Archive for May, 2011
First Info Carnivore FAN Contest. Like and win!
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Random tid-bits on May 27, 2011
Here it is, the first ever Info Carnivore Contest. I’ve been wanting to host a contest here for a little while. My objective: increase the reach of this blog and our facebook and twitter fan base. While I’m very happy with overall readership and reader interaction on the blog, I’m not as happy with the level of social sharing the blog is getting. I know Info Carnivore is home to great and original content, I hope this contest helps spread the word and encourages the readers that are here to share our content with others. The prizes in this contest are great for any blogger or internet marketer. Win Books, tools, and advertising to help lift your blog or site off the ground.
How to Enter the Info Carnivore fan contest.
Enter between May 27th and June 3rd, 2011!
1. Become a fan on facebook. Follow this link to LIKE Info Carnivore on facebook.
2. Follow me on twitter. Follow this link to take care of that @danielsnyder1
3. Tweet about this contest (below) on twitter to your followers. (Please use the hashtag #icCONTEST, failure to do so may mean your entry is overlooked!)
Awesome Contest Sponsors & The Prizes You Want
There are 6 sponsors jumping on for this first ever info carnivore twitter contest and some really fantastic prizes. There will be three winners.
Three copies of Twitter Dummy
John Paul Aguiar of Money Dummy has graciously provided us with THREE copies of his guide Twitter Dummy, a value of $19 each. John is a Twitter marketing monster who currently has almost 100,000 followers and has been listed over two thousand three hundred times.
Free Advertising at info carnivore
I’ll be giving away a 125 x 125 adspot on Info Carnivore. In fact it’ll be in the same above the fold spot as the “advertiser here” BSA ad spot that you see on the top right currently. The winner of this adspot will receive 30 days free advertising on Info Carnivore. Please note, the ad is subject to my approval.
Search Engine Scout
SEScout is offering 2 lite accounts for their serp tracker web software. I’ve personally used and recommend SEScout as an optimal and accurate way to find out how your keywords are really ranking in the search engines.
Free Advertising at iBlogZone
DiTesco from iblogzone.com is offering a 125 x 125 adspot for 2 weeks at his blog. Please note, the ad is subject to the approval of iblogzone.com.
Three copies of Blogging for Beginners
Brankica from live-your-love.com is giving away three copies of her brilliant e-book Blogging for Beginners.
Triberr Bones
The guys at Triberr have been nice enough to supply us with three prizes of Triberr Credits. 150 Bones worth $10, 320 Bones worth $20, and 500 Bones worth $30.
Read up on this article if you are wondering “What are triberr bones?”
1st Prize
A lite account with SEScout to track your keyword ranking in the serps.
A free adspot at info carnivore for 30 days. 500 bones at triberr.
One copy of Blogging for Beginners from Brankica, and one copy of Twitter Dummy from John Aguiar.
2nd Prize
A lite account with SEScout. A free adspot at iBlogZone for 2 weeks. 320 bones at triberr.
One copy of Blogging for Beginners from Brankica, and one copy of Twitter Dummy from John Aguiar.
3rd Prize
150 Bones at Triberr.
One copy of Blogging for Beginners from Brankica, one copy of Twitter Dummy from John Aguiar.
How to be a Winner!
The contest will run from Friday May 27th through Friday June 3rd. Winners will be announced on Monday June 6th! Any entries received before 12AM PST on Friday the 3rd of June 2011 will be eligible to win!
Winners will be chosen at random, based on those who meet the entry criteria (that is, you followed the 3 steps above!). I’ll be using rowfeeder.com to track the hashtag #icCONTEST on twitter to ensure that you tweeted about the contest. The winners will be returned randomly and the first three returned will receive the three prizes in order. Questions? Comments? You know where to leave them. 
Good luck and a special thanks to the sponsors! This contest wouldn’t be possible without them!
