as simple as that (pretty much). PR tells how popular you are. The more sites (from good neighborhoods) that link to your site (or Squidoo lens) the higher your Page Rank. Now, this is a painfully basic explanation – but that is the gist of what PR is.

How Does Google Decide Search Engine Placement (or rank)??

Let’s get the answer straight from Google. I found this handy piece of information here.

Serving results

When a user enters a query, our machines search the index for matching pages and return the results we believe are the most relevant to the user. Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, one of which is the PageRank for a given page. PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank. Not all links are equal: Google works hard to improve the user experience by identifying spam links and other practices that negatively impact search results. The best types of links are those that are given based on the quality of your content.

Got that?

Let’s see if you got the same out of it as I did.

I read:

Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, one of which is the PageRank for a given page.

So, a Squidoo Lens, or a Blog post, or an entire site has it placement in the search engines decided by over 200 factors… and Page Rank (PR) is just ONE of those 200 hundred factors.

Interesting!

Ok, I also read this:

PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages.

There it is, that ‘gotta be popular’ thing… it’s High School all over (says the band geek)!

So, I can just go get a ton of links to point to my site and my Page Rank will sky-rocket, right? Wrong!

Not all links are equal: Google works hard to improve the user experience by identifying spam links and other practices that negatively impact search results.

Well DARN!

So, what is a GOOD link to my site that will increase my Page Rank and help me with that ONE factor out of 200 that helps me with my search engine placement?

The best types of links are those that are given based on the quality of your content

Hmmmm…. based on the quality of my content? What does that mean to us today?

Links are ‘it’, kids. Good, high-quality links that have content-related anchor text. These links will not only help the over-hyped Page Rank (PR) of a site or Squidoo lens……

But these high-quality links TO your Squidoo lens or site are the KEY to improve your search engine ranking.

Please, don’t kill yourself going into your lenses and frantically trying to keep them overly-fresh. Yes, ‘tweak’ them, but do NOT spend more SEO time ON your lens than you do OFF your lens.

Read yesterdays post to be sure you know how to SEO optimize a Squidoo lens before you set it loose on the world.

Then – get to work on link-building.

Oh, and stop worrying about PR so much! Let’s focus on search engine rankings…not that green bar. =)

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Improve Search Engine Placement of a Squidoo Lens – Part 2

So let’s say you have a site…. how about a Squidoo lens… that is ranking in the search engines – just not high enough. Improved search engine rankings are your goal…. so how to you improve search engine ranking for your Squidoo lens?

Squidoo SEO to Boost Your Search Engine Rankings

In part 1 of this series, we will focus on basic ON-page SEO optimization techniques you can do to enjoy improved search engine placement. If you haven’t already, go back and read How to SEO Optimize a Squidoo Lens (will open in a new window so you don’t lose your place). While creating your lens, it is imperative that you focus on the SEO ‘hot-spots’ that are available within your Squidoo modules. How to SEO Optimize a Squidoo Lens will show you how to optimize your<title> tag, the <h> header tags, your keywords, your description and other Metas that can make a difference to your over-all search engine placement.

After you have created your Squidoo lens, or you have a Squidoo lens you feel is ‘ready to go’ – let’s analyze it and see what the search engines will think.

How to Analyze your Squidoo Lens

First off, I want you to go to this free tool that analyzes web sites and web pages. Again, it will open in a new window so we can work together.

Go ahead an enter your exact web address of your Squidoo lens (include the http://). Answer the little question following your url. This question is designed to make sure you are a human and not some program spamming this wonderful free tool.

Ok – click ’submit’

How to Read Your Squidoo Analysis

There will be a LOT of info on this page. This info is important and you will love it for pages on actual web sites to assist you. However, for the purposed of improving search engine placement of Squidoo lenses, we will focus on 3 things.

Under ‘Meta Tag Analysis’:

• Title
• Description
• Keywords

Optimizing the Title of a Squidoo Lens

This is VERY… V-E-R-Y important for SEO optimization. If you were only going to focus on ONE SEO procedure, the <title> tag would be it. Let me repeat this for the kids in the back of the class….

The Title Tag is VERY VERY important. Do not neglect it.

For the sake if this SEO lesson, I used my Marine Boot Camp lens as the guinea pig. I like this lens. Plus, it is #799 over-all right now and I’d like to see more traffic come to it from improved search engine placement, which, in turn, should help the over-all lensrank.

Good news – this is what I see for the analysis of my title tag:

Awww shucks, I’m perfect. =)

Optimizing The Description Tag of a Squidoo Lens

The description meta tag gets mixed reviews from the SEO community. This is the meta attribute that would help the search engines decide what to put on the search engine result pages as the description of your site (The words under a search return). Many times a search engine will use a chunk of content that pertains to the query of the searcher, but there are times I have seen my meta description come up.

My two cents: It’s worth doing and takes a few extra minutes to accomplish. Don’t forget, Squidoo gets your meta description tag info from your Intro Module.

