However, I have found something almost as good: Your Domain Name.  Having the right domain name can really give you a head start in rankings.  The right domain is a keyword rich domain, or hopefully, your main keyword phrase.

Let’s look at an example from some of the research I have been doing with my new company Anthro.  One of the products that Anthro pushes is radiology furniture (and I really have no idea what that actually is).  Their main competitor AFC Industries bought the domain radiologyfurniture.com.   If you search for that keyword phrase in Google, their website shows up in the first position.  If you look at backlinks, radiologyfurniture.com has a total of 9 backlinks while the competitors have much much more, but aren’t ranking as well.

Another example is my new venture watchfilipinomovies.com.  My main keyword phrase is “Watch Filipino Movies.”  As of this morning, I am ranked on the first page only after having the site active for a few weeks and doing almost no link building.

Obviously a domain without incorporating other SEO fundamentals won’t help you much in the long run, but a solid keyword rich domain as well as great title tags, and great content, and supporting links is a recipe for success.  The power of a good domain is strong enough that for someone starting a new website should definitely do SEO keyword research and pick the right domain even before worry about site content.

For well established websites, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend changing out the domain with a new one (although it can be done successful if you read my earlier post on Successfully moving Your Website).  Also a lot of well established sites have a lot of brand recognition and identity.  We definitely don’t want to lose that with a new domain.  What I would suggest was shown in my first example of domain ranking success.  That is, building a separate site all about that specific keyword that can help give supplemental information that will support your main website.  This could be a new domain (and website) for each site product line, or maybe a new site for a best selling product.

The point of this is to make sure to take your domain into account when you are going to start an SEO project.  I have yet to really test variations of keyword phrases for a domain, but I will definitely update you when I do.

Related posts:

1. How To Move Your Website with 301 Redirects and Google
2. Link Building Basics
3. What Is SEO?

I was the top SEO guy for Marketecture until May when the company management realized they had no money and had to let me go. From what i’ve been told, the company has stopped selling SEO packages (and i’m not sure if they are fulfilling on current SEO clients). Instead of looking for a job right away, I decided to hold off a bit while my wife gave birth to our son who was born on June 25th. Check out these recent pictures of him:

He is definitely a cute baby, and also really fun to have around.

After a series of interviews, I started this week at a new company Oregon called Anthro. Anthro makes office furniture that is very unique and can perform various functions like rise, lower, and expand. Check them out if you are interested in anything like that. I have been brought on as the company’s internet marketing specialist, in which I have spent much of this week analyzing keywords, trying to find out what rankings they currently have, and what efforts are making them money and which aren’t. It will be interesting to see how this job differs than working for an agency. I do see it being less stressful, but also way different.

I have also made a new commitment to getting back into writing for SEO. I feel like being forced to write will keep me updated on the latest trends. I also think I have some cool ideas that perhaps some of you aren’t using.

Anyways, there is a little update about myself.

Go Ducks!

Image Source

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1. New SEO Blog

Why Does Your Business Need SEO?

According to the Nielson Company, a total of 9.18 billion searches were executed in February 2010 in the United States alone.  A lot of people are now using search engines to find what they need, whether it is goods, services, or just information.  Every business should be looking to capture a portion of this market, and in order to do that, they must have their website listing show up when someone searches a relevant phrase.

The chart below shows the breakdown of which search engines are being used on a percentage basis:

As the chart shows, Google has the largest share of the market, while Google, Yahoo, and Bing have over 91% together.  This information shows that if your company can control the search engine rankings on Google, most likely your company will control the rest of the search engine market.

Going forward, I am going to be giving you tips and tricks to make your website become as search engine friendly as possible.  Some of the things we will do will help the search engines find your site easier.  Other techniques will make sure all the pages of your website are being found and inside the search engine index.  After that, we will focus on rankings and showing the search engines that your site deserves to be at the top.

Related posts:

1. Top SEO Case Studies
2. How The Right Domain Can Bring Ranking Success
3. Official: Google Doesn’t Care about META Keywords

What happens when you decide that you need a new domain for your website?  Perhaps your website has been penalized (shame shame).  Or, perhaps you realized that your domain could be better if it had a few more keywords.  Whatever the reason, if you decide to just scrap your current domain and start another, you need to do it right or you will shoot yourself in the foot for SEO.  The reason for this is because the search engines have all of your pages indexed with a certain domain name.  Not only that, but all of the links to your site are (you guessed it) using your domain.  You don’t have to start over however.  There is a way to move your entire site without skipping a beat.