IP-Echelon gathering intel on YOU and YOUR web activities
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Blogging on May 25, 2011
I’ve written previously about torrents and the big question many ask “Are torrents safe?” , I’ve even speculated about the possibility of authorities tracking IPs, or even perhaps planting bait torrents for the sake of prosecuting end users for copyright infringement. You can read the article here, Do The Authorities Plant Torrents?. People are often asking me where are the safe torrent sites, and I have to laugh since my online experience always leads to a definitive there is no such thing as a safe torrent site.
Recently more proof surfaced that shows downloading copyrighted materials online is simply not safe, secure or private. Australian based company IP-Echelon has entered the global copyright infringement stage. I had a brief email conversation with the founder & CEO of IP-Echelon Adrian J.F. Leatherland and was able to ask him a few questions about the service. Adrian provided me with a brief response, but has not yet replied to my further inquiries. I am still optimistic that I may hear back from him in the near future!
What is IP-Echelon
Their website states “we monitor Internet piracy. We report on how it affects you. We educate about legal alternatives. We protect your rights.”
IP-Echelon is a service that maintains distributed physical ‘listening stations’ throughout North America, Europe and Australasia. These stations continuously monitor networks for the appearance or transfer of ‘content of interest’ and utilize advanced geo-location techniques to narrow down the location of infringers for marketing intelligence and law enforcement. This information is kept indefinitely and can be exported in a variety of ways from their online portal to be used as evidence in court. In addition they provide online reporting services, with a powerful suite of utilities to process the vast amount of data collected by their monitoring systems.
Monitor, Report, Educate, Protect.
The four bolded words in their header image (you can see it on their website) are monitor, report, educate and protect. The words that I think are of interest to most internet users are in the first phrase “we monitor internet piracy”, obviously in order to monitor internet piracy one must monitor both legal and illegal transfers of data and then analyze that data to determine if a copyright infringement is taking place. IP-Echelon is very secretive about what they call their “listening stations” and wouldn’t go into any detail with me about their methods or what technology they employ other than to quote their website we “Operate a global network of monitoring stations across North America, Europe and Australasia, we continuously monitor networks for the transfer of content belonging to our clients.”
Mr. Leatherland shared with me that his company IP-Echelon does not “issue press releases and have a very meagre web presence but service some of the largest copyright holders in the world and various law enforcement agencies on non-copyright related projects.”
What are your thoughts on a service like IP-Echelon?
The law is very clear when it comes to copyright infringement. However a whole lot of grey areas emerge when we begin to deal with the way that evidence is collected. A service like IP-Echelon while providing a great tool for their clients and law enforcement agencies could very easily cross over into dangerous territory gathering too much intel from their listening stations.
What are you thoughts on monitoring of this type? Especially private companies collecting information on your internet activities?
Update (May 25, 2011)
I was asked kindly by IP-Echelon to remove their copyright images and logos from this site so I have complied with that today. As I disclaimer I want to communicate that I do not intend to portray a service such as IP-Echelon in a bad light. I feel these types of services are valid, and have a role in our society. This article is simply intending to share an opinion on privacy concerns that some people may have with a service of this nature. Though I have not been told directly I would assume that a service like IP-Echelon does not operate at a carrier level but is more likely monitoring torrent sites in some capacity. Ultimately the people doing “bad” would be exposed with a service of this nature, and those who are not doing anything wrong really should have nothing to fear. Would love your thoughts on this topic in the comments below.
Place & Profit: Why would your movement profile be so valuable to companies like Google & Apple?
Posted by ThomasStone in Blogging, Security News on May 24, 2011
I remember the last week of October in 2010: there was a flurry around the office when we discovered that Google had merged place results with organic search results. I sat down and wrote an article about it right away. This change was actually really good news for our company and our clients—the more important that place becomes in search rankings, the easier it would be for us to help our local clients compete against big, national competitors. We were excited about it, and we immediately started rolling out maps optimization and other kinds of Local SEO campaigns to leverage these new opportunities.
