Step 1: Download your theme of choice
Unfortunately WordPress can’t read minds, so you’ll have to pick out the theme you want to use. Call me biased, but some of the templates on our free WordPress themes page are quite nice. For this tutorial we’ll choose the Blue Green theme. Click the download link, and save the .zip file to your hard drive. Read the rest of this entry »

There is so much information floating around out there about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how to get some rankings. So much of it is contradictory and confusing. I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about the secrets of top rankings.

So, let’s jump right in with the secrets to SEO success….

Secret # 1: There are no secrets! The search engines make it all very public and clear what you need to do to get top rankings. The success lies in the details and proper implementation. But there is no top secret, proprietary technique for getting top rankings.

OK, so now we all know there are no secrets, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t information you need to know, such as:

If you don’t optimize your site, you won’t get top rankings. It really is that plain and simple. If the engines can’t spider your site and you don’t have links and strong content, you don’t stand a chance against the sites that do have all that in place. So many people don’t want to spend money on SEO, or are afraid to take the plunge but then they can’t understand why they don’t have rankings. So maybe there is a secret – maybe the secret is take action and get your site optimized!

Your site structure matters! I can’t tell you how often people have said to me “I know my site is a mess, but I don’t want to spend the money fixing it, so can’t you just throw up some keywords and Meta tags and get me some rankings?” Ummmm, no, I can’t. Your site structure is your foundation. You would never build a house without a solid foundation, why would you build an SEO campaign without a solid foundation?

Don’t just focus on small keyword list that is made up of the most popular and competitive keywords. You will be missing out on opportunities for great keyword phrases that convert really well. Expand your list. Include long tail phrases. They may have less traffic but they will convert at a higher rate and if you get enough of these phrases they will likely add up to be better than your original list.

SEO is changing and evolving so staying current on what the engines are looking for is important. Either hire a firm to get you top rankings or find a way to make sure you stay current with information you can trust.

Social media and SEO go hand in hand, so get out there and be social. You can optimize your site without doing social media, and you can do social media without an optimized site. But why would you? The two enhance and compliment each other. The truth is there is a lot of competition out there for website traffic so why not use all the tools at your disposal?

Focusing on SEO without focusing on conversions is a mistake. You are going to work so hard, or pay someone your hard earned money to get you top rankings. You can’t afford to ignore marketing issues. Make sure your site is going to convert all that great new traffic you are going to send to your site.

Google Webmaster Tools and your web stats are a goldmine of information. Make sure you take time to see what words people are actually using to find your site and see what people do once they get to your site. See how many people link to you and which of those sources are driving traffic. Find out if there are errors on your site. There is so much information to be analyzed; you just need to make the time to check it out.

Successful SEO requires time, patience, skill, knowledge, persistence, attention to detail, knowledge of HTML, current information and an understanding of marketing helps too – then you can write the best possible text while using the keywords well, and it will also help you write compelling Title and Description tags….OR – the willingness to invest in a professional firm to get those top rankings for you.

Jenifer Horowitz

Building up a lot of backlinks is a great way to help raise your page ranking on search engine results. A backlink, also called an inward or incoming link, is a link from one website to another.

The quality of a site is often indicated by the number of incoming links it has.

For example, if you have a website that is all about teaching kids math, then if the quality is good you’ll have people linking to your site in their articles and blogs.

You can adapt that system to fit with your internet marketing plan.

How do you get more backlinks? That’s where the current generation of Web 2.0 sites comes into play. Sites like WordPress, Propeller and Associated Content allow website owners to upload their own content.

So, if you write some articles about how great your product or service is, then upload it to one of those sites with a link to your website, you have created a combination sales pitch/backlink.

Here’s an exercise: open up a new window in your web browser and go to Google. In the search bar type “link:yourwebsite.com” Don’t enter the quotes and replace yourwebsite.com with the address of your website.

The results will show how many sites are currently linking to yours.

Now try out the website name of a big player in your market. Odds are, you’ll find that they have a lot more links to their website than you do to yours, and their website probably shows up a lot higher in search results rankings than yours does as well.

Coincidence? Definitely not.

Here are a few quick tips for how to generate more backlinks to your site, and therefore a higher search engine ranking:

* Do you have more than one website? If so, then have them link to one another. This is a great way to get a new site off the ground if you already have an established site up and running.

* Upload content to Web 2.0 sites

* Create videos for your product or service and upload them to YouTube, Google Video, etc. It is really important to include a link to your site in the description or signature file!

* Check out an RSS aggregator. These are websites that compile articles and blogs into one place. Just about all of them allow you to include links in your Web 2 posts.0 sites.

James Schramko

You may argue that the title of the article is a bit bizarre. It sort of says that if there is an e-business solution then e-business must be a problem.
Truthfully, I could have titled the article “Discovering how to effectively manage your e-business leads, affiliate programs, clients, payments, and emails. No doubt exits, however, that the latter is entirely too long.

Any person who spends any time in internet marketing will recognize the need for having a solution for these specific parts of e-business. It is a good idea to start on the right foot and take advantage of a bundle of services that can help you to get your work done. An even more accurate – and longer- title would have included options for expanded payment/credit options, prospect/marketing campaign tracking, customer management tools, recurring billing and commission tools, payment and affiliate centers, customization tools for order forms, and thank you pages. As you can see, it’s terribly wordy.

As titles go, “The Ultimate e-business Solution” is accurate and short. What about you? You might be relieved to discover that there are many businesses who will not only take care of these tasks, but will offer many other ones. Also, you can have these services done for you for no more than .67 each day or .69 per week.
You cannot and should not do all of these tasks yourself when you are experience growth of an e-business. It’s equally as ridiculous to try to hire individuals or companies to take care of individual tasks when you can pay a reasonable price to a bundle service.

Paul Abbey