Here’s a riddle for you…

Q: What’s black and white and read all over?

A: SEO!

It seems as far as Google is concerned, SEO is either black-hat (unethical) or white-hat (ethical). Just like the 2011 panda update or their most recent penguin, it’s all black and white. There is no gray. And the pages that get top ranking are most certainly “read all over” just like the newspaper that served as the punch line in the old joke. If SEO’ers game Google it’s their low-quality web pages that are “read all over” – and that’s exactly what Google does NOT want.

The unfortunate thing here is that with mass updates like Panda and Penguin, a lot of innocent websites get knocked out of top spots – having done nothing wrong. In fact, a representative of Google has stated that the Penguin update will focus on locating and dealing with “over SEO’d” web pages.

Yes; that is what it sounds like. If your website shows to many signs of intentional optimization, it will be penalized. So what can you do? The good news is, it’s not very complicated. The bad news is, it goes against what 99% of SEO professionals are used to doing to score top rankings.

Let’s explore the possibilities together…

Many SEO professionals have been saying for years that social media has no benefit to search engine optimization efforts… That’s just crazy.

Any website considered an authority by Google is like gold. And considering that Facebook gets more daily visits than Google, I’d say that puts them in the ‘golden’ category. But it’s not just Facebook; Myspace.com has been helping web pages rank higher for years. Twitter also pitches in, as do others.

But it’s not just “active” social medial sites like these. Video sites like YouTube and Google Video offer a whole new level of what I classify as “passive” social media. Links from these (in the video tags) can prove extremely valuable your SEO efforts.

While there is no exact magic number of how greatly links from any type of social media site help, even .01% (.0001) makes it worthwhile. Yes, really…

Think about it… The average in-demand keyword today has about 1,500,000 competing pages vying for the top spot, depending on the niche and GEO.

That’s 1,500,000 pages x .0001 = 150 competing web pages.

Simply put; where would you rather be in the search results, on page 1 or  on page 15…150 spots away from number one?

You may not have the time or budget for this, or the next few tips, but I felt they should be included so you had the greatest potential advantages, whether you can immediately take advan-tage of them or not.

Take every opportunity to partner with your SEO company or specialist. This is especially important when issues arise. You may never have one, but if problems do come up, remember that it only takes a moment to become part of the solution. And keep in mind that when you are fully onboard, you will be amazed at how much good can come from a seemingly bad situation. In SEO, “challenges” really are opportunities.

The number of competing pages shown by Google is not necessarily a true indicator of actual “head to head” competition. It is however a true indicator of how many other pages have been (and remain) indexed by Google.

So what does that mean? It’s simple, all of these pages might not be stiff competition, but they are all potential contenders to be recognized for that keyword – at least as far as the search engine is concerned.

Simply put, Google believes these page are relevant to the keyword searched. That in itself is competition, even if much of it is somewhat weak by comparison (if those “competing” Web pages have not been carefully optimized).

For example, do a search on Google for “New York pizza” (no quotes) and you will get a number similar to 22,000,000. Do you suppose there are really twenty-two million Web pages on the Internet that are trying desperately to be number one for the keyword “New York pizza”? It’s extremely doubtful.

However, of the 22,000,000 results (potential competing pages) for the keyword “New York pizza”, even if only the tiniest percentage (say 1/10th of 1%) was actually optimized, that is still a great deal of tough competition (22,000)!

This is not to imply there are 22,000 pizza shops in New York, but it does beg the question – how many pages does each website have? If each only had ten pages, that’s 2,200 actual sites. Of those, probably half are likely not a shop in the city but rather an online business – or shop in another city – selling New York style pizza. But it’s still competition on the Web. YOUR competition.

It can take just as long to optimize for a keyword that will bring in 10 visitors per month as 1,000. I’m not talking about “junk” keywords that some lazy SEO person tossed in the mix because they were easy to rank for. I mean REAL keywords with good search volume every month – and real competition. You need to become a keyword curator and get rid of those with low ROI so you can focus on those that bring in the profits.

Using Google’s keyword tool, ( https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal ) we find that there were 145,000 searches performed in the previous month for “New York Pizza.”.

Wow! That’s a lot of potential visitors if you nail a top spot. But how targeted will it be? Let’s look at the competition. A quick search of Google shows that we have 22,000,000 competing pages; many about New York style pizza, not about pizza actually located in New York.

A bit more research shows us that “New York City pizza” has monthly potential traffic of about 63,000 and much less competition at 6,480,000. Now, that’s a big difference!

We still have plenty of potential visitors but now with only about one-third the competition (6,480,000 compared to 22,000,000).

Let’s try again. How about “NYC pizza?”

Wow! 58,000 monthly searches and only 2,990,000 competing pages. Talk about a no-brainer!

“NYC pizza” Close-up shows the lowest competition yet

You get the idea. Not all keywords are created equal. Consider these three possible scenarios…

• Some might bring you thousands of people who are not even looking for what you have to offer.

• Others might bring in all the business you can handle.

• Still others might attract a good number of visitors interested in a free offer but not becoming a paying customer.

Knowing how to spot the best keywords is one of the most important things your SEO company can do for you – or that you can do for yourself if need be.

There is so much more to keywords than we can cover here. The topic could easily fill an entire book itself – and actually has many times over. Just know that a true SEO expert has spent years sharpening his or her skills in this area – and for good reason; keyword selection is crucial to your success.

A keyword is just another name for a search term. Basically it’s anything your potential customer is typing into the search engine to find (hopefully) your website.

A GEO is simply a geographic point of reference, such as a town, city, or state.

When properly combined, keywords and GEOs are what targeted search engine traffic is all about.

For example, if you have a pizza parlor in New York City, you would want to be very specific about your business type (product or service) – in this case pizza, as well as your location.

The keyword will most likely be “pizza”, unless you specialize in a particular type of pizza for which you want to be known. But the GEO might take some thought. Let’s work through it…

“New York” is the state name but also a shortened version of the city name; aka “New York, New York.” But is it more? In this case, yes. New York style pizza is very popular, sold all over the country and often simply called “New York Pizza.”

Using one of several available tools, a good SEO professional would start by looking at the potential volume in terms of monthly traffic you could expect based on either a broad match or exact match of the selected keyword. Let’s try a broad match for the keyword “New York pizza” using Google’s keyword tool.

The next two posts will cover this in great detail.

The ability to craft text to not only satisfy the needs of both a search engine and live visitor is not enough in today’s world. You have to be able to WOW them. There is far too much competition to merely interest the reader, be that reader a person or a bot.

Several years ago, Google introduced its natural text algorithm (NTA) and the game was forever changed. Before that, it was easy to write just what a search engine bot wanted to see and gain top rankings for your efforts. Not so today. Nowadays you need to walk a precarious line between what the search engine needs to see and what your visitor wants to see. And this is a good thing.

Do you remember some of those top-ranking pages from the early 2000’s? What a bunch of junk! Here’s an example of then versus now…

Then:

“Plumber Boston available for emergency services plumbing for plumbing problems from master plumbers Boston.”

Now:

“Looking for an emergency services plumber in Boston? Look no further! Our certified and bonded master plumbers will have your plumbing related problems fixed in no time. We are punctual, courteous and always happy to be of help.”

What a difference! Who would you rather call: the robot or the nice friendly plumber? Google knows the answer and that’s why they added their natural text algorithm. They value the user – and thus their experience – on any site shown in their results.

All this said, if you ever have to choose between two seemingly equally qualified SEO people, choose the better writer. That bet will pay off in spades every time.

The next time you are hiring, or re-evaluating current employee job duties, make it a priority to identify a good writer. Then be prepared to eventually develop him or her into an SEO copywriter. Again, I say eventually. This is not something that will happen overnight but copywriting (of any kind) is a skill set that pays for itself many times over – and SEO copywriting accounts for about 25% of your SEO success.

It’s important to know that search engine submission is not the same thing as search engine optimization. Although submission is often an important part of your SEO campaign, just telling search engines about your site is usually not enough to get any kind of decent rankings – or resulting traffic – from that engine.

In fact, most websites don’t need to be submitted because the search engine spiders (AKA / crawlers and bots) will find them through inbound links. But of course, this means you have to have inbound links from web pages that the search engine visits, which in turn means you might be waiting a while before a spider ever crawls your site.

So is it better to submit your site to the search engines or should you just wait for them to find you? The answer is, an ambiguous, “it depends.” It depends on if you have the time to wait for a spider to naturally find your site. It depends on if you believe the rumor that Google gives less credit to sites that were submitted rather than found naturally. It depends on how you plan to submit your site, if you head in that direction. Yes indeed, it depends.

I tend to err on the safe side and not submit sites to Google and to only hand submit sites to Yahoo! and Bing. As for Google, I concentrate on quality inbound links to get the site picked up naturally and quickly by creating links on pages that Google considers “fresh,” meaning they come back and spider the content regularly – often daily.

And what was that about hand submitting? Why on earth would I take the time to manually submit a website to a search engine when I can have a piece of software do it cheaply or even free in a matter of seconds? That’s simple. I submit sites by hand because that’s what the search engines require. Not “request” but require.

Using a piece of software to submit your URL to Bing and Yahoo! might save you a few minutes work, but it could cost you the ability to get listed. And let’s be reasonable, they are ready to send you thousands of dollars in free sales and all they ask is that you abide by their requirements and hand-submit your URL. It’s a no-brainer. Get typing or have someone do it for you.