The way to do this is with 301 Redirects.  A 301 Redirect is a protocol used to tell the browser (and search engine spiders) that your site has been permanently moved to a new location.  This protocol is set in your .htaccess file.

For those who don’t know, the .htaccess file basically controls everything that happens with your server.  Before loading your website, the browser will look at the .htaccess file first to determine if it needs to do anything special – like redirecting your website.  301 Redirect aren’t the only functions of the .htaccess file.  For a full tutorial, view this .htaccess tutorial.

The code I am going to give you below needs to be inserted into the .htaccess file, which is usually in the root of your website files.  If you don’t have one, you can easily create one by using your favorite HTML editor (my favorite is Notepad++).

Moving Your Entire Website from One Domain to Another

Copy the following code into your .htaccess file and change the domains.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

What this code does is redirects both instances of your old domain (from www and non-www) to the new domain.  Once this code is uploaded to your server, your site will be moved in its entirety.  For example, if you have www.olddomain.com/FAQs, it will redirect to www.newdomain.com/FAQs.

How to Redirect Individual Pages from One Site to Another

Sometimes you don’t need to just redirect the entire site, but individual pages.  I recently did this for a client who had built their website originally with really poor not SEO friendly URLs.  Their new site (because of me) had great keyword rich URLs.  If this is your situation, you will need to redirect your pages individually, however there also is a function to redirect entire folders to a single page.

Here is how to do this in your .htaccess file.

Start by turning your Rewrite Engine on with this code

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

In order to move a single page, use the following:

redirect 301 /oldunfriendlyurl.html http://www.newdomain.com/very-friendly-url/

You will need to do this for each page.  However, if you don’t have a want to redirect an entire folder to a specific page, use this code:

redirectMatch 301 /oldfolder/ http://www.newdomain.com/newfolder/

With this code, any URL inside of /oldfolder will automatically be redirected.

Changing Your Domain with Google

Finally, you need to tell Google that your old domain is no longer in use and you want your search results to load your new domain.  Luckily for us, Google Webmaster Tools has a built in feature to do this for us.

1. Create a Google Account and visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools.
2. You need to verify both domain names with Google Webmaster Tools (this will be easier if you don’t setup the 301 redirects yet).
3. Open up the Webmaster Tools for the old domain.  Click on Site Configuration and then on Change of Address.  From here, you will be able to select from a drop down list your new domain name in order to initiate the change.

This process might take a few days, but once it is complete, Google will now have your site pulling the the correct results and showing your domain name.

Related posts:

1. How The Right Domain Can Bring Ranking Success
2. Official: Google Doesn’t Care about META Keywords
3. New Server!

I have decided to make some very generalized customer profiles and how I like to deal with them.

The “I already know everything about SEO” SEO client.

This client feels that they know everything that they need to know about SEO, which makes them very distrusting when you do things other than what they know to be true.  I have had clients that thought that the most important thing was high PageRank inbound links, in which they didn’t care about their content.  I have had clients that only cared about META optimization, and cared very little about link building, keyword stuffing, or adding new content.

How to Manage Them

• Don’t hurt their ego.  They feel like they know just as much as you do about SEO.  We want to keep them feeling good about themselves.
• Explain to them that SEO is a full package of different elements.

The “What am I paying you for?” SEO Client

This client knows that SEO as a “concept” is important, however they know nothing about what is.  They have little concern about keyword research, timetables, or generally staying in contact with you.  If they do call, they will ask you why they “cannot find themselves in Google.”  For example, I had a client a year ago who was paying for the lowest package selling different kinds of coffee.  He wanted to be ranked on the first page for the keyword “coffee.”  These clients have no idea what keywords you are targeting.  They will also have no idea how long SEO takes.

How to Manage Them

• Explain what SEO is and what it generally entails.
• Make sure you both know what targeted keywords are expected.
• Explain that SEO is a long term process and they need to be patient.
• Give them things they can do to help (write content, write blog posts).
• Show examples of good rankings you have for clients.

The “How long will it take to be #1″ SEO Client

This client wants you to tell them exactly when they should see themselves ranked on top.  Unless you are Google, this isn’t possible.  All you can do is perform SEO to your ability and search engines take care of the rest.

