The Network Solutions sponsored TwitterChat I was talking about last week is today at 1 pm Eastern/New York time, and will last until 2:30 pm or until we get to as many questions as possible.

Highlights:

1. The event is completely free. .

No charge, really.

2. All you have to do is click here to register for Keep Them Coming! How to Increase Traffic to your Website.

(Both web traffic and SEO will be discussed.)

Update: Two prizes are being given to registered attendees.

One will be a free prize from me. The other is a surprise. One is a random registered attendee, the other is to the registered attendee with the best question.

3. Every person who registers, even if they can’t attend at the last minute, is getting a special freebie to help with their Web Traffic.

And no, it’s not 366 Traffic Methods.

4. Free tips on search engine optimization

Answering questions like “Why is SEO critical to increasing web traffic?”

5. Free tips on web traffic

Key information, such as: “Top 10 tips on how to increase web traffic”

6. You get to send me questions through the moderator.

I won’t be answering any questions about naked pictures, or accepting marriage proposals. Stay on Topic, People!

If you’re a Twitter Chat newbie, there are some tips on the post about the Women Grow Business Inbound Marketing Twitter Chat from April.

You don’t need  a free Twitter account to attend, but that sure makes it a lot more fun.

One more thing. I have a bet going with someone that I can get 100 people to register and attend.

So if you know people on Twitter or Facebook who you think would enjoy this free session or help save them money in their business, retweet this message or share it on Facebook. You can even email it your subscribers, or republish this whole post on your blog.

I’ll owe you one retweet or Facebook share that you cash in tomorrow morning, if

1. you’re one of the first 12 people, and
2. you respond to this message with your Twitter handle  so I can make arrangements with you.

Once again, I am honored to be a guest speaker in a Twitter Chat series.

This one is being hosted by Smallvolution from Network Solutions, next Thursday on Twitter, from 1 pm to 2:30 pm Eastern/New York time.

I tell you.

If someone had told me I’d be working closely with the company I first registered my domains with, it would have been inconceivable.

Can you imagine starting a public access TV show then one day guest star on NBC? That’s what it feels like. And as always, I want to share my blessings.

Here’s what’s in it for you.

1. The event is completely free. .

No charge, really.

2. All you have to do is click here to register for Keep Them Coming! How to Increase Traffic to your Website.

(Both web traffic and SEO will be discussed.)

Update: Two prizes are being announced shortly. They’ll only be available to those who register for the event – so even if you’re not sure you can attend, REGISTER NOW.

3. Every person who registers, even if they can’t attend at the last minute, is getting a special freebie to help with their Web Traffic.

And no, it’s not 366 Traffic Methods.

4. Free tips on search engine optimization

Answering questions like “Why is SEO critical to increasing web traffic?”

5. Free tips on web traffic

Key information, such as: “Top 10 tips on how to increase web traffic”

6. You get to send me questions through the moderator.

I won’t be answering any questions about naked pictures, or accepting marriage proposals. Stay on Topic, People!

If you’ve never been to a Twitter Chat before, after you register, see our last post regarding the Women Grow Business Inbound Marketing Twitter Chat from April. You don’t need to have a free Twitter account to attend, but it helps if you want to be able to ask questions and join in the fun.

And stay tuned, I’ll be reminding you again soon, with more tips and pointers about Twitterchats.

This post is part of our 68 Traffic Tips day. To find the complete list when we’re done, see the original post. Be sure to subscribe to get a weekly round-up of our daily traffic tips.

1. Choose one cookie based and one IP based statistics program, as the numbers are a bit different depending on which one you use.
2. Look at a snapshot of your traffic using your statistics program weekly or monthly.
3. Before you do keyword research, make sure you’re using the right keywords.
4. Try asking your audience what they’d type into a search engine to find you.
5. Instead of pursuing just the competitive, short tail terms (short phrases like “internet marketing“), or only less competitive,  long tail phrases (longer phrases such as “how do I get started in internet marketing?”), use some of the longer phrases to reach the shorter phrases – rank for both.
6. Choose one family of keywords and optimize for it. Unless you’re a seasoned expert, you’re not going to rank for dentist, dental practice, cosmetic dentistry, california dental work and los angeles crown settings. Pick an area, dominate it, then if you can, leverage your way into some of the other less competitive areas.
7. Getting good search rankings is mainly about the quest to present to the search engines a balance of content and links.
8. The harder, or more competitive, the keyword, the more complex it is to correctly balance the equation of content + links= a good ranking.  The harder the keywords, the more multiple subtle factors come into play, but they are all related to these two items.
9. There’s more than one way to skin a cat (and I still want to know when and why, in history we inherited this expression.  Why would I want to skin a cat?) Nearly every theory of search can be debunked or supported by theory. What you want to find is the method that got results for companies like yours.
10. Now that Google is trending towards personalization based on social circles, the quality of your social circle matters more than ever, as does the content you submit. Keep keywords and content in mind.
11. Get into Google News with a press release.
12. Get into Google News with an article.
13. Get into Google News as a news provider.
14. Pay more attention to Video. Film and television are the two mediums the masses are used to, and by far appear to be the most successful vehicles to promote your content.  It’s far easier to rank with video than with text as many companies fail to realize how important video is.
15. Go into any videos you have on YouTube and request the new auto-captioning available for all videos on YouTube with clear audio tracks. You can later take the auto-captioned file, improve it and re-upload with your corrections.
16. Google is also placing more of an emphasis on localization in its shift to more personalized results. Be sure to log into the Google Local Business Center, as well as Yahoo’s, and get your local business office set up, whether or not you have a site.
17. Google Blog Search is increasing in prominence as Google continues to change the look of the results page. If you don’t have a blog, start one. If you do have one, make sure it’s positioned correctly in Google Blog Search, not just for a general search, but for the times you publish a new post.
18. Updates are another featured area of the upcoming new Google results page (you can already see this new Google look as the default on new computers, reportedly). To get in on this action, you want to make sure your tweets, and other real-time updates are on-message. That doesn’t mean talk about yourself all the time, it means, be consistent.
19. If you have things to sell, Google products is for you. It’s much easier to submit than it was back when it was Google Base.
20. Don’t forget about Yahoo, Bing, Ask, or the major directories, general or niche. Just because they aren’t Google doesn’t mean they aren’t important. Those of us who thought Yahoo was the only place that mattered were blindsided when Google came along, as were those who refused to add social media to their marketing mix, now that Facebook is driving as much traffic, or more than, Google. Today’s newbie could be tomorrow’s giant.
21. Pay attention to the major players, and niche rulers in search and directories, but be selective about anyone outside the top ten. The idea that submitting your site to 6000 directories will get you anything other than links at the 10% of them that count at all, is a myth. And you can get 600 equivalent links from article marketing, forum marketing, or buying them, so what’s the difference?

As we’ve discussed recently, there’s a lot of confusion around the issue of social media and getting a return on one’s time and social investment, to the point that some people think social media for business is ineffective.

If you’ve been thinking that lately, think about how happy you’d be if social media helped you get into your target market’s path through Google. According to a recent announcement by Google, social media may now be able to help you in ways you hadn’t ever dared to dream.

Everyone knows that social media can already help you with search in 3 ways, the first being the own 1, lease 9 method of making your mark on all of the top ten results, which I discussed in Traffic Reality about 4 years ago in great detail. The second, of course, is in getting links to your site from social media profiles or voting submissions, the third that popular submissions get rapid link boosts from multiple sources.

In October, Google started an experiment called Google Social Search, which you could opt in to, in order to see information from what Google is calling your social circle, in your search results.  Last Wednesday, they also rolled out Google Social Search Results to anyone who is logged into a Google account when they search.

What could that mean to you?

Well, if you’ve been cultivating a social presence in Twitter, for example, and become connected to 1000 people, all those people, and  their connections, will be added to your social circle, from which Google will pull extra search listings to be integrated into the current set when a user is logged in.

Of course, when you start to think that even though Google has a dominant market share, even if a full 25% of them have a Google account and are logged in, you might think that doesn’t give you much of a boost.

That’s not necessarily true. You have to look at three factors: first, are you the only person in your niche that the person searching is connected to?

If you’ve been building your social network for quality from potential clients and customers rather than only quantity, where you just follow peers, auto-follow friends and existing friends so they’ll follow you back, the answer is, probably.

Second, personal suggestions are stronger than what any search engine says. Being found in search helps dramatically. But when it comes down to the tie-breaker, folks buy from folks they know.

Third, it’s not just the people you’re connected to, it’s the people THEY are connected to as well. If you look at the video below,  it says towards the end that the people your friends are connected to are included in your extended social circle.

Well, that means you’re included in the friends of your friends as well.

How many people could that be if you have 1000 Twitter friends who have 1000 Twitter friends?

Add in the recent changes to Google Reader, the move to Google Caffeine, even Google Friend connect starts to look extremely relevant, as Chris Lang alluded to this past summer.

Of course, this can be blown out of proportion – social media is important, as is search, to traffic generation. But they are each one tool in a well rounded strategy. It’s folly to lean on any singular method to get traffic to a site to the exclusion of all others, because if your strategy fails or its effectiveness changes over time, you’re putting your entire business at risk.

So keep in mind as you strategize that you still have regular search engine optimization to contend with – your primary Google traffic focus ought to be the people who are not logged into Google, as they are the majority.

Remember also though that even they have live updates from social sites like Twitter, streamed into results.  So, like it or not, ignoring social media or denying its influence is to do so at the peril of your own business. And hyper-targeted traffic to a smaller audience is still more money in your pocket at the end of the day. Keep it all in perspective is my only warning.

If you’re not already seeing a return on your investment in social media through better links, higher traffic, and viral spread of your messages, now is the time to fix whatever is wrong with your social media traffic strategy.

In upcoming posts, we’ll be discussing more about Google’s Social Moves and what you need to do in order for your business to maximize your social media returns across the board.

A sound social media strategy is already critical for you to gain or keep your edge over competition. Now it’s factoring into search strategy as well. Search is now social. Get ready.

Seriously guys.

Can’t you keep the web the way it was when I left it for TWO weeks? Who is sleeping on the job? All I ever asked you guys for was to make sure nothing major happens when I’m gone.

But it never fails. The instant I go on vacation, eleventeen different things change (or threaten to change, or start to change) about the web and I come back to an Inbox full of questions.

Says my protégée. I don’t do email anymore.

Anyways, so here’s the short list of the news I’m going to add my own analysis today.

• Yahoo adopts Bing for search, and the mixed reaction to the ten year deal and how it will affect search engine optimization.

  Wasn’t there a major search engine that started out like this… starts with a G… hm… maybe I’ll remember later.

  Folks are saying they are giving up on search… but isn’t that what was said about their alliance with… what was it? Oh yeah I remember GOOGLE.

• Facebook buys FriendFeed and expands their search into the News Feed. Has Facebook set their sights on search? Or wasn’t that the plan all along? And aren’t they really cozy with Microsoft? That just made Bing? Who just hooked up with Yahoo?
• Twitter has a denial of service attack and Network Solutions’ merchant account service gets hacked.

  We’re going to delve more into that, how I believe we all missed the point of the news, and for the second, the horribly uneven coverage in the press tomorrow.

  With the disclosure that I’m on Networks Solution’s Social Web Advisory Board, which makes me kind of an even bigger deal than you thought I was, but, as you’ll read, does not influence what I write about. Unless of course they can afford to pay me $2 million.

  Yes, I can be bought. But I’m not cheap, and I will tell EVERYONE when it happens…. lol…

• Google debuts Google-On-Crack, better known as the Caffeine public beta. They’re asking for your input. I’m asking you to pay attention.
• Tr.im is Gone. Blames Twitter. Tr.im is Back. Still Blames Twitter. … Wait. WTF is Tr.im?

Okay, you got me. I have no intention of covering that in my upcoming news analysis. I just don’t get the business model for a URL shortening service that ….

Okay I don’t get the business model for ANY url shortening service. There are things along the lines of bit.ly that I would pay for. Because how is tr.im different from is.gd?

That rant is for another day maybe. It took me three hours to do this much. My back is just killing me today.

Back on the topic though. In the upcoming articles, I solemnly swear that I’m not going to just tell you what everyone else said. I just did that – you’ve got a mouse, click over and read the reports.

