Jon's In Waikiki (AKA The Waikiki Marketer)

This long outdated technique is as old as the Meta Keywords, but it clings on somehow. And it’s costing some businesses.

I talked to one the other day who was paying a company $200/Month to resubmit his site to Google and the other search engines to keep his website ‘fresh’ in the listings.

That’s $200 he might as well have spent on lottery tickets or those Skechers Shaping shoes. He would’ve got just as much out for his money.

First, we’re not talking about submitting your Sitemap to Google or the search engines when you’ve made updates. That’s legitimate.

Keep in mind, though, that if you’re not making changes to your content – or adding new content – submitting a sitemap of the same, unchanged pages over and over does nothing for you or your business.

What we’re talking about is SEO companies and services that actually use Google’s (or Yahoo’s, or Bing’s) submittal form to resubmit your site.

The real story is this. Once you’re in Google, you’re in. There’s absolutely no reason to keep putting yourself into their In Tray.

They have your web address and they’ll come by automatically to find what you’ve changed since the last time. It’s AUTOMATIC.

In fact, constant resubmitting could actually be considered spamming in some cases, which will actively hurt your rankings. That’s the last thing you need.

EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE GETTING FROM THIS SEO SERVICE

If someone is selling you on this SEO service, they’re actually asking you to pay the for 1 of 2 things:

1. Absolutely nothing
OR
2. Possible penalties for your site and your business

The choice is clear. Tell them to get lost.

There are a few misconceptions that constantly crop up when working with clients. They see I’m not doing something that someone told them would guarantee Page 1 Rankings and ask why.

It can undermine our relationship very quickly, especially if the person who told them I should be doing this or that is a good friend or, as has happened, another SEO trying to steal business from me.

This never ends well, unfortunately. The client is often suspicious of me from them on, believing that I might be holding their business back by not doing this or that.

This is the 1st in a series to hopefully end some of those persistent SEO myths. We’ll start with one of the Big Ones:

THE META KEYWORD TAG – STRIPPED OF ITS AUTHORITY LONG AGO

I can’t tell you how many times people have asked why I’m not stuffing the Meta Keyword tag. The Short Answer: Because it doesn’t affect rankings in the slightest.

Yes, it did work in the late 90’s, but search engines have generally ignored the Meta Keyword tag for about 10 years now. It does nothing to help your rankings in Google or anywhere else.

People stuffed those tags silly back in the day – that’s exactly why Google skips over them now. They were manipulated and used wrongly. When that happens, Google shuts down the party. And this party was over long ago.

Any SEO ‘Expert’ pushing this technique today is either extremely bad at what he – or she – does or they’re ripping you off. There’s no 3rd option.

Another big Google update just rolled out in the last couple of days. The screams of anguish you’re hearing are those who saw their sites take a dive. As usual, some of them seem to be truly innocent victims of Google’s evolving SEO algorithm.

My sites seem fine, so far. These things tend to roll out over time, though, so I’m not declaring victory just yet. You might be asking – what is this update targeting exactly? Here’s the answer.

What’s This Google Update About?

This update specifically is to hit websites using keyword stuffing in their content and tags, as well as what they’re calling ‘unusual link activity’. That activity includes paid links and backlinks that use anchor text unrelated to the actual content of the page being linked.

As this is all done by software there is that random element of ‘Why is this considered spamming, but this isn’t?’. Not much you can do about that, unfortunately. However, this does mean your SEO will need finer brushstrokes by many of you out there.

Here’s a couple of excellent articles on what’s going on and who the winners and losers are, so far, in this latest Google Update:

Winners & Losers from Google’s Webspam Update

New Google Search Algorithm Update

Google has finally entered the cloud storage game fully with the debut of Google Drive. The problem is that, at least right now, it doesn’t stand out in a crowded field.

Google’s successful products have all had something that truly made them stand out, despite being later entrants in their market. Gmail was, and is, an extremely powerful email program with a lot of extras plus enough storage to satisfy just about anyone.

Google Analytics was an already great package that they made Free. Suddenly, real data that could help you make smart internet marketing decisions was available to everybody!