How to Manage Them

• Never guarantee rankings.  If they demand a time frame, give yourself a generous window of when you expect to see decent results.
• Discuss realistic ranking goals.  Some keyword phrases cannot be broken into without a huge budget and lots of time.
• Point to past clients and the time their website saw success.
• Reassure the client you are doing all you can to get them ranked.

The “Why is my PageRank not increasing” SEO Client

This one absolutely bothers me, not just because I get it so often, but because it shows a great lack in understanding about what is important.  PageRank actually has very little to do with actual rankings, however it is a good indicator that you are going in the right direction with your website.  PageRank also updates just 2-3 times a year.  If you study some of the most popular key phrases and check the PageRank of the top ten sites, you will usually notice a large spread from PR 0 to PR 7.  That should show you that it is more important to optimize for keywords at not for PageRank.

How to Manage Them

• Explain that Good Rankings trump PageRank every time.
• Explain exactly what PageRank is and what it indicates.
• Show clients with awesome rankings and lower PageRank.

Hopefully this will help SEO’s better deal with their clients, and also give notice to SEO clients to give your SEO’s a break.

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1. Flash

   Avoid building your website completely in Flash.  Search engine spiders cannot read flash content just like they cannot read content from images.  Many developers don’t realize this as they build a visually appealing website.  A small amount of flash is okay as long as there is a text version of the content as well.  In the SEO world, content is king.  If content cannot be read, it is isn’t worth much.

2. Text as Images

   Just like Flash, your website will have considerable SEO content issues if you embed important text in images.  Make sure important content is inside the HTML, as it is the only way it can be read by the spiders.  If you must use images, make sure to use the ALT image attribute to give some description to the image.

3. Frames

   I have been programming websites for over 12 years now, and in my honest opinion, frames are lousy HTML elements and shouldn’t be used.  However, since I started learning SEO, I have found that frames can spell disaster for ranking a website.  Content inside a frame or an <iframe> is loading from a seperate source, and therefore cannot be crawled by the spiders.

   This can especially be a problem for real estate websites who usually frame in their MLS listing from a separate source.

   If you already have a website with frames that you want to SEO, the task will be very long and difficult to move that content to a frame-less site.

4. Splash Pages

   This is one of the most common problems I have seen when trying to SEO a website.  Splash pages usually have very little content (many times it is actually flash) then facilitates the user entering the website.  The first page the search engine spiders see should be the most important.  A splash page usually doesn’t have much navigation and basically just creates an extra barrier for the spiders.  If your splash page is flash, there is no way for the spiders to find the rest of your site as they cannot read flash.  Please…Please…Don’t use a splash page.

5. Menus that Cannot be Spidered

   Flash menus look cool, but they cannot be followed by the spiders.  Your navigational menus are the most important highway for the crawlers, keep them open and able to be followed.

6. Too much AJAX

   Many web developers like to impress website visitors (and perhaps increase site functionality) by adding AJAX to the website menus and navigational tools.  Search engine spiders will have a difficult time crawling the dynamic content that is loaded in AJAX.

   Another problem of AJAX is that the URL doesn’t refresh when content changes on the website.  This means there aren’t unique pages on the site that can be easily linked to.  This will greatly disadvantage your viral marketing.

   Keep AJAX to those elements of the site that don’t have to do with navigation or loading of separate pages.  Only use it for smaller elements.

7. Non-Friendly SEO URLs

   If your website is built with a CMS, or is otherwise dynamic, you’re URLs will also be dynamic.  This means your page will pull a query in the URL to determine which content to load.  Using your CMS, or the URL rewriting functionality of the .htaccess file (more on that some future post), you will be able to make your URLs SEO Friendly.

   Instead of the dynamic url of: www.domain.com/?a=123
   You will have SEO Friendly URLs of: www.domain.com/page-title

   This will not only help your search engine rankings (keywords in your URL are always a great idea), it will also increase the user experience on your website.

8. Keyword Stuffing

   META tags used to have more importance in search engine rankings, however due to spammers and keyword stuffers, they are not as important.  Actually the META Keywords are completely ignored by the big three search engines.  Keyword stuffing is loading your title tags, meta tags, and content with too many keyword phrases that either aren’t relevant to the site, or make the content unreadable (due to high keyword density).  Keep your keywords within moderation, and remember to write for the user, and not for the search engine.  You will find higher rankings this way.

