The tool lets you find questions that people are asking about the products you sell.  These are questions people are searching for in the search engines.  When you have the questions, its simple to then put the questions and answers on your website in a FAQ page
(Google loves FAQ pages) or a blog post or use as content for articles you write.

You can then optimize web pages or blog posts for the questions by linking to them with the questions in the anchor text of content you create and distribute.

Click here to access this free question tool

I was going to submit it to my network of blogs and link it to a web page.  To find out what web page I should link to I searched for the term in Google.  I planned on using my best ranked web page to link to.  Might as well start with the web page that Google already thinks is relevant to that keyword phrase.

I searched for the term but did not find any of my web pages in the first 10 pages of Google (first 100 results).

So, I quickly posted on my blog using the keyword phase in the title of the blog post and several times in the body of the post. Within 5 hours, that blog post was on the first page of Google when you searched in Google for ‘do stun guns work.’

As I write this, my blog post is at #9 in Google for that keyword phrase.  I’ve submitted the article I had written optimized for this keyword phrase to my network of blogs to see how quickly I can move this blog post up the rankings.

The point is, a blog is very important in your SEO toolbox.  Posting on your blog can be more effective and quicker than creating a new web page optimized for a particular keyword phrase.

New content now plays a more important role in Google’s algorithm.  So, keep creating new content and the best way to do this is posting on a blog integrated into your website. Google sees it as new content for your website.

Because of the importance of new content to Google, here’s a little trick you can do.  If you have a blog post that is ranking pretty well in Google for a particular keyword phrase and its an older post, just by changing the date on the blog post to a current date you can boost your ranking in Google.  Try it!

They have finally given up the pretense of being able to detect paid links, so they’ve decided to devalue all links on web pages that are navigational links or links found in the navigation areas of a web page. These areas are found at the top, on the side or at the bottom of a web page. These are also the areas that paid links are usually put.

What has increased in value to Google is contextual links. Google now will give a boost, a huge boost, to contextual links. Links found in the actual content of the page – not in the navigational areas. When we do the 500 Free Links each month for our Coaching Club members, we put a contextual link within the content we create and distribute.

In the above paragraph you can see that the phrase Coaching Club is a hyperlink. This is a contextual link.

You can do this yourself by linking keyword phrases within the content of your web site or blog to relevant pages of your website. This is internal linking and Google counts it. This will help your website increase in ranking and its something you have complete control over.

Contextual links can also be put in articles submitted to certain article directories and blogs. They can be put in press releases submitted to certain press release directories. You can also put them in the description of videos that you submit to YouTube and other video directories.

You can still do paid links, but only deal with web site owners (not with a link broker) and ask them for contextual links.

I didn’t want to pick on any of my distributors, so I searched for the keyword ‘fishing’.

Below you will find a screen capture of some of the results.

If you look at the listings circled in red you can see that there are trailing dots ʻ…ʼ in the title. This is because the page title is longer than 66 characters.

Now you may not think that this is important, but in testing there is a significant drop in click-through rate on listings with the ‘…’ present. Testing resulted in a 3-4% decrease in click through rate (CTR).

So, make sure there are no more than 66 characters in the titles of your web pages.

This has to do with expectations of sales after getting small number of visitors to your website.

Statistics tell us that only around 2% of visitors will purchase on their first visit to your website.  That means that 98% of the visitors come to your website, look around and then leave.  

This makes collecting their email address so you can continue to communicate with them one of the most important things you can do.  You need to focus on building your list.

To do this, think of something that you can give visitors to get them to sign up for your list.  Consider it an ethical bribe.  This can be a free report or a discount on their purchase.  It’s not enough to just ask them to sign up.  Even though its free to do so, you need to sell it!

As you probably know, SEO is mainly getting back links to your website by writing articles and submitting to article directories, like www.ezinearticles.com, writing and submitting press releases to press release directories, like www.prlog.com, creating videos and submitting to video directories like www.youtube.com and posting comments on relevant blogs.

If you are interested in finding out how many links you have to your website, go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/.  Enter in the full URL of your domain, including http://www and click on Explore URL tab.

When the results show up, click on the Inlinks button.  On the Show Inlinks drop down menu choose Except from this domain.  On the to field drop down menu choose Entire site.

This will give you a pretty accurate view of the links you have to your website.  This way you can deal with the facts and not guess about the links you have.

Hope this helps.

One more thing.  I sometimes hear from a distributor that they have done everything I said to do but haven’t made any sales.  I find this an interesting statement because I don’t even do everything I say.

When I ask them what they have done, they tell me they have written and submitted two articles and one press release.  To give them credit, they are on the right path, but they stopped.  Getting links to your website is a neverending project.  You can’t do a few articles or press releases or videos and think you are done.

If you want to start getting real traffic, Google needs to consider you an authority when it comes to the keyword phrases you use to optimize your articles, press releases and videos.  This is why you need to use long tail keyword phrases; 3, 4 or 5 word phrases.  It’s easier to become an authority when you focus on less competive keyword phases.  The more articles, press releases and videos you do focusing on these keyword phrases, the more of an authority you will become to the search engines.

When you write, remember to use a longtail keyword phrase in the title and the same keyword phrase several times in the body of the article or press release.  Keep plugging away and you will succeed.

The Title not only displays at the top of the browser window, but also appears as the linked text when potential customers perform a search in a search engine and review the results. The Title is indexed by all major search engines. The Title Tag does not have as much importance in search engine optimization as most people think.  But, the Title and the
description meta tag are important in making your website unique to the search engines.  Google will only display the first 65 characters. So, stay within this number.  But, the most important function of the Title is getting people to click on you.  The Title must grab attention, evoke emotion and create curiosity.

So, instead of stuffing the Title with keyword phrases, make it a magnetic headline so when people are scanning down the search engine results they are drawn to it, read it and come to your website.

The meta tag description works with the Title to attract potential customers. When someone goes to Google or some other search engine and types in what they are looking for, the results shown are usually the Title and the description meta tag. Because of this, you should write your Title and description like the headline and text of an important classified ad.

The description meta tag should always include the keyword phrase you want to optimize your web page for, but do not keyword stuff. Usually Google will use your description meta tag in its results if the description contains the relevant keyword phrase.  If it doesn’t, Google will pull from the body text. Keep the description meta tag to 150 characters or less.

Search engine optimization is about 30% on page factors and 70% off page factors. The primary off page factors are getting links to your website.  

Creating comments and pages on Web 2.0 sites will get your website indexed very quickly (just hours) and will give you a link back to your website. The number of links and the relevancy of links are factors Google usesto rank your website.

Example of Web 2.0 sites are myspace.com, facebook.com, Squidoo.com, Wetpaint.com and Hubpages.com

I want to keep this simple. My definition of Web 2.0 is any website, blog or forum that allows you to interact, too leave information, especially a link to your website. They are social sites.

For instance, if you visit someones blog and they allow you to make comments and leave your web address, that’s basic Web 2.0. If you visit a forum and make a comment and can leave a link to your website, that’s Web 2.0. Myspace.com and FaceBook.com are Web 2.0 and other sites like Squidoo.com, gather.com, hubpages.com, clipmark.com, digg.com and scribd.com are all Web 2.0 sites.

Now why is Web 2.0 important?

Because the search engines are starting to give authority rankings to many of these Web 2.0 websites. In other words, they consider these sites to be important. Because of this, they give links from these websites importance. One link from a prominent Web 2.0 site can be worth 100 links from regular websites. Plus, these are one way links. You do not have to link back from your website.

Because these websites are interactive, you are able to set up accounts and post information and give links to your websites. Google spiders these websites often, as often as every minute. If you have posted relevant information and included a link to your website and used keyword phrases that are not too competitive, its possible for your listing to be ranked in the top ten of Google within hours.

Someone sees this link, clicks on it, goes to the Web 2.0 site, clicks on your link and ends up on your website.

So, the main advantage to these Web 2.0 sites is that they can send a lot of targeted traffic to your website and help you in your search engine listings and page rank and its free.

There is a lot of information on Web 2.0 on the Internet. I will also be covering this subject in my Coaching Club.

You are going to start seeing more and more listings in a Google search from Web 2.0 sites. They will soon crowd out the other websites. If you are depending on organic search engine listing for traffic to your website, you had better get real familar with Web 2.0 quickly.

Already, when you search on Google, you will see Wikipedia listings, news listings, maybe a video from youtube.com, which is also a Web 2.0 site. Google refers to this as Universal search and will fully take over by the end of this year.

To stay up with this, you will need to post videos on youtube.com, set up lenses on squidoo.com, submit images to flickr.com, use Google Base, etc.

First thing you can do to find websites that will be willing to exchange links with you is find those websites that are linking to your competitors.  

To find websites that are linking to your competitors, go to Yahoo.com (not Google) and type link:http://www.domainname.com – substituting domainname for your competitors domain name.

You may be intimidated by the number of websites your competitors have linking to them. Don’t be.

They may have thousands of links to them, but most mean nothing to the search engines because they are not relevant.

You will accomplish the same thing with fewer links if you limit the websites you exchange links with to websites that are relevant to you.

In other words, only link with websites that have to do with self defense, personal protection, home and personal security, etc.

To find relevant web sites to link with, search at Google.com by typing the following into the search field:

“add link” +”self defense”
“add url” +”self defense”
“submit your url” +”self defense”
“add your site” +”self defense”

Make sure you use the quotation marks just as I did above. That will give you an exact match in the results. You can substitute “self defense” with “personal protection” or “home security” or even “martial arts”. Be creative to find relevantwebsites.

This will give you a list of websites that should relevant to yours and are willing to exchange links.

Sometimes the add your site or submit your url links are not easily to find on the page. But they should be on the page that Google returns somewhere.

Then its just a matter of clicking on the link and following the instructions for exchanging links.

Getting links is the number one thing you can do to improve your search engine ranking. It is time consuming and you may want to outsource it. But, its something that should be started and never stopped. You never can have enough relevant links to your website.

Hope this helps.

A blog is simply a way to easily publish to the Internet without knowing any html.   If fact, some people use a blog as their web site.  

You can get a free blog at www.wordpress.com. But, when you initially get it set up, it’s on the WordPress web site. You don’t want to keep it separate from your web site. It should be a page on your web site with the look and feel of the rest of your web site. Fully integrated into your web site.

The reason you want it part of your web site, is that every time you post to your blog, this shows up as fresh content and activity to Google and the other search engines. They like this and it will cause them to visit your web site more often. Over time, it will add hundreds of web pages to your web site of good, relevant content.

Integrating the blog is not simple to do so you’ll need to find someone to integrate it for you. You can check on www.guru.com for someone to integrate the blog for you or we can do it for you. If you want us to do it, please contact Laura at our office – laura@safeytechnology.com

Whenever you write to your blog, keep your list of keyword phrases handy and add a few to your posting whenever you can. Also, you will have the choice of having comments turned on or off. On means that people reading your blog will be able to comment on it. You want comments turned on. You want people commenting on what you say on your blog. This will constantly be creating new content which will help you with your ranking in the search engines.

You don’t have to worry about people putting up stuff bashing you or using profanity. You can moderate the comments. This means that before any comment is posted live, you have to approve it. The process is very simple
to do.

So, you definitely want comments turned on.

Make blogging a big part of your search engine optimization. Try to write to it everyday. You don’t have to write long articles, but definitely use keywords you want to rank high for. Such as stun guns, pepper sprays, self defense products, hidden cameras, etc.

Hope this helps.

Michael Gravette