But if you want to know how some of these events might change your life or at least your business or why you shouldn’t care, or just want to hear me speculate, then stay tuned. As usual, I’m going to tell you how the news will affect you, the business owner building a web presence , between tonight and tomorrow.

Here’s a trick people fall for all the time. It’s so common the really scuzzy people have a name for it – it’s called “False Proof.”

It’s when they tell you something that is technically true, but completely irrelevant or immaterial. 

Like when a person shows you a check for $75,000 they made from affiliate sales. But they don’t tell you they spent $60,000 in advertising and have to share the rest with several JV partners. 

Or when a so-called search expert will say, “I’m number one out of  33 million results.” And you think, really? 33 MILLION?

Then you get their software, ebook, or system, and you find out that even though you’re also able to rank number one for a term that gets 33 million results, none of it sent you any sales, or leads – and really, not much traffic either.

If you don’t want to get hustled by this little trick, remember that proof has to be MEANINGFUL. 

If you’re in a traffic or search tool buying frenzy, paste this notice to your computer.

Unless The Keyword They’re So Proud of Ranking For Is Actually a Difficult Task Even for a Professional, They’re Not Teaching You Anything You Can’t Find Out On Your Own.

Unless the thousands of links they’re getting are Valuable links, it’s a waste of your time and money to get them. 

If the technique they’re showing you is unethical, remember you’re risking your entire business for a possible short term gain – is the possibliity of losing everything you built worth a few extra sales? 

If It Sounds Too Good To Be True, It’s Not Always Because You’re New to This. Most of The Time It Probably IS. Look for the Proof. Look for the Respect of Peers OUTSIDE THEIR INDUSTRY Who Don’t Benefit Monetarily From the Product’s Success. 

 

It’s fine to profit from a JV deal with a friend, I’m not saying it isn’t. I’ve done it and when I have, I’ve slept great. 

What’s NOT Okay is when the testimonials of friends are the Only testimonials they have. What did their peers think? What did their clients think? What do people who didn’t know them from Adam before they tried it think?

If a person selling you an SEO product or search consulting is a layperson, and they figured out how to get results better than the next guy, though not on a professional level, and they say so, that is completely above board.

But if they’re claiming to be a guru or expert in any way, and they’re using keyword rankings or number of links generated, or anything else to prove their results, make sure they stand up to scrutiny.

Here are some things to test for:

• The number of results doesn’t always tell you how comparatively difficult the keyword is to rank for. 
   
• If the keyword is more than 4 words long, a monkey could probably rank for it under the right conditions.
   
• Even if it is hard for a newbie, and the program will help you get to the next level of expertise, if the terms you would rank for are those that don’t send any traffic, or help you build up to terms that will send traffic, it’s a waste of time
   
• If it’s just one keyword, and not at least hundreds, if not thousands that they have gotten rankings for? They aren’t an expert. You do NOT really know what you’re doing with search until you have been able to maintain hundreds or thousands of rankings for a few years. You can get to number one by cheating in the short term – until they catch you and ban your site.  Luck or cheating doesn’t make you an expert.
   
• Is the top result they have in Google or Yahoo their own site? It’s not that it’s a bad thing to get to number one using Ezine Articles or Hub Pages. It’s that you don’t control the rankings, and you don’t need someone to teach you something fancy to get that ranking.Anyone can get a popular site to rank at the top for an article they’ve contributed – there are free articles for how to do this around the Net. That’s not some coveted secret worth $97. You just use your keywords in the title of the article you’re contributing. The real trick is getting that ranking to mean money for you – just because it’s technically listed higher for you, and a link on that page goes back to your site, doesn’t necessarily mean it will help your search rankings or that the person reading the article or watching the vide will go to your site. 

  It Can be a good technique. But knowing that doesn’t make you an expert.

Now, I won’t sit here and say that every expert trying to get you to buy a search or traffic related product is full of it. There’s a lot of good programs out there that work. But the instant you’re being promised outlandish results with a minimum of effort, it’s right that your BS radar should go off.

There are plenty of programs out there that work – to tell them apart, scrutinize your expert, and the results of the tool. You may be surprised at what you find.

