Bill McRea

Online business owners know how crucial it is to stay on the cutting edge of SEO knowledge, but when you are trying to run a business and keep your customers happy it can be challenging. Today we’re going to share a few handy seo tips to help you stay abreast of the constantly changing world of Search Engine Optimization.

• Take a seo class to learn the basics

Claiming to be the #1 Online SEO Training Course, SEOBook offers an seo training program which includes access to community forums and seo tools.

Source: seobook.com

SearchEngineCollegeprovides seo training courses from beginner level to advanced. They also offer courses in web copywriting, keyword research, website usability, ppc and other topics pertaining to Marketing online. They offer a free, sample lesson so that you can get a feel for the classes before you enroll.

Source: searchenginecollege.com

The JM Internet Group offers free seo and social media marketing training programs. You can sign up for either a live or pre-recorded webinar on the topic of seo, google AdWords and social media marketing best practices and tools.

Source: jm-seo.org

• Follow these top seo experts on Twitter:

According to, Greg Scott, here is a list of seos to keep your eye on. Stay Up to Date: Top 10 SEO Experts to Follow on Twitter:

@SEORockstars

“Learn SEO from some of the Rockstars who helped build the industry. I’ve been doing SEO since 1996 and took the reigns of hosting this show from Greg and Todd.”

@AndyBeal

“CEO of Trackur, author of Radically Transparent & founder of Marketing Pilgrim. Award-winning photographer, black belt in Taekwondo, ukulele player, Christian.”

@mattcutts

“I’m the head of the webspam team at Google.”

@randfish

“CEO + founder of SEOmoz. I tweet 50-75X/week primarily on inbound marketing, SEO, startups & entrepreneurship.”

@leeodden

“Author: OptimizeBook.com CEO @TopRank online marketing w/ insights on strategic Social Media, Search, Content & PR. Proud dad, world traveler, foodie.”

Source: blog.dropshipaccess.com/bid/28247/Stay-Up-to-Date-Top-10-SEO-Experts-to-Follow-on-Twitter

• If you’ve been bitten by the seo bug, and you really want to immerse yourself in seo knowledge and rub elbows with the top seo experts, check out a search engine marketing conference near you:

The, SES Conference & Expo, hosted by ClickZ is held in several cities around the world each year including New York, Shanghai, Toronto, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Chicago, and Singapore at various dates throughout the year.

Since 1999 the SES conference has been covering topics such as:

• Designing websites that are search engine-friendly

• Link building basics

• How to select an seo agency

• Managing PPC campaigns

• Working with website analytics

Source: sesconference.com

Once you’ve set up your rss feeds, Twitter lists, taken an online seo course or attended a seo conference, you will begin to build on your foundation of seo knowledge week by week. While there’s no reason you must become an seo expert, it’s good to stay up to date with all of the changes in the world of search engine optimization because they have such a major impact on your business.

For more seo tips and online marketing strategies for building and growing your online business, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today.

Search Engine Optimization is critical to your website’s ability to attract organic search engine traffic. Not everyone who runs an online business, however, is an SEO expert. It can be challenging to know what to do to get your website to the top of the search engine results pages, and keep it there. In this article we’re going to look at three of the hot, new SEO tools that promise to help you, the online business owner, to manage the SEO tasks for their websites more efficiently.

1. SEO Profiler

Billed as, “Your complete SEO solution,” SEO Profiler offers website optimization, competitive intelligence, link building, keyword research and rank tracking reporting tools. You can get a first month free and a wide range of paid plans to suit the needs of the webmaster with a single website to an SEO firm providing services to their clients.

One of the coolest features of this software is the wide range of tools you gain access to all in one place. You will be able to develop effective keyword strategies, and get actionable reports such as the Backlink IQ, which can give you a competitive advantage. Between the Keyword index tool and the keyword competition tool you will get reports that will help you to take advantage of opportunities quickly.

SEO profiler also has a ranking monitor, so that you can get detailed reports on where you rank in the major search engines, and track your progress to the top.

2. Microsite Masters

Microsite Masters is a SEO tool for SEO professionals. Its main promise is the ability to provide, “advanced tracking metrics to determine campaign efficeincy.” It also promises the ability to track dozens of seo campaigns, and determine ROI and measure how SERPs are impacted by other service providers and vendors.

This power seo tool offers:

• SEO score board
• Export PDF reports
• Automated alerts
• User Control Panel
• Multi-user support

The Linkbuilders blog had this to say about this new, seo tool for 2012, “Cost reduction is just one of the many bi-products from the visual tracking aspects of being able to monitor expenses on a per-keyword basis within Microsite Masters.”