Google Drive, though, doesn’t have a lot to sell itself. It seems to do a good job of allowing you to store and access files, but so does Dropbox and some of the other cloud storage packages out there.

They are touting it’s integration with Google Docs, but even that doesn’t turn heads. It’s just ‘nice to have’ for the vast majority of people.

The amout of free storage is 5GB, more than Dropbox, but less than Microsoft’s SkyDrive. Again, good, but not the topper that could have sold it more. They do promise some future developments including fax and video editing, but that’s all down the road.

For now, you can grab the free space, then wait and see. But unless you use Google Docs a lot, there’s no compelling reason to make it your prime cloud server if you like what you have today.

You can see a full check of Google Drive and its features here:

Google Drive Hands-On

In this part of the guide, we’re going to delve even more into the content you need to be sharing on Google+ to get search rankings benefits. Let’s take a closer look at what to share on Google+ and how to do it, in prime SEO style.

HOW & WHAT TO SHARE ON GOOGLE+ TO TARGET RANKINGS

First, like other social media you want to share pictures and video. They’re popular and tend to catch the eyes of those you’re sharing them with more than straight text.

Just remember to add some copy along with the pics and flix, though. It not only will give people some context, it’s also your chance to slip in some keyphrases. Especially pay attention to the Headline, which not only needs keywords, it also must grab attention.

You can also use Surveys to get others to interact with you more. Just be sure that you make the Survey questions(s) and subject intriguing. No one will answer a boring survey. Give some background of the reason for the questions – it’s part of showing you to the world that can hook people. That’s what social media is about, anyway – being you.

SEO FOCUS IS CRUCIAL

If you’re using Google+ for SEO, then that means staying focused on the area you want to rank for. Just like optimizing a website, you want to generally stay on topic. Doesn’t mean you can’t stray now and then. It just means that people shouldn’t wonder what your focus is from a brief look of your profile and history.

Finally, try to have a regular schedule laid out for working on your Google+ account, including content sharing. Keep that schedule and you should see SEO benfits paying off soon!

– Read Part 1 of Using Google+ For SEO & Rankings
– Read Part 2 of Using Google+ For SEO & Rankings

In the 1st Part of the Google+ For SEO guide we talked a little about making the right connections and sharing with them. This is such an important point that we need to expand on that in this segment.

As we stated before, you want to add Leaders in the industry or area that you want to rank for as well. These can be actual celebrities or known figures OR they can just be people who have large followings on Google+.

It’s important that you organize your circles right for this. You want all the people who are also centered on that same industry/area that you added put into one circle. Not just the Leaders but anyone else you’ve added for that subject.

You do this because you want to share your targeted content where it will have relevancy, not necessarily with your friends and the guys on your volleyball team.

Google+ Content Sharing For SEO: How To Do It & Who With

In Google+ you can choose which circles to share your content with, so this is done very easily. It’s a great feature that makes sense if you want to truly use social media to its greatest strength. Constant mass sharing to people who don’t care about the subject is a good way to be ignored or to be deleted from others accounts.

When you share your content with others, it appears on their stream, which is crawled by Google’s spiders and indexed. The idea is that the more streams it appears on, the more times it is crawled. Those repeated crawlings cause Google to give your content more weight and a much better chance at higher rankings for it. That’s SEO in a nutshell, really.

Remember, you want targeted Circles for your connections PLUS targeted, specific & quality content to share with them. Keep your focus on that and you should start producing contnet that gets you found.

Google has said, if not outright, then between the lines that Google+ will be a factor of some sort in their new ranking algorithm. In other words your use of it can affect your business & website rankings. That’s a pretty clear signal that you should be using Google+.

Along with that benefit, there’s the fact that Google is going to give some precedence to content & listings from their own social media program. Why wouldn’t they?

GETTING STARTED IN SEO FOR GOOGLE+

This is the 1st in a series of how to get started in Google+. We’ll tell you exactly what you can do and where to do it in order to raise your profile in this social media.