9. Poor Anchor Text

   Anchor text is the actual text that someone clicks on to enter your website.  When you are building links, avoid anchor text such as “Click Here” or “Find Out More.”  Anchor text is used by the search engine as one way to find out what your site is all about.  Build links with anchor text that is keyword rich.  Instead of “www.jeffashby.com,” try “SEO Strategies.”  That way, you will rank better for those terms.

   Also makes sure to vary your anchor text with a variety of targeted keyword phrases.  The last thing you need is to get marked as spam by the search engines because your anchor text is all the same over hundreds and thousands of links.

10. Not Using ALT Attribute

    All important images you use should have an ALT attribute used.  This text will describe what the image is to the search engine spiders who cannot see the content of your image.  This gives another method for the spiders to see what you site is about and will supplement the other content on the site.

    Also, properly using ALT text will help ranking your images in the search engine’s image search results.

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I just took a quiz over at DarkGreySEO.com, in which they determine, based on you are willing to do as an SEO, if you are a Black Hat, White Hat, or Grey Hat.  And the results?

Dark Grey SEO

Pushing the boundaries to the maximum minus one fraction, your SEO campaign is as hard as it gets without getting in trouble with the law but you’ve probably been in trouble before with Google. You rarely back down when faced with conflict or a challenge.

You don’t like SPAM or SPAMMING however a comment blog SPAM or four is okay. However, you don’t over-do it and rarely use a personally identifiable URL when you get risky.

You’re probably banned from AdSense due to mistakes you make in your early years. You’re hopping on a friends AdSense account because you’re screwed.

However, you’re not banned from AdWords and that’s all you need. With your knowledge of consumer habits combined with your ability to tolerate SEO risk, you’re on your way to a powerful future.

You know that you have to diversify your SEO resources to account for ‘collapse.’ If a campaign goes south, you don’t care because you have 2 more backing it up that have an entirely different strategy.

You are Google’s worst nightmare x 2. The real McCoy. The Genuine Article. The Mr. Smarty Pants of SEO.You have probably received one or more warnings or C&D’s from Google or other companies. You had to break a few eggs to make your omelet. This is how it’s done.Your campaigns are highly refined, targeted, and optimized however you’re not 100% sure from one day to the next if your money-makers are going to get POOFED from Google and then your revenue goes bye-bye. You’ll need to start all over.This is both your gift and your curse for the Dark Hatted SEO.

This is about right for me.  I will talk more about how I feel about Black Hat SEO in the future, however I do not feel an ethical dilemma when it comes to SEO tactics.  If you can use a strategy that doesn’t get caught, in which helps you rank, why not do it?  I will not divulge all of my black hat secrets, however I will get into some strategies that are somewhat less reputable as we go along in our journey.  Anyone can take the quiz and post their results here in the comments.  I am interested to see where everyone stands.

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1. Link Building Basics

Paternity DNA Testing
StrictlyDNA.com is a website that my friend Dan and I built and have continue to work on to bring paternity testing to those who need one. This website is just barely getting off the ground, however we have already seen some success in the pay per click advertising.

Christmas Patterns
sweetdreamspatterns.com is a website I have maintained for my mother for a very long time (I think I started building it in early 2000). The website hasn’t changed since 2003, however my mother has requested me to rebuild the website in order to revamp her business which hasn’t done very much in the last few years. I would like to see her to really well, and I think with such an old domain and a non-competitive niche market, we should see some success. During the process of building this website, I will talk about some of the featured I am adding in order to effect our SEO score a little better.

Portland Oregon Photography
cmemoriesphotography.com is the photography website that I have built for my sister and mother’s photography business. We are already seeing great rankings for the key terms of Hillsboro Photography, however I would like to branch that out a little bit to hit up Portland and other surrounding areas. The site that is up right now is one I built back in January of 2008. My skills have greatly improved since then, and I am currently working on a development site which will revamp the site completely as well as utilize the power of WordPress. I would have had it up months ago, however my sister hasn’t been the best at getting me all the content I need.

SEO Tips
jeffashby.com (this site) is one I would obviously like to rank high for. I am going to do this by giving away a lot of free useful information in hopes that you will like my content and link to it. So…in advance…thanks for the linkback!

I am sure there will be other sites in the future, as well as clients I work on at work.

Also, notice that I used keywords as the link text for the links above. That is one of the most important SEO tips out there (and more on that another day).

Related posts:

1. What Is SEO?
2. Link Building Basics

Related posts:

1. What Is SEO?
2. Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes