search engine optimization

I’m sure there are probably a hundred blog posts about the new Google SEO Starter Guide but I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring also. Yes, this guide is for beginners and it’s targeted specifically at getting Google juice, and there are a lot of other things you should be doing because, in spite of all the Google hoopla, it’s not all about Google.

But there is some very good and solid advice in here and it’s a great starting point for new webmasters or website owners looking for pointers from the guys who own about 80% of the search market.

Ginny Reddish, author of Letting Go Of The Words: Writing Web Content That Works, spoke at the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) event this morning on website content. While I’m a copywriter specializing in writing copy and content for websites, I picked up some great pointers from her. She also reinforced a lot of my “beliefs” about copy and content on websites.

Ginny Redish is definitely a content ”evangelist.” which works for me because so am I. But enough blah, blah. Let’s take a look at her major points:

Internet marketing “gurus” are like ants on a sugar cube.There are hundreds of them swarming all over the Internet. And the vast majority of them are full of crap.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there are some people out there who really know their stuff. But how do you tell whether you’re going to get a first class, up to date education in Internet Marketing or sold a bunch of old tired “tricks” that haven’t worked for years or are rehashes of off-line marketing ideas?

Here’s my bullshit detector:

Who are their testimonials from?

SEO software comparisons probably aren’t what you expect on this blog but I think it’s appropriate. Anyway, I’ve written an article on my web site comparing the two SEO software packages.

I actually use them both for search engine optimization. However, I use them for different things because each is stellar at some SEO requirements and not so good at others.

They really aren’t that expensive for all they do and I believe they are the premier SEO software packages available to day. Mainly because they are regularly updated and they were the first SEO software packages on the market that really were useful.

The short answer? No. Google Page Rank gets bandied about quite a bit by people who really don’t know anything about SEO but want to pretend they do.

Google Page Rank is really all about trust. Google looks at a number of factors when anointing web sites with Page Rank but none of them have much to do with Search Engine Optimization.

Mostly, Google looks at how long your web site has been around. Their theory is that the longer your web site has been around, the more likely you are a going concern that isn’t going to shut down next week.

Google Analytics is the best free analytics package out there for keeping track of what is happening on your web site. Why do you care what’s happening on your web site? Because if you don’t know what’s wrong, you can’t fix it.

Do you know how many people are visiting your web site? Do you know what pages they are visiting the most? Do you know which pages they are leaving from? do you know which pages they visit the most and how long they stay on those pages?