I thought about that week driving home from work yesterday, listening to people on the radio talking about hearings that Congress is holding to investigate how Google and Apple are using the location-tracking data from smartphones that they (or other parties) might be collecting to build movement profiles of subscribers. I was floored. As place has become increasingly important in search over the past six months, Google has already been moving to capitalize on the SEO renovations that everyone’s been doing.
The Wall Street Journal summed up the mechanism at the heart of the matter succinctly, reporting that, “Android phones collect their location every few seconds and transmit the data to Google at least several times an hour…also transmitting the name, location and signal of any nearby Wi-Fi networks as well as a unique phone identifier.” There are different specs on how Apple would be able to collect location-data from iPhones, but the problem is essentially the same across the board.
If location can be tracked in real-time, marketing can happen in real-time. If movement profiles can be constructed of users there are possibilities for marketing that would resemble science fiction. If marketing companies know your route home from work or where you like to go on Wednesday night and they can toggle that with—say—information from your Facebook account, they’re going to be able to target you to sell you on deals in ways that would be more like telepathy than like Groupon or Facebook Ads. Marketing companies might end up knowing more about you than you know about yourself.
So there is pretty strong motivation for movement profiles to be built up for marketing purposes. Apple and Google assure Congress they’re not collecting location info for these purposes, and there is no evidence to the contrary at this point. However, it seems more or less inevitable that this is going to happen if the opportunity is there—whether Apple, Google, or the apps on your phone are collecting the information, somebody is going to be doing it. And, indeed, they probably already are. As the WSJ reports, “The Google and Apple[‘s Congressional hearings] follow… findings [from] last year that some of the most popular smartphone apps use location data and other personal information… more aggressively —in some cases sharing it with third-party companies without the user’s consent or knowledge.”
The question is: How concerned about this should we be? The IP address of the computer that you’re searching from already informs your search results, which—obviously—shapes the way that marketing forces are approaching you. If you live in Chicago, when you search for ‘Thai restaurants,’ both Google sponsored links and organic search results will be arranged in a manner that is more or less contingent on your location. As far as I know, there is no such thing as ‘pure’ or ‘objective global search results’ that can be accessed on any specific search engine portal accessed from any discrete IP. So there’s nothing new about this trend in marketing strategy. All search results are geographically contingent. The momentum that’s been growing around Place functionality over the past year would tend to indicate that, if anything, they will only become more so over time.
If anything, in the long term, the kinds of informational interactivity that movement profiles would open up would be likely to make local markets more efficient and productive. Social Media Marketing certainly takes location into account—and social media marketing is poised to become the supreme platform for marketing in the next decade. And that’s a good thing. It means that we’re having a conversation with the industries we’re buying from rather than just having commercials and products dumped on us. There will obviously need to be regulations about how this sort of location-tracking information can be used in court, and all of those questions will get hammered out in due time.
The jury is definitely still out on this question. I personally am still conflicted about whether this is going to be a good thing or a bad thing in the long run.
What do you think? Would movement profiles be an automatic negative, or could they make a contribution to market efficiency and adaptability? Please let me know what your thoughts on this subject are in the comment section.
Looking at 3 Measures and Metrics for Website Quality
Posted by Jess_Spate in Blogging, SEO on May 18, 2011
Quantifying how good a website is very difficult. What are the signs of a great website? Plenty of visitors, lots of links from other large and excellent websites, Facebook fans, mentions on Twitter, good clean HTML and attractive design. Rolling all that information up into a single, easy to understand metric is very tricky. Then there is the question of actually extracting all that input information in the first place. Some of those factors can’t really be quantified, especially without human intervention.
PageRank looks primarily at your link profile
There are two popular approaches to measuring website quality. The most common looks at the link profile on the assumption that good sites get more links. PageRank (PR) is the best known of these metrics, and it takes into account both the number of inbound links and the quality of linking sites. It’s usually expressed as a digit ranging from zero to ten, the higher the better. It’s been around for a while and it’s nice and simple.
A lot of people use PageRank to attract linking partners and sell advertising space, but there is a problem. Published PageRanks are only updated every few months, so a new site that has worked hard for three months and now has plenty of inbound links may still have zero PR. Many pro bloggers and SEO folks have moved away from PR for that reason. The replacement metric of choice is usually mozRank, which uses similar concepts but leaves behind the delay problem that annoys so many low PR webmasters. It ranges from 0 to 10 and is a little more precise than PR, because values are reported to two decimal places.
Replacing PageRank with MozRank
There are a few variations on mozRank, but perhaps the most powerful is the concept of mozRank Passed. This metric aims to quantify the amount of power a link from a particular page conveys. It takes into account the number of outbound links, the page’s own mozRank and several other factors. It’s not in popular use yet, so it’ll be very interesting to see whether the SEO community thinks this measure is valuable over the long term.
Alexa takes a look at your traffic
The second site evaluation strategy is to use the number of visitors. That’s all very well for webmasters who have access to their own visitor data, but when you want to check out the competition you won’t have access to their analytics accounts. So, how to estimate visitor activity? Alexa Rank is the most widely used metric of this kind, and they use browsing data collected from every user with an Alexa Toolbar installed. Their rank is based on a relatively small subset of internet users- the exact number of Alexa Tool users isn’t public knowledge- but downloads number in the tens of millions.
Because it’s based on small statistical sample, Alexa Rank is only really useful for big sites. It is a true rank with values ranging from the millions to number one, the lower the better. Google firmly occupies the top spot, followed by Facebook and YouTube. An active PR5 commercial website might have an Alexa Rank in the hundreds of thousands, and a value of a million is reasonable for a medium-sized PR3 blog.
No Single Metric Gives a Proper Pictures of Website Quality
While it’s quick and convenient to quote PR, mozRank, and Alexa Rank (and many people pick just one), no single measure gives a full picture of website quality. As a mathematician I hate to say it, but the best tool for evaluating a site is still the human eye. Does the design look sharp? Is the navigation easy and intuitive? Is it actively updated? Most importantly, is it useful, funny, or interesting?
Numerical metrics are great, but they still need to be combined with the evaluation of a human being to be really informative. When you’re looking for a linking partner or evaluating a business opportunity online, always check the PR and the other ranks, but use your own judgement too. Sites that are obviously putting a lot of effort into content may start out ranking poorly but they’ll soon start to rise- just because a site has zero PR and low mozRank doesn’t mean it won’t make a good investment.
Twiends Review: How buying Facebook fans ruins social proof
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Site Reviews, social media on May 16, 2011
A Twiends review for you today, taking a look at the ethics behind what most would call buying facebook fans. Twiends has now added a new feature, essentially the ability to buy fans for your facebook page. Twiends is a web service that offers to help you grow your social network by getting you more twitter followers, facebook fans, or views on your You Tube videos. The premise is simple, earn “seeds” by liking other FB pages, following people on twitter or watching You Tube videos. Spend your “seeds” when people ‘like’ your fanpage, follow you or watch your videos. The attraction is obvious it’s a quick and easy way to build some numbers and grow your social network.
Twiends equals 30 facebook fans in 3 minutes
I popped over to Twiends the other day at the recommendation of my good blogging friend Suresh who recently wrote an article “The Secret of how I got a custom facebook URL in under 15 minutes“. His post inspired me to check out Twiends yet again, though I’d heard of the service a long time ago I had quickly concluded that the quality of twitter followers one might gain from a service such as Twiends would be weak at best. Not being one to gravitate towards the model of buying followers or fans, I ignored Twiends at that time. Using a tool like that to ‘add’ so called targeted followers to your twitter account is not something I recommend, and I can testify that I’ve had great success with twitter without using methods like that. (Read up here about my twitter success without automation).
Just for fun I followed Suresh’s instructions signed up for Twiends and let the free seeds I had go to work on my facebook fan page. The ability to integrate with facebook and add likes to your fan pages is a new feature of Twiends, so I had to give it a go. Within 3 minutes (not an exaggeration) I gained 30 facebook fans, by the end of half an hour and a quick subscription to the Twiends newsletter (you get some free seeds for opting-in), I had another 30 new fans. Suresh’s article was RIGHT, if you are building out a new FB Fanpage this is a foolproof way to grab that important custom URL as soon as possible.
Twiends Review: “It might be fun but don’t be fooled.”
Gaining 60 Facebook fans without any real work in a matter of minutes felt nice for about half a second, then the fuzzy feelings wore off when I reminded myself that there was likely not one quality fan in the bunch. After all, these people were utilizing the service for the same reason I was, we were motivated by selfishness. It didn’t take long for my suspicions to be confirmed when several dozen of the new fans jumped ship by “unliking” my page. They had clearly just USED me for the seeds they gained for themselves (ugh! the audacity of some people, LOL). How does a service like this sustain itself? Twiends itself admits that it’s newest users utilize the service more (newest meaning members that are younger than 24 hours old). It sounds like people have fun with it for an hour or so, and then realize what poor value there is in the followers / fans gained and quickly drop off.
Twiends also sells seeds for those who really want to put some money into buying some fans. I would really advise against actually buying seeds. Twiends provides at the low end 1250 seeds for about $30.00 all the way up to 20,000 for $280.00. You can bet you’ll get a lot of facebook fans, but who knows how many will drop you just as quickly as they came. Would anyone even possibly suspect that these are potentially loyal fans who will engage you or become customers who convert into sales or subscribe to your newsletters?
Big Numbers equal Social Proof, or do they?
Twiends can’t really be called a community, I imagine the interaction that exists between members who are introduced on the site is pretty meager. For the most part users don’t really care about other users. If you are there, it’s for the sole selfish reason of gaining social numbers. Why? Big numbers equal social proof, or do they? Now with services like Twiends it becomes difficult to trust the numbers of any site. How many subscribers, facebook fans, twitter followers do you have? Really? Are they really following you? I’ve visited this issue before when I asked the question, Are you Twitter Followers REALLY following you?.
Twiends runs on the egos of those who want large follow counts and more facebook fans. While it is true that numbers aren’t everything, they do (did?) mean something. Artificially inflating them with services like Twiends doesn’t prove anything to anyone, rather it confuses the issue of social proof and makes all of us doubters.
If you actually LIKE this article, and you’re genuinely interested in this blog it would be great if you would LIKE us on facebook. Are you using Twiends? What do you think of the service? Share a brief personal Twiends review with us in the comments.
New Discoveries, The Google Dance and an Oil Change
Posted by Daniel Snyder in My Thoughts on May 14, 2011
I want to say thank you to my regular Info Carnivore readers, you’ve made this ride a real pleasure. The beginning of May came and went and I barely noticed that the one year anniversary of Info Carnivore has come and gone. This blog has gone through a lot of changes in its first year, and yet it will continue to evolve, develop and grow. This past week I determined to build and stick to a publishing schedule, my goal is to publish new content at least three times a week. Monday’s I intend to release a resource article that provides advice, information or how-to relating to the primary niche areas of the blog (Blogging, SEO, Keywords, Ranking, Security, and Social Media), Wednesdays will most likely be for guest posts, I’ve been receiving a lot of requests and submissions for guest articles but I don’t want to publish more than one a week. With my readership up and traffic continuing to grow Info Carnivore could also be a great place for you to submit a guest article. On Friday’s I plan to release content as well, most likely an opinion piece or a review of sorts. Occasionally on Saturday’s I will publish my own version of the ever popular round up article, featuring news and posts of the week. That’s what this article is!
WordPress Database Error (MySQL error 28) thanks Friday the 13th
My apologies to anyone who saw the ugly wordpress database error that was up on this past Friday the 13th (coincidence?). I logged into my dashboard early Friday morning only to discover this error message, “WordPress database error: [Got error 28 from storage engine]“. The MySQL error caused me to panic and threw off my brand new publishing schedule. I logged into cpanel and repaired all MySQL tables but the issue still did not resolve. I ended up submitting a support ticket to my host (Dreamhost) who replied about 5 hours later with a resolution, “It looks like there was an issue with the database server. I had an admin reboot it and the error should no longer appear.” The above Friday the 13th experience goes to inform anyone else with the MySQL error 28 that it may most likely be your host and not you. Since the MySQL database for info carnivore is on a shared server an admin at Dreamhost had to reboot that server. Issue resolved, first week publishing schedule… trashed.
Upcoming Info Carnivore Contest – LIKE the fanpage!
I plan on hosting a contest at this blog in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for details. I’m currently looking for some worthwhile prizes and sponsors. (PS. If you have a product you’d like to promote this could be your opportunity!) The contest will be nothing too complicated, more of a LIKE us on facebook and RETWEET this to win type of contest. Stay tuned for details. Speaking of the Info Carnivore fan page, if you’re not a fan yet why not become one? I use the fan page to publish some really unique (and actually interesting) minutiae and web discoveries. I’ve not been satisfied with the amount of fan interaction on the FB page, so I hope to be a little more active and creative over there in the coming days. Why not get a head start on the contest and jump over to our fan page now!
Discoveries of the Week
Recently I’ve spent some time over at IM Relationships the blog of James Pruitt where he has been sharing some really interesting SEO and link building articles. His article the Top 5 Best Link Building Methods You Should be Using provides some solid fundamental information for those who are looking to build new links for their blog or niche sites. His previous article however was perhaps even more informative (for me) when he threw out the 5 Worst Link Building Activities. This article sparked some good conversation as James and I discussed the topic of how fast should one build links, which also turned into a conversation about the Google Dance. If you are unfamiliar with the Google dance, you can read James’ article on Overcoming the Google Dance and How it factors into your rankings. I too have experienced the symptoms of the google dance with my niche sites (I’m still experiencing them) and it is an interesting topic for discussion. I’ve also written about my opinions on what some call the “Google Honeymoon Period” and speculating whether the so called honeymoon exists as part of the google algorithm.
Another blog I’ve been perusing regularly is iBlogZone Home Based Business Resources by DiTesco. In a recent article DiTesco answers the burning question “How To Build High Quality Websites” clearly and concisely. With the Google Panda update there is that growing awareness that the only thing that matters is quality. DiTesco provides us with the information we need straight from google that will insure that the way we present our content is “panda friendly”. As DiTesco puts it “It is now all about “quality”. Quality content, quality links, quality websites, quality navigational structure, and so on. Come to think of it, was this ever really an issue?”
Tony Hastings at The Top 10 Blog is a new discovery for me. How he locked up that domain name I have no idea, but Tony writes about the Social Media journey and shares his Top Twitter Lists weekly which is a great way to find some valuable people on twitter that are actually worth following. Tony provides enjoyable content with a unique way of viewing things, just take for example his recent article “Does your blog need an oil change?“ Where he makes the analogy of thinking about your blog the way you maintain your car.
Thanks for your loyal readership. Stick with us as Info Carnivore continues to grow. I look forward to your input, my readers are important to me and the content on this blog is crafted to meet your interests. If there is content you’d like to see please let me know, I do my best to write articles around any suggestions I receive.
9 Steps to Successful SEO Copy
Posted by TimArends in Guest Posts, SEO on May 11, 2011
Website promoters know that most traffic comes from the search engines. They also know that two of the major factors that affect ranking in the engines are inbound links to one’s site and keywords. Significantly, these two factors work together: the keywords on your site tell search engines what your site is about, and the backlinks to your site tell them how important your site isThe combination of the two factors determine your relevance. And relevance is, of course, what the search engines are all about.
There’s been a lot of talk about HTML meta tags and their importance. It’s wise to view these meta tags almost as street signs, which is how the search engines look at them. Specifically, the keywords in the tags should match those in the copy or your site will not be indexed for those keywords. Of course, the engines also take into consideration how often the keywords are used on the page. You shouldn’t overuse keywords in your copy, but you should make sure that it at least contains them. The trick is to make your copy keyword rich but not to compromise readability. Readability is important to your visitors — after all, they are the ones who will buy your product or service.
Keep the following nine guidelines in mind and you will be better able to make the copy on your site appealing to both visitors and search engines.
1. Categorize your site
Keep the structure of your site in mind. If you structure your pages around certain benefits, it will be easier to categorize them by keyword. For example, if you have a site that sells handmade Macbook and iPad carrying cases, you could divide it into separate pages for Macs, iPads, iPhones and so on, then segment each section into the different models and capacities. This way, your narrowly focused pages will be able to target more specific keywords.
2. Find your keywords
Subscribe to www.wordtracker.com for a day, type in the key points of products you’ve identified on each page of your site, and analyze keywords your customers will use when they’re searching for your products. Naturally, these are the words you will want to use in your copy.
3. Use phrases rather than single words
Needless to say, there’s much more competition for single keywords than there are for longer key phrases. Research also shows that, as Internet users become more search savvy, they’re more likely to search for specific strings rather than individual words. They’re learning that they can find what they’re looking for much faster by being more specific. So think about what’s unique about your business. For example, if you sell handmade Macbook and iPad carrying cases, then use this as your primary keyword phrase. In this way you’ll have a better chance of ranking in the more targeted searches. WordTracker can help you find the most appropriate phrases.
4. Focus on the important phrases
Don’t try to include every possible keyword phrase that could relate to every page. Focus instead on one or two phrases per page. For example, for your Macbook cases page, you could focus on the phrase ” handmade Macbook carrying cases.” On your iPad cases page, focus on “handmade iPad cases.”
5. Get specific.
Don’t just say “our cases.” Instead, wherever you would normally use that phrase, use instead the phrase “our iPad carrying cases.” Be careful though. Never sacrifice readability for keyword placement or you will risk annoying your visitors.
6. Put your keyword phrases in your links.
Tie your pages together with text links so that the search engines will see that the pages are related. For example, on the bottom of your “handmade iPad carrying cases” you would include a text link to your “handmade Macbook carrying cases” page. You can also include a similar link within the body of the page. For example, “In addition to offering handmade iPad carrying cases, we also offer handmade Macbook carrying cases” with the relevant phrases being links.
7. Use key phrases in your headings.
As you probably know, headings help readers to scan your website, but they help the search engines too, since they assign more value to phrases that are marked with the heading tag. Therefore, be sure to include your key phrases in your headings as well.
8. Don’t worry about keyword density
This may seem surprising, but I do not think you should pay too much attention to the keyword density of your text. This is because concentrating on keyword density almost inevitably results in poor quality copy. Fortunately, if you follow the other tips in this article, obsessing over keyword density will be unnecessary.
9. Write, write, write!
This may seem obvious, but copy really is king! If writing is a chore for you, consider using a voice dictation program like Dragon Dictate for Mac or Dragon NaturallySpeaking for PC. This allows you to write just as quickly as you can speak. Of course, careful proofreading will be necessary, but this is true no matter how you create your content, and many people find dictating much easier and mor natural than speaking.
These guidelines will help to ensure good search engine optimization for your copy. The main thing you want to do is find a balance between copy that is written for the search engines and that which is written for your real human visitors. In the final analysis, the latter always takes precedence over the former.
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