They offer a wide variety of pricing plans ranging from the free plan, which does not give you access to the higher-end benefits such as CSV exports, PDF reporting and rank change notifications, which are some of the most critical aspects of this tool that sets it apart, to the enterprise level at $299. per month. Note that the higher the monthly fee, the more keywords, but even at the lowly, “Mom’s Basement,” level there is an unlimited domain limit for this tool.

3. SEO Power Suite

Comprised of four seo software packages, the SEO Power Suite has had 150 feature updates from the 2011 edition. The four parts include:

Link Assistant: This software is designed to help you with your link building campaigns. Link assistant assists you in finding link partners, and make sure that those new link partners are linking back to you.

Website Auditor: This tool analyzes both your site and those of your competitors when you are trying to rank for a specific keyword phrase. It will discover what is working to help you rank and let you know what it is. You will also learn which are your most popular keywords, and what your keyword density is.

Rank Tracker: Checks where your site ranks in the search engines, and it automatically checks your rankings to save you time and effort.

SEO Spyglass: This tool allows you to analyze your competition, and find the best quality links for your site.

* Bonus Free SEO Tools:

If you’re looking for a comprehensive selection of free seo and website research tools, you can visit the ebacklinktool.org website. There you’ll find a ton of resources to help you manage your website’s SEO needs for free.

For more seo tips and other online Marketing resources, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today where you can discover lots of Internet Marketing strategies today.

Online entrepreneurs know the value of page rank. The closer your website is to the top of page one, the more organic search engine traffic your site will attract. Since this is the best kind of traffic there is—and, by the way, it’s free—it makes sense to focus a lot of energy on making your website rank as high as you can. While the actual factors that make up your site’s page rank are super secret, there are some general principles of seo that you can follow that have been shown to Boost page rank.

One of the basic principles of SEO is that the largest portion of a website’s page rank (which applies only to Google) comes from external factors such as the number and quality of incoming links. The recent changes Google has made has also emphasized the importance of your site’s relevance and authority within your subject area. One of the best ways to gain credibility and authority for your website, if you are still working on establishing it, is to borrow it from those that you associate with, link to and get links from.

What are authority links?

While it’s rumored that the number and quality of the inbound links to your website accounts for as much as 80% of your site’s page rank, (link popularity) quality counts. The higher the authority the website’s linking to you have, the better. Authority links come from websites with a higher page rank, big portal sites such as Huffington Post, Yahoo!, or Mashable. Some sites are considered high authority sites because they are .edu or .gov sites, which Google tends to give a lot of love to.

Here are five tips for getting authority links to boost your site’s page rank and get more traffic:

When you are building backlinks go about it thoughtfully. Google can penalize your site if it looks like you are addling links too quickly, so go slowly and consistently so that the number of backlinks to your site grows at what appears to be a natural pace.

1. Focus on quality over quantity

Now more than ever the quality of the links to your site, and the sites that you link to is important. You can get penalized if spammy sites link to you. Pay close attention to the quality and page rank of the sites that you link to as well.

2. Limit the amount of reciprocal links

Google prefers to see more one way links than just a ton of reciprocal links. If you link to a site and they link back to you make sure that both sites have relevant content, fairly equal page rank and overall quality. Again, linking to a low quality, much lower page rank site can bring down your site’s authority.

3. Get your website listed in the dmoz.org directory

DMOZ is a powerful directory, but it can take months for your site to get listed after you submit it, so the prevailing wisdom seems to be submit it and then get on with your life. If you get in you can get a nice SEO boost, if not, you don’t lose a thing.

4. Get links from .edu and .gov websites

Getting links from .edu and .gov sites is a great way to increase your website’s authority naturally.

5. Submit press releases to press release directories

Press release directories and media sites tend to be authority sites with high page rank. Submitting a press release with a link back to your website will not only give you a ton of exposure, it can help boost your SEO.

Building backlinks is an important strategy for attracting traffic to your website. For more tips about building and growing your online business, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today.

When it comes down to it, seo is all about finding ways to make your website as appealing as possible to the search engines (mainly Google) so that they will send you as much free, organic, search engine traffic as possible. So, if you have an affiliate marketing blog, SEO is something that is always on your mind. In this article we’ll look at five tips that you can use to help your affiliate blog get found so that you can attract targeted traffic and make more sales.

1. Quality content is job one

With all of the upheaval caused with the Google updates you can no longer get away with poorly written, low quality content on your sites. Now affiliate marketers must find ways to create better quality content that falls within Google’s new content guidelines.

The freshness of your content also matters as Does the relevance. You’ll want to mix it up and provide your visitors with a variety of content formats such as audio, and video in addition to text. Interact with your visitors and encourage lots of user generated content. In the end it is quality, fresh, relevant keyword-optimized content that will attract the human visitors and the search engines to your site.

2. Make your site mobile friendly

Mobileis sizzling hot at the moment. We are coming into a time when smart phones are taking over and more people are accessing the Internet on mobile devices—that is cell phones, tablets and other Internet ready devices—than with their desktop or laptop computers. You can even take a peek at your analytics and see how many of your current visitors are accessing your site using mobile browsers. If you want mobile users to stick around and access what your affiliate marketing blog has to offer, then make sure that there is a version of your site that provides a satisfying experience for your mobile visitors who are viewing your content on a tiny screen or a touch screen.

3. Be active in social media

Since the Google plus your world update, the importance of having an active presence on Google+ was underscored. With this new update, when the people in your network do a search using any of the keywords associated with your niche, your Google+ profile results will appear on the first page of the search results they get.

You also want to be active daily and in some cases several times a day on Facebook because of the SEO benefits of the inbound links. Create a business page, and use the Networked Blogs app to gain more exposure and links to your blog.

Twitter is as important as ever to help boost your SEO because of the inbound links From a high page rank site. With Twitter you want to be on the lists of influential people in your sphere, and create lists that people want to be on and subscribe to.

5. A new link building strategy

Since traffic is the life’s blood of your affiliate marketing blog, you’ve got to stay up on all of the changes that are happening in the search engine world. You’ve got to develop a new link building strategy that focuses on quality over quantity. One of the best ways to get high quality, targeted inbound links is to do guest posting gigs. Make a list of the top five blogs in your niche and make contact with the authors. Offer to do a guest post for them and in return you’ll get exposure to a new audience and a high page rank link back to your blog. Do this often enough and you’ll begin to see the benefits accumulating.

To successfully attract as much organic search engine traffic as possible become a student of SEO. Take action on these tips with your affiliate marketing blog and test and track your results.

If you found these SEO tips useful there’s more where these came from. Visit http://mcreasite.com/blog for more information about growing your affiliate marketing blog today.

Last week Google launched the latest change in the world of search with its, ‘Search Plus Your World, (SPYW)’ and there’s been lots of reaction in the online world. Basically, what Google has done is insert content from Google+ personal profiles into search results. Now, when you do a search it is populated by relevant content that people in your G+ circles has shared.

There has been an angry backlash from Twitter, evidenced by a statement from their General Counsel who said that the day SPYW launched was a, “bad day for the Internet,” and, “. . . bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”  All squabbling between competitors aside, ‘Search Plus Your World,’ brings lots of changes that will have an impact on your branding efforts and your website’s seo. Let’s take a look at what these changes mean for you as an online business person.

Because SPYW is now integrating social media content from Google+, it underscores the importance of having a strong showing on Google Plus both personally and with a G+ brand page. Then, when the people in your circles search for content related to what you have to offer, your content will be brought to the forefront of their attention.

You’ll also want to build out your G+ brand page and get it added to the circles of those who are influential within your industry to make the most of this added visibility.

As far as SEO goes, SPYW will have an impact on how people will be finding your site and your shared content. Make sure that you are including links back to your G+ profile, which should be filled out completely with links to all of your relevant pages, keywords and lots of excellent content.

Privacy seems to have become a concern with all of these personal results being aggregated in one place. According to the Google blog, the results page for ‘Search Plus Your World,’ results is secured with SSL encryption by default for users who are signed in to their Google profile.

Keep in mind also that if you absolutely hate SPYW because you feel like its cluttering up your search results, you can simply turn it off with a click on the icon at the top right of the Google search results page. The head and shoulders icon included personal results, and clicking on the globe icon hides personal results from your searches.

As with any big change it’s a bit too early to tell how successful SPYW will be, and if people will embrace it or ignore it like many of Google’s previous changes. For now, the big takeaway seems to be the urgency to make sure that your Google+ profile is representing you powerfully, and that you are sharing useful, relevant content with your circles so that when they do a search you show up and remain top-of-mind with your target audience.

Search engine marketing is just one aspect of running a successful online business. Visit http://mcreasite.com/blog to discover more tips and information about growing your business using Internet Marketing.