The analysis of the meta description of my Squidoo lens says:

Wowzers! I’m still perfect. Oh, I’m gonna get a big head! =)

Keyword Analysis of a Squidoo Lens

Now we come to the keywords meta tag. This is pretty much the ‘disposable’ meta tag these days due to the fact that the search engines will crawl your content and decide for themself what your lens or site is about. However, my opinion is – Why NOT use it? It certainly doesn’t hurt anything and it’s good SEO practice.

Remember where the search engines get your keywords from a Squidoo lens? That’s right, from your tags.

Keyword Analysis of my Squidoo lens:

Uh oh… I’m not ‘perfect’ anymore… haha!

Squidoo SEO Analysis Summary

Spend a bit of time using this free site analysis tool to get your site all with strong green check marks – especially before you more on to OFF-page optimization of your Squidoo lens. Knowing that your lens (or site) is well optimized and search engine ‘friendly’ will be the peace of mind you need to not worry so much about the content, but about doing those off-site things that really help you have improved search engine rankings.

Few Notes about Using that Analysis Tool for Squidoo Lenses:

There are a lot of factors analyzed with that seo analysis tool. For a lens on Squidoo, don’t get all upset if it tells you that you have too many characters. Squidoo allows you to have many more keywords (tags) than a SEO professional would recommend. Also, there is a lot of room in the Intro Module for your meta description info. The intro on a lens tends to have many more characters than I would use to optimize an actual web page. Just keep in mind that Google will only show the first 160 characters, so focus on making those first words keyword-rich and ‘click-able’.

Ok- get to work! In Part 2 of Improve Your Search Engine Placement, we will talk about all the oh-so-important things you can do OFF-page to improve your chances of better search engine placement.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Improve Search Engine Placement of a Squidoo Lens – Part 1

Brad Callan is offering a SWEET and DEEP discount on his SEO Elite software for 24 hours only!

What is SEO Elite?

Basically one of the most valuable and powerful tools you will have in your internet marketing arsenal.  Hands down, the one of the best SEO software programs you can use.

Overview of SEO Elite :

• Discover how any page ranks at the top of the Search Engines.
• Instantly finds hundreds of high page rank websites in your field.
• Searches for Super Affiliates willing to promote your products.
• Shows immediately which partners are still linking back to you.
• Allows you to do a backlink search on all major search engines.
• Learns how many and which pages each major search engine has indexed.
• Notifies and keeps a daily, weekly, and monthly change record of where your website is ranked for ANY search term.
• Analyzes and compares special search commands on Google
• Finds exactly which websites your competitors are advertising on.
• Allows you to eliminate any penalized websites you link to.

It does SO much more than just the above. I highly encourage each of you to go to the info page for SEO Elite and do three things:

1 – Sign up for the search engine domination ecourse. It is excellent and will really help you improve your search engine rankings.

2- Completely read the info page. Watch each video that shows all the features of SEO Elite and how to use them.

3- Don’t FREAK OUT when you see the price tag. Today, you are NOT paying that much..not even close!

Want SEO Elite for a Sweet Little Price?

Great! Go here and get SEO Elite for a major discount…

24 hours only, so hurry!

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

SEO Elite – Major Discount on SEO Software

Why Google? Reality is, Google currently holds a 77% market share of all search engine business. Google handles something like 300 MILLION search queries a DAY. With over 8 billion pages in the Google index (and counting!), you need to have your ducks in a row and learn how to improve your search engine ranking… or else you will get lost in the Google index.

There is so much garbage out there pertaining to certain theories of how to better your rank in the search engines. We all (should) know that Google likes the following factors of a web site – and ranks a site with these factors in mind:

Keywords in url

Keywords in content (and near each other)

Link Popularity (links pointing TO your site)

Keywords used to link to your site

Over-all theme of the site or page

Now, I have to mention that Google doesn’t mention optimizing meta tags, however, my post earlier showed Matt Cutts himself in a video talking about why it is important to optimize description tags.

Improve Search Engine Rankings – The Myths

Yes, there is a lot of false information going around about how to boost your site in the search engines. Your first step in learning how to improve is to learn what is BS – and what is NOT. Jonathan Leger has a great new (free) report out on search engine myths. Jonathan defines them… and breaks them with solid, proven facts backed by tracked testing.

These are some of the search engine ranking myths Jonathan debunks:

Myth #1: Google Knows All and Sees All
Myth #2: Google Will Not Rank Duplicate Content
Myth #3: You Must Get Links From Related Subject Sites to Rank
Myth #4: Your Site Must Focus On One Subject To Rank
Myth #5: High PageRank Means Good Rankings
Myth #6: To Maintain Good Rankings, You Must Add New Content
MYTH #7: THE BIGGEST MYTH: Ranking In Google Is Hard!

Improving your search engine rankings is not hard

Sorry, but improving your rankings in Google is not hard – if you know what you’re doing. Think about Google, and what their goal is. Their goal is to provide their users with the fastest, most relevant search results possible. Heck, they are the only website that I can think of that has the goal of getting visitors OFF their site as quickly as possible!

If you play by the rules – learn what Google wants – and take the time to de-program yourself of all the inaccuracies regarding better search engine rankings, you will do fine.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Improve Search Engine Ranking… How?