We begin in the obvious place – creating your account. You’ll need to do some keyword research for whatever it is you want to be indexed and ranked. Keyword research isn’t covered here. We’re dealing strictly with the Google+ system, so we’ll assume you have some keyphrases in mind.

Like any social media account, you have areas to fill out with information about you, your professional life and your part in this great world. Here’s what you want do during those first minutes.

Take those keyphrases and use them in the text boxes and areas in your account. Use them in ways that read naturally. No keyphrase stuffing. These places especially need your keyphrases:

* Introduction
* Employment
* Education
* Places

You want to fill out the profile as much as possible. Others will respond better to you, and will be more likely to Add you, if they see that. It gives them a whole person to interact with, very important in Social Media.

GROW YOUR GOOGLE+ CIRCLES

Obviously you’ll start by finding and adding friends and acquaintances, what you might call the ‘low hanging fruit’. Those are important. Next, though you want to find those people who are leaders in your targeted areas. For example, if you’re a magician, maybe you want to find and add Chriss Angel.

You also want to find your people who are your targeted area leaders WITHIN Google+. Not necessarily celebrities, but people who are active and popular ins the system.

You want to engage with them, commenting on their posts, etc. Don’t go overboard, just use the same etiquette you’d use on Facebook. I’m assuming you’re a reasonable person, of course 😉

This will take you a little time, so we’ll stop here. Make your profile keyword targeted as well as adding some things that are interesting or intriguing about you. It’s about interaction, remember. NOT sales.

Hope you find this helpful. More to come.

PC World just reviewed 3 SEO Software programs, all of them with some excellent features. You can read the review here:

PC World SEO Software Review

The headline for the reviews tends to simplify the results of what’ll happen if you use these programs (‘Make Search Engines Love Your Site…’), but that’s understandable.

It’s a headline to get you to read so you really can’t get too upset about that. I’d probably write the same thing if I was the writer.

However, having and using SEO software isn’t going to make you an SEO powerhouse instantly anymore than having Photoshop will make you an astonishingly talented digital artist.

Crucially important ingredients are missing from the programs.

This has been written about before in this blog, but it can’t be said enough: Keyword placement just isn’t enough anymore. And that’s what these programs are geared toward, which is fine.

Meanwhile, though, Google has taken the SEO Game to a whole new level. If you’re not on that level, your site is going to get left behind.

Google now wants to know that your site not only has the right keywords, but that its content is worth your visitors’ time and attention.

If they’re going to spotlight your website – put it on Page 1 – they want to make sure the quality is there. It’s their reputation on the line for feeding you accurate, valuable search results, after all.

The Google ranking formula is factoring in Visitor Experience, in other words. In a competitive market, that’s something no software program is going to do for you. Just ask Black Hat SEO-ers.

A favorite trick of black hat SEO was to use software that grabbed content from other sites’ pages, reconfigured it into a different order along with insertions of keywords and put it on their site as ‘content’.

It read like the ravings of a madman, but it did help the site rankings. You can’t argue with results, right?

Yes, it worked very well for a while, but now Google’s ranking bots know better. Those sites got killed in the last couple of updates.

SEO software definitely has its uses and its value, but it doesn’t do the job of a real, knowledgeable SEO professional. It’s a tool. And that tool is like any other.

In the hands of Michelangelo, it can produce masterpieces like the statue of David.

Or, in the hands of so many shop class students, it can produce one more ashtray on a quickly growing pile of them.

Actually I was wrong in that last post. Checking the data again, we’ve actually increased monthly Conversions by a little over 6.5 times (650%). Not a bad return:

That’s not the end of it either. This gives the totals for this past February and March was even better. So the client is doing even more business than even the below data shows.

This screenshot is from the client’s Google Analytics account. Identifiable info is cropped out for their protection & privacy.

If you want results like this, contact us now for a consultation.

It’s Official. One of my clients, who was already enjoyed getting 3 times the leads they used to – every single month, has now seen a new upswing recently. My services are now bringing in 5, yes FIVE, times the leads they used to have before they took me on. They are very happy.

Find out how you can get similar results for you and your business.

Contact me today for a consultation. Waiting is just delaying.