Given the statements made in my last post, I figured this might come in handy.

Here’s a short list of people and sites whose advice I follow and would go to for help, to outsource a project, or to learn more about search, whether I was stuck or just wanted the latest information. It’s by no means all-inclusive, and not in any particular order. This is just off the top of my head, and for the sake of variety I took a person’s site off the “site” list if I mentioned them by name.

People:

1. David Bullock
2. Jill Whalen
3. Danny Sullivan
4. Wendy Boswell
5. Andy Beard
6. Jennifer Laycock
7. Marty Weintraub 
8. Ann Smarty
9. Lyndon Antcliff
10. Donna Fontenot
11. Aaron Wall
12. Lee Odden
13. Chris Winfield

Sites: 

1. SEO Rainmaker
2. Search Engine Blog Daily Crawl
3. SEOMoz
4. Sphinn
5. SEO Roundtable 
6. Search Engine Watch
7. Search Engine Guide
8. ISEDB
9. Search Engine Journal
10. StuntDubl

photo credit: myuibe

A client recently asked me about Meta Keyword Tags. After quickly double-checking the date of the message I referred him to this page about ranking factors at SEO Moz, which was updated about a year ago.

Then I started thinking, where does one refer to one as a source for one to find out what the best search information is these days? Don’t see any short lists out there, so I’m just gonna mention a handful of resources that

1. I haven’t pointed to before/often,
2. that write in language that is accessible to every day people,
   and, consistently has accurate, actionable information

.

SEO Moz
Search Engine Land
SEO Book
Search Engine Journal
Search Engine Guide
Search Engine Watch
Websearch Column @ About.com

Share your favorites in the comments – I could make a larger list.

Maybe I don’t have kick-ass compilations like Lee or Marty…

but I can hang with the old school SEOs. I know a coupla things.

Better titles to your blog posts or articles that you have one your site. Here’s an interesting take from the Seattle Times:

Some news sites offer two headlines. One headline, often on the first Web page, is clever, meant to attract human readers. Then, one click to a second Web page, a more ordinary, factual headline appears with the article. The popular BBC News Web site does this routinely on longer articles.

They go on to give an example:

“The search engine has to get a straightforward, factual headline, so it can understand it,” Newman said.

On the Web, space limitations can coincide with search-engine preferences. In the print version of The New York Times, an article last Tuesday on Florida beating UCLA for the men’s college basketball championship carried a longish headline, with allusions to sports history: “It’s Chemistry Over Pedigree as Gators Roll to First Title.”

On the Times Web site, whose staff has undergone search-engine-optimization training, the headline was, “Gators Cap Run With First Title.”

Smart search strategies that please both the reader and the search engines (with a priority to your audience of course) is one strategy for headache-free SEO. That’s not the whole story of how to make your search engine optimization efforts simple, but it’s a good start.
Read the rest of the story in The Seattle Times: Nation & World: “For best search-engine exposure, the answer might be in the tweak.”

I don’t think that’s the official name, but I also didn’t want to give it away. So why should you obey my commands, actually Leave My Site and go visit his?

Because I said so.

Okay, I knew that wouldn’t work. First of all, his blog is gorgeous. An example of working Both form and function. Marshall left me a comment yesterday, and I clicked through to his site out of curiousity like I always do. (Reason #238 why you should comment – I am so nosy that I can’t resist visiting every non-spam-commenter’s site).

I went to his site and found tons of useful posts – not just useful but friendly, open and … there’s just something about the way he writes, where he somehow makes you feel really comfortable and laid back. Recent post include one on tagging, another on Feedburner that will help a lot if you’re confused about the initial sign up, as well as a short and sweet intro to blogs.

If you’re at all intersted in web tools, or want to learn more about Web 2.0, do yourself a favor and mosey on over to Marshall Kirkpatrick’s blog. Quite a treat

Resources: Visit Marshall’s blog here. Drag this link into your RSS reader to subscribe.

Recently while browsing one of my favorite sites, Updates.com, in the Google section, I noticed they had an interesting whitepaper up about Top Google Rankings & Role of Link Popularity. It’s a free download that you can access after signing up.