Have you noticed how many online groups are offering their members some kind of help with SEO lately? As part of ‘keeping my finger on the pulse’ I’m signed up to a number of online newsletters. Only a couple of them are actually for SEO. The rest are a variety of marketing, writing and other online business groups. All of them at some point have run articles about SEO.

The latest really surprised me: American Writers and Artists Inc. (AWAI) just ran an article called “7 Steps to a Winning SEO Strategy.” Alarmingly, in the middle of a fairly basic description of SEO strategy, they’re offering a Web copywriting intensive that will make you a “working web copy specialist after only three days of training.”

I’d be the first to admit that good writing skills are essential to good copy, but I really don’t think you can learn everything you need to know to be a good SEO writer in three days. Heck, after working in the field for two years it took me a couple of months to decide whether or not I knew enough to go out on my own as a fully-fledged SEO writer.

Companies that promote these kind of schemes in any niche are, in my opinion, doing a great disservice to their profession. There’s a lot to be said for experience and the kind of knowledge you can only get from immersion in a certain subject. I don’t think you can’t learn enough about anything to actually work in the field. And if you’re going to learn something, doesn’t it make a lot more sense to learn from someone who specializes in that particular niche?

What do you think?

• Add this to Social Bookmarking
  
  • Subscribe
  • Blinklist
  • Bloglines
  • Blogmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Getting indexed by Google News is a fairly new trophy for bloggers. The extra exposure you’d get from being included on a major news site such as Google News blows the mind. Who wouldn’t want it? As yet though, there’s not much out about how to achieve it. It’s one of my goals and when I set out to discover what I need to do, it occurred to me there must be plenty of others who’d be interested. So here goes.

It’s important to note that getting indexed by Google, and getting indexed by Google News are two entirely different things. Getting indexed by Google is a simple matter of having someone who is crawled regularly link to you. Can be a matter of only a few hours.

But getting Google News to like you is harder. There are rules and if you’re not following them, well, you can forget about getting indexed.

Much of it has to do with common sense. Make sure you comply with all of Google Webmaster’s guidelines.

• Never use a default theme for your blogging platform. Google hates ‘em (see right).
• Make sure you’re getting indexed for your chosen keywords–one good way to do this is to name your blog categories for your major keywords.
• Make sure your stories fit the criteria for the type of stories regularly included on Google News. A good way to get an idea would be to simply go over there and take a look in the category where stories from your site might get posted.

You Need Multiple Bloggers

One thing that Matt Cutts mentioned in his 2007 SEO WordPress talk at WordCamp, was that you stand a much higher chance of getting indexed if you have more than one person posting to your blog.

This is fairly easy to arrange: swap blog posts with other bloggers you know and whose work you like. It goes without saying that their niche has to at least be compatible with yours if it isn’t identical. It’s also a good idea to invite selected bloggers to write guest posts for you. This is usually a win-win situation because you will be providing exposure and backlinks to your guests.

Remember too that even if some of your posts are indexed by Google News, they probably won’t all be, as the most important criteria are to do with the article itself and not the website overall. This is another way in which Google News differs from the Google search engine, which will index all your stuff if it has accepted your site.

If anyone has any more good tips for getting indexed by Google News, please post a comment below. We’ll all thank you for it.

• Add this to Social Bookmarking
  
  • Subscribe
  • Blinklist
  • Bloglines
  • Blogmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Repeatedly we’re reading predictions that Google is going to be replaced as THE search engine pretty soon. Naturally, the runner-up search engines would have a hand in Google’s demise if they could. But I see it as indicative of Google’s true strength that despite the best efforts of their enemies, Google seems to be riding the waves so far.

Why would Google laugh at all the dire predictions that this behemoth is going to hit the runway? Well from their perspective things have probably never looked better. Let’s take a look at the facts.

• They rule the roost as far as search is concerned, and at the moment no other search engine looks even close to catching up with them (I get around ten times as much traffic from Google as I do from Yahoo or Windows Live and it’s probably a similar story for most websites out there).
• They are expanding in every direction and into different segments of the online market.
• They are the authority as far as achieving a high profile business online is concerned.

But, they’re losing something that’s vital to any business large or small, and that is customer satisfaction, particularly among customers who are more web-savvy. What are Google’s customers (including myself) starting to worry about or question?

• More than once it has been suggested that the Google apparatus is dangerously large and their databases retain information that could be used against us.
• They are beginning to sound arrogant when complaints are leveled against them: it’s as if they know they’re #1 so it doesn’t matter if a few complain.

It would be interesting to hear other points of view on this topic. Please comment.

• Add this to Social Bookmarking
  
  • Subscribe
  • Blinklist
  • Bloglines
  • Blogmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

I’ve just been reading an interesting discourse over at Newsweek. It reminded me of a time when if you wanted to conduct a search, the only choice you had was Yahoo. Back then, no-one ever even considered that Yahoo might one day have to fight for their turf. Then, along came Google.

(more…)

• Add this to Social Bookmarking
  
  • Subscribe
  • Blinklist
  • Bloglines
  • Blogmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Yesterday just about nobody got any work done because we were all furiously trying to make sense of Google’s latest crawl where hundreds of highly ranking websites (that is Google Toolbar pagerank) lost three or four points in rank–and in some cases more….

(more…)

• Add this to Social Bookmarking
  
  • Subscribe
  • Blinklist
  • Bloglines
  • Blogmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Google has done it again! Two days ago there was an update. You know I only managed to get onto the first page of a search for my primary keyphrase last week. The latest update has bumped me to the second page. Ho hum. So now I have to go back to work, doing more of what I was doing before (which I was planning to do anyway) in order to reach my goal. How are you doing as a result of the last shake up? Let me know.

• Add this to Social Bookmarking
  
  • Subscribe
  • Blinklist
  • Bloglines
  • Blogmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

For months I’ve been working on my Google ranking for my main keyword for my wellwrittenwords.com website. Finally I made it to page 1! I’ve been #2 and #3 on Yahoo and MSN for some time, but this one took some work. Just goes to show that if you plug away with organic SEO techniques, you’ll have success in the end. And it is a fact that 60 percent of people searching on Google will go for the ranked sites, rather than clicking through on the ads to the right of the page. SEO is a great investment for any business website.

Oh, by the way, my main keyword for that site is “SEO copywriter”

Don’t forget to drop me a line if you’d like me to help you get a Google page 1 ranking!

• Add this to Social Bookmarking
  
  • Subscribe
  • Blinklist
  • Bloglines
  • Blogmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

I’m not sure what to think of this. Any comments? Death of Adsense.

• Add this to Social Bookmarking
  
  • Subscribe
  • Blinklist
  • Bloglines
  • Blogmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

If you’re not using Google Analytics to track traffic to your website, you’d better be using something else! Only by noting trends on a daily basis can you take decisions about what’s working, what’s not, and where you should go from here.

I have the Google Analytics script installed on all of my web pages except my blog. Up until now I couldn’t figure out how to intsall it on WordPress pages. I just discovered a great little script though, that I hope will solve my problems. I’ll keep you posted.

• Add this to Social Bookmarking
  
  • Subscribe
  • Blinklist
  • Bloglines
  • Blogmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Of late, it seems that hardly a week goes by without one of the major search engines coming out with some new trick to poach customers from rivals. One of the latest events is the debut of Google’s new “Google Apps for Your Domain.” Clumsy name huh? (more…)

• Add this to Social Bookmarking
  
  • Subscribe
  • Blinklist
  • Bloglines
  • Blogmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati