Should I optimize my website for Search Engines or market my website to search engines? That’s a big question and I’ve seen lots of confusion in the SEO vs SEM debate. The answer is…”you have to do both”.

Search Engine Optimization is usually seen as a subset of Search Engine Marketing. I honestly prefer to think of them as internal versus external.

Internal
There are many things you can do to make your website more “search friendly”. Google likes blog entries, tags, meta descriptions, alt tags, keyword placement, keyword density, and site maps (plus many many other things). All of these items are on your website and make Google happier when looking at your website. The idea here is to really work your butt kissing valet skills on Google when they show up at your door. Park their car, wipe their nose, complement their spouse and make damn sure their water glass is always full. When the big boy on the block shows up, make it well worth their trip.

External
Just because your own website is chock full of brown nosing goodness, doesn’t mean Google will even deign to send people to your door. Google wants to know that it is sending people to the “right” place, and not just a hole in the wall that talks a good game. There needs to be lots of people (websites) telling everyone how great the place is (hyperlink to your website) in order to be recommended. Each hyperlink is a vote and the more votes your website has the more you will be noticed and recommended. Please remember that not all votes carry the same weight. A vote from your 20 cousins (all named Daryl) isn’t considered as valuable as a direct recommendation from a major news station (or talk show host). Not only that, but you will need to use those same keywords from your optimized website when you go out and start building your constituency. Marketing hasn’t changed as much as people think, it simply started using new tools online.

You want new visitors to your website to find you for the right reasons and you want existing visitors to see exactly what they were looking for when they get to your website. This is a simple concept, but can be very time consuming if you haven’t already figured out your business model and specific target audience.

The objective is not SEO or SEM. The objective is to increase sales, or expose your branding, or relay a positive image. SEO and SEM can move your goals forward, but if you don’t know your real goals, then you’re just throwing your Cheetos to the pidgeons and getting pooped on as they fly away.

Toff Ward
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Accelerate your business online using social media.

Wouldn’t it be great to get 8 hours worth of value out of 4 hours worth of actual work? I don’t know about you, but that’s an important business goal for me.

Whether I work 4 hours a day or 20 hours a day, I want the time spent to be as productive and useful to my business as possible and I don’t want my tasks to take any longer to accomplish than necessary. To give an example of what I mean, I recently discovered that I could cut my search engine optimization research time in half by using Market Samurai as my primary SEO research tool. That can be a pretty significant chunk of time to any website publisher.

With search engine optimization, it takes time to find keywords, check search traffic, analyze competition strength, cross reference trend information, and gathering information on backlinks counts and anchor link text. Spending time finding each piece of information adds up quickly and that can mean hours of research time that keeps you from doing other equally important things.

Prior to using Market Samurai, I used a collection of SEO tools for:

Keyword Research

• SEO Blogger Tool (Firefox Addon)
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Google Adwords Tool
• Keyword Discovery Search Tool

Competitor Analysis

• SEO for Firefox (Firefox Addon)
• Yahoo Site Explorer
• Google  Search Modifiers

Rank Tracking

• SEO Books Rank Checker (Firefox Addon)
• WebCEO (PC)
• Link Assistant Rank Tracker (Mac)

These are all great SEO research tools and in some situations I do still use one or two of them, but overall I’ve found that I can get faster results using Market Samurai alone.

Instead of using multiple platform dependent tools whose data must all be cross referenced, I use one tool that works on any machine and supplies the information I need in one common interface. I don’t have to jump between tools and spend time working with the way each tool presents information. Market Samurai even does some analysis for me so I can spend more time making business decisions and less time crunching numbers.

So, if saving time is part of your business mindset and you find yourself spending more time than you think you should on researching keywords, assessing competitors and tracking your search engine placement, then take a look at Market Samurai. It will cut your search engine optimization research time in half and then you’ll have time for the rest of your business.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Flip through the presentation I gave for the Dallas SEO Meetup group for a quick look at each of the tools mentioned in this article.

Accelerate your business online using social media.

Now before you get all twisted up by the 4.92% slice of search engine traffic, keep in mind that these are relative percentages so the size of the Search Engines wedge depends on the overall amount of traffic you’re getting to your site. In some cases 4% equates to a a significant amount of search traffic. It’s kind of like having only 2% left of a tera-byte drive. That 2% is still a respectable amount of space. So 4% doesn’t always mean small.

The key point to consider is that search engines are fickle. Yes, visitors from search traffic are actively looking for products, services, and information about specific things, but we have to keep in mind that if an algorithm change means those searchers can’t find your site, then it doesn’t matter how targeted they are. You need to have more than one source of traffic, preferably sources that don’t change drastically overnight. If all your traffic comes from search engines then you are depending on them for all your walk up business. This can be a bad place to be.

A better mixture is to build up links from several website traffic sources like what’s shown in our graph above. With more traffic coming from referring sites and direct traffic you are less likely to have your overall traffic numbers drop suddenly, because you are less dependent on changes in the Google Caffeine search algorithm.

To be honest, I would rather see larger numbers for referring sites than direct traffic because that would mean that the site is being seen as an authority and other sites are likely pre-selling the visitor before they arrive on the site. That said, there are benefits of direct traffic that might not be obvious at first glance, such a visitor loyalty and responsiveness. These are harder to measure, but they offer the greatest amount of value.

Here are just few ways that you can increase your links from referring sites

1. Be the first to link to other sites. This will put your site on the radar of other site owners and they will be encouraged to check out what your doing and possibly link back to your content in their own articles.
2. Comment on other blogs. Leave good comments that add to the conversation that’s already going on. Don’t play know it all, but do write as much as you can to add value. If you say more than the author, that’s okay as long as you do it in a spirit of contribution and not one of “look at me”.
3. Write guest posts for other blogs. Website owners are continually looking for new content. They either have to write it themselves or they have to pay to have content written. If you contribute an article, then will be more than happy to link back to you as credit for your contribution. If the article adds value for the reader then this is a win win win situation for everyone involved.
4. Use social bookmarking sites. The excitement around these sites has mellowed a bit, but they are still good for getting click traffic to your site. As with all things in the social space though, keep in mind that you’ll get more value out of social bookmarking if you’re being social in the process. That means adding friends and being sure to bookmark their stuff as well.
5. Use social media sites regularly. Honestly, I see social media as a stronger form of marketing than anything we have ever seen online. If Facebook made search a prominent part of their offering I believe they would give Google something to worry about. But, that’s another article all together. Just remember that people use social media to share things and that’s exactly what you want people to do with your website.

If you are getting most of your traffic today from Google, or Yahoo, or even Bing, then great. You’re doing a great job. The search engines have found you and you must be doing something right because that’s translating into website visitors. Now, spend some time building on the other sides of the house. Start a campaign to build up your incoming links, or look for some cheap forms of paid traffic. Whatever you decide to do, make sure that you balance out that pie chart so that if the search engines sneeze, your visitor traffic won’t catch cold too.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Accelerate your business online using social media.

Are you getting at least 100 new visitors to your blog everyday?

If not, it may be that your blog is not optimized for the search engines, which is where people begin their search for products and services online.

Some “search engine experts” would have you believe that search engine optimization requires a lot of advanced techniques to rank well. But the truth is that even a little simple optimization can go a long way.

Here are five things you can do right now, on your own, to make sure your website is optimized for the search engines.

1. Page Title – Make sure to use relevant keywords within the title tag of each page of your blog. The title tag is the first thing a search engine discovers about your site. The keywords you use in your title should be carefully chosen to describe what your page is about.
2. Meta Tags – Be sure to inlcude a useful description in the description meta tag that’s located in the head of your document. The meta tag is still used by some search engines as the description that will show up as part of the search engine listing. Completing the description tag doesn’t take very long and it’s a good way to exercise control over what appears to searchers in the search engine listings.
3. Use H1 Tags – Make sure the headline of your blog post is displayed within an H1 tag. The H1 tag is considered a notation to highlight important parts of your webpage. The search engines use this to determine which parts of your document are emphasized. The headline of your blog post is different than the title of your document, so don’t confuse the two things.
4. Post Titles – Also, ensure that the headline of your blog post includes keywords relevant to your post topic. Be careful not to overuse keywords though or the search engines will think you are keyword stuffing, or trying to game the system. Just be sure to use keywords when it makes sense, and make sure your titles are friendly for your visitors.

Tip: If you use run a WordPress blog, a good SEO WordPress plugin is The All In One SEO Pack. It gives you the ability to tweak the page description, page title, and associated keywords.

5. Write For Humans First – Most importantly, when writing articles for your website, be sure to write for the human reader first and the search engine second. For example, don’t just use the word “player” when you could be more descriptive by saying “music player” or “MP3 player”. Just make sure that your keywords don’t disrupt the flow and meaning of your sentences. Including the same keyword in back-to-back sentences can be very distracting for human reader and can be something a search engine can penalize you for doing. So be natural in your writing, but use relevant keywords where they make sense. This will make your articles work for both search engines and your blog readers.

A good free SEO analysis tool for analyzing your website can be found at WebsiteGrader.com. Website Grader measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

For more information on ways to optimize your website for the search engines, check out the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

Remember, even a few simple changes can make a world of difference for your blog. Just be sure you cover the basics first.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Here’s how the Compete website describes their Search Analytics, “It’s your starting point to build and optimize search marketing campaigns that create brand awareness, drive site traffic and increase sales. Use Compete Search Analytics to discover keywords driving traffic to any domain, identify gaps in your search strategy, invest in terms that drive the most engaged visitors, and track your performance against competitors and peers.”

Compete offers a great service that really puts important information in your hands. I personally like the site comparison tool because you can begin to get a rough idea of how sites are doing compared to each other in terms of traffic. You can use this information either as a benchmark for your current competitive efforts or you can use it as a gauge to research a market or plan strategies for acquiring visitor traffic.

The service offers some bare bones free information, but if you really want to dig into the keyword research, you’ll need to buy some Compete credits. Credits are purchased with real money and each report deducts a few credits from your overall balance. The system seems to be very fair.

I received free trial credits when I created a free account and the overall theme seemed to be that the more potential valuable you stand to gain from a report, the more credits it will cost you.

Perspective:

Gaining insight into what is going on with websites in your topic of interest is as much a necessity of picking a direction as it is a part of trying to gain a competitive edge.

While compete is not a complete picture of everything that is happening with a competitors website, it is a lot better than not knowing anything at all.

Combined with keyword research tools like WordTracker and Google Trends, Compete can be a very useful tool in your research toolbox.

Competing,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

I’m not going to list all 45 tips in this update, but here are a few interesting ones for you.

1. Use English Names for Images
2. Descriptive and accurate titles are essential
3. Use title elements on every hypertext link
4. Pick the right theme (SEO over Eye Candy)
5. Web hosting affects your traffic – google traffic is affected by site performance (google could flood a slow server). StumbeUpon stops sending traffic to slow sites
6. Serve images from your own server and not Flickr or risk sending traffic to Flickr and not your own site. Images searches will go to where the site is stored.
7. Use a sitemap to tell Google where everything is on your site. Get the WordPress Site Map Plugin.
8. Post regularly, no less than 2-3 days. Post in advance. Keep 2-3 post buffer at all times, a week or two is even better if you can.
9. Always show related posts.
10. Use Print style sheets to make it easy for people to print your content.
11. Use deep linking by using keywords in the link text.
12. Have your own domain name. Don’t use typepad, blogger, or other sub-domain.
13. Create a podcast and/or publish a video to connect with your audience and make yourself real.
14. Pick a theme that loads quickly
15. Use wp super cache plugin to survive a digg front page appearance.
16. Use the link attraction factors plugin to find out if your post title is digg worthy.
17. Always include at least one image per post, period.

These are all great tips, but the grand finale was the best tickler and that was the Layered Technologies real-time analytics reporting tool from Woopra.com. I’m getting a beta account today as part of being an attendee of WordCamp Dallas 2008, so I’ll update you on all the yummy coolness once I have a chance to get in and use the tool.

Updating from WordCamp Dallas 2008

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend, but I heard a lot of popular blogging names were there. It would have been a great chance to mix it up with other motivated people because getting to know people face to face will always be a great way to build solid long term relationships.

I really enjoy talking with focused like minded people so, you can imagine how excited I am about attending WordCamp this weekend in Frisco, Texas. The blogging event has been on my calendar for a couple of months now and at last glance, 130 bloggers are registered to attend.

In case you haven’t heard of the event, it is a two day WordPress blogging event that focuses on blog reader and developer topics.

Over the two days we are scheduled to talk about topics like WordPress 2.5, how to handle content theft, building blogging influence, seo for bloggers, the business of blogging, and testing with WordPress.

Lorelle VanFossen is scheduled to deliver some of the material related to WordPress Power Tips. Her blog has been a great source of information for me as I’ve tweaked my WordPress blog from it’s original template to what you see today.

Her blog was especially helpful when I upgraded to WordPress 2.3, so I’m hoping for an opportunity to personally thank her for the great information she provides on her blog.

Overall it promises to be a great two days. I plan to report live from the event and I’ll be posting pictures to the Open Source Marketer Community. So be sure to look for those starting this Saturday.

If there is an event in your area or a major event that you can plan to attend, then I highly recommend that you plan to be there. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and make friends with people that I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise by attending events. Even free events have been a good source for making contacts.

For the most part people are very open at these events because they are there to meet other people and share information too. So, if you’ve ever wondered how you can meet people within your industry, attending events is a great way to make those connections.

If you’re in the Dallas area this weekend and would like to attend a blogging event, then there’s still time to register. If you already plan to attend, then look me up while you’re there and we can sit and have a coffee together. I hope to see you there.

Going to camp,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

So, please don’t beat me. You will get your article and I will get to write the next article in the series. But, until then, here is something you need to read about. My good Italian friend who is a master of video tutorials recently put out seven fantastic videos about Firefox extensions that will make your life easier.

Here are the 7 Firefox extensions covered in the videos:

1. Get Pagerank And Alexa Rank Of Any Web Site – This is great for selecting sites to target for link building.
2. The Ultimate SEO Plug-in – I use this plugin and it will absolutely change the way you get information about websites.
3. Find Out Your Competition In Google In Different Countries – This is great for knowing who you can potentially target for joint venture partnerships.
4. Monitor Any Website For Changes – Stay on top of specific websites.
5. Exclude Your Own Visits In Google Analytics – Keep your numbers real so you get an honest look at your traffic.
6. Automatically Backup And Synchronize Your Bookmarks - Keep everything up to date without a hassle.
7. No More Waiting When You Click On A Pdf Link – Not waiting is always a good thing, especially when it comes to PDFs.

These extensions are a great addition to your productivity and Internet marketing toolbox. Vittorio walks you through each one. Vittorio really is a master at video, so read his blog post, Top 7 Firefox Extensions For Web Site Owners and give the videos a squint. While you’re there check out the rest of his video library. He does not sleep much so he has an impressive collection of video tutorials.

Now back to that Del.icio.us article,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

No matter what you might think, blogging is hard work. Blogging it’s just about writing a few paragraphs and going outside to play. There are search engine rankings to optimize, articles to tag, comments to respond to, rss feeds to promote, mailing lists to promote and manage, and ads to manage. So with all that to do, anything you can to reduce your labor is a good thing.

Here are ten WordPress plugins that you must have or else you will end up doing more work than you need to.

1. SEO Title Tag Plugin – http://www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin/
   Customize your blog title beyond what is allowed with the default install of WordPress. “SEO Title Tag makes is dead-easy to optimize the title tags across your WordPress-powered blog or website. Not just your posts, not just your home page, but any and every title tag on your site!”
2. Sociable Plugin – http://push.cx/sociable
   Add social bookmarking icons to every blog post so that your readers can add you to their favorite social bookmarking site. “Social bookmarking sites allow websurfers to save, catalog, and share interesting pages they find online. The Sociable plugin appends links for your readers to use those sites to the end of each of your blog’s posts, increasing your potential audience.”
3. Ultimate Tag Warrior Plugin – http://www.neato.co.nz/ultimate-tag-warrior/
   Add tags to every post so that your readers can find related content on your site. This is another level of content organization beyond putting your posts in categories.
4. Adsense Plugin – http://philhord.com/wp-hacks/adsense
   Embed adsense into your blog posts by simply adding a special tag in the post. This is a great time save because you don’t have to go to the Adsense ad creator or keep the code in note pad to paste in each time you write an article.
5. Talkr Plugin – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sds-talkr/
   Convert your text blog post into downloadable audio format that can be downloaded or listened to right from your blog. See my article, How To Create Text To Speech Blog Posts
6. Contact Form Plugin – http://www.douglaskarr.com/projects/wp-contactform/
   Add a contact form to your blog so that your readers can contact you. Effective use of this plugin really depends on how you want to receive contact from your audience. Some people like to allow an email option for reader contact, while other bloggers like to push all the reader communications to the comments for search engine use and community content creation. There is no right or wrong way, but this plugin makes it easy to add a contact form to your WordPress blog without having to hack out a solution yourself.
7. Comment Avatars Plugin – http://www.napolux.com/projects/myavatars/
   Add avatars to your blog comments. This adds an element of community to your blog and grabs the attention of your readers. It also encourages comment participation and adds visual interest to your blog.
8. Subscribe To Comments Plugin – http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/
   Encourage reader comments by allowing them to subscribe to comments so they will know when comments have been added to your blog posts. Your readers probably take in several other blogs and you can count on them remembering to come back and check for updated comments. The subscribe to comments plugin helps you and the reader by letting them know that new comments have been added to your blog posts.
9. Comment Spam Protection Plugin – http://sw-guide.de/wordpress/plugins/math-comment-spam-protection/
   Protect your comments from spam by adding a spam protection question to each of your comment forms. This plugin is simple and effective. It asks a basic question of the reader that only a human could answer. Because this plugin is so simple it is easy to use and customize, if you are into that sort of thing.
10. DoFollow Plugin – http://kimmo.suominen.com/sw/dofollow/
    Encourage commenting by allowing search engines to follow links in your blog comments. Readers will be rewarded by a little link love when they comment. Remember that when you use your blog to give to the greater community then you will ultimately get back more. This is the law of reciprocity and it is a valuable point for any blogger how is trying to build value in their site. Be open to sharing the love and the love will be good to you.

These just a few of the WordPress plugins that will help you optimize your blog for search engines, encourage reader comment participation, add advertising to your posts, and enhance your content by offering an audio version.

Keep reaching for success,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

P.S. If you are interested in other time saving, money making, blog optimizing ideas, then me and the other bloggers at Yaro’s Blog Master Mind Course.