EzSEO Newsletter # 105

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EzSEO Newsletter # 105

Andy Williams ez SEO

ez-search-engine-optimization.com

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This week:

1. Wordpress

2. Building Affiliate Sites - Miniseries Part XVII

3. VEO Report Feedback

4. Other Stuff

Hi again.

Still no snow here on top of Mount Teide :o(
We did have a dusting of snow the other day, but it quickly disappeared in the unusual heat we are having here in the Canary Islands.

There is usually snow on Teide in November (or even earlier) so this is a big disappointment. We wanted to take out daughter and dogs up there to play in the snow before Christmas, but that does not look likely to happen now. Sometimes I envy those of you who live in areas where a white Christmas is the norm, and its not a question of will we get snow, but how much? Enjoy it!

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1. Wordpress
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You may know or even use Wordpress. It is a fr.ee blogging tool that you can install on your own web space. I use it for my ezSEO blog and love it. You can get a copy at

http://wordpress.org/

Blogging has had a mixed press lately, especially in terms of SEO. Lots of people quickly jumped on the blog & ping bandwagon, and the search engines became stuffed with spam blogs. A new breed of spamming tool evolved - those that automatically post RSS feed entries to a blog, or worse still, auto generated content. These blogs were setup solely to generate incoming links to other sites, and as such, were rightly treated as spam by the search engines and removed.

Because of this, many people hesitate to embrace this technology. However, blogging is a great way to get your message across. Blogs set up to provide quality content are likely to thrive in 2006, and they offer fast, efficient ways to create content sites.

If you are interested in setting up a Wordpress blog, or learning more about Wordpress, Sherman Hu has released a set of videos you can watch for fr.e.e. The videos are part of a bigger course called “Mastering Wordpress”, which he is releasing tomorrow.

The course is a “comprehensive, beginner-and-advanced-friendly, non-geek-speak, video series that shows you how to setup, customize, utilize and market your blog using Wordpress”.

For bloggers, or wannabe bloggers, I highly recommend you go watch the first 22 videos.

On that page, you can see a video trailer that provides an overview of the course, and sign up to get the first 22 videos for fr.e.e.

You can also see a multimedia report Sherman created called “Battle of the Blogs”.

For those who want to know what the full course offers, I have included the course outline that Sherman gave me below.

Mastering Wordpress Course Outline
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Ongoing video Q&As, free video upgrades, training sessions, community forum of like-minded business owners, and contest & prizes make it a complete training solution for anyone interested in blogging for fun & profits.

Course details:

“Mastering Wordpress” is a video series that spans across 5 volumes of videos.

Here’s what’s offered:
- Comprehensive Content that covers setup, customizing, utilizing, and marketing a Wordpress blog,
- Beginner-and-Advanced-Friendly Tutorials that match different skill levels
- Non-Geek-Speak Instruction that is simple to understand and follow,
- Moderately Paced Instructional Videos to accommodate a “see & do” approach to learning
- Breakthrough video enhancements to the original video curriculum with complimentary Video Curriculum Upgrades,
- Accelerating a member’s progress and cutting short their learning curve via complimentary Video Q&As,
- Brainstorming, sharing, learning and connections with like-minded members through our forum “Community Central”,
- Added learning opportunities with impromptu web conferences, e-learning classes, and audio conferences,
- Privilege of purchasing reserved seats for exclusive events and future products - in advance of public sale,
- Fun with Contests and Prizes

There are 5 volumes of videos in total. All the videos cover definitions of technical terms, what’s important to know and what’s not, and cover the topic as comprehensively as possible.

The 22 “Sneak Peak Preview” videos are included in Volume 101. These videos are not snippets of the real deal. It’s the actual content. Volume 101 walks a viewer from understanding what blogs are, how to register a domain name, how to select and shop for a hosting provider, right up to installing a Wordpress blog. There’s lots of value here.

Volume 201 showcases how to customize a Wordpress default theme/design.

Volume 301 showcases how to use a 3rd party design theme. There are a lot of features to this theme, so the videos will go into detail the many aspects of this topic.

Volume 401 showcases a professional theme that Sherman uses in all his client and personal blogs. Feature-rich, flexible, search-engine-friendly, and easy-to-set-up.

Volume 501, also known as the Advanced Series, covers Group Blogging, Ghost Blogging, and how to include feeds into one’s blog.

Access the videos here.

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2. Building Affiliate Sites - Miniseries Part XVII
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If you have been following this course so far, you will have:

a) identified your niche and checked for profitability
b) carried out your keyword research at Wordtracker.
c) sent yourself your keyword research from Wordtracker.
d) selected several phrases to use as main page keywords.
e) selected suitable phrases to be used for article pages.
f) learnt how to theme pages. You should use this information to begin collecting themed keywords for your planned pages.
g) seen how main pages differ from article pages, and understood how these differences dictate how the pages are created.
h) seen how selling differs from pre-selling, and learnt one way to sketch out a blueprint of your pre-selling content.
i) looked at a top selling sales page, and dissected out the various pre-selling techniques highlighted by the “pre-selling blueprint questions”.
j) looked at two models for building main sales pages.
k) looked at how to write articles, and learnt a simple “Value Test” you can use to decide if your article is good enough.
l) Found a suitable web host, domain name and web editor.
m) Looked at links, and understand that some links will server you better than others.
n) Seen how Page Rank can be passed onto other pages, and also that the Google toolbar is not accurate.
o) Seen that links in to a page are a vote for that page, and that the link text used on incoming links, gives your page some reputation for that term. The more incoming links with that term, the higher the reputation.
p) Seen how tracking your visitors can give you a lot of useful information, and chosen a stats script for your own site (if your host does not provide one).

If you missed any of these newsletters, you can read them online at my blog:

http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/blog/

This mini course begins in issue #89 and continues to the latest post in the blog.

Today I want to look at the topic of links pages. I have a confession to make… I don’t actually put much effort into my own links pages, and don’t go out aggressively looking for link partners.

My own strategy is simple.

1. Setup a links page using a script that allows me to easily add partners, remove partners and check up on partners.

2. Write 10-20 quality articles for my new site and submit them to various resources on the internet (more about this later in the series).

3. Wait.

After a few weeks, interesting things start to happen.

My articles have been republished on a number of sites, with links pointing back to my site. The PR of my site increases, as do my rankings, making my site visible to other webmasters. I start getting link exchange requests, and accept those that meet my own criteria (more about these in a minute).

While this is going on, the script I use for my links pages is actually bringing me in link exchanges requests as well. You see, webmasters who use this script can quickly and easily contact other webmasters in their niche, and request exchanges.

All of this means that my own reciprocal link building is easy, hassle-fr.e.e, and to a large extent, automated.

The script I use is LinkMachine.

Not only do I use it for links pages on my websites, but I also use it for my ezSEO directory.

OK, it all sounds very easy, doesn’t it? Well, to a large extent it is. I sit back and wait for others to contact me.

However, there is one main problem with links pages that you should be aware of (and I know there are a few people who will disagree with me here, but that’s OK.). The search engines actually don’t like pages set up for exchanging links. To them, this constitutes an artificial method of getting links to your site and improving your sites ranking.

This is the main reason I don’t work hard at getting reciprocal links. As we will discuss later in the miniseries, there are other, better ways of getting links into your site.

OK, if I don’t rate links pages very highly, why do I add them to my sites?

Well, good question. Two main reasons:

1. I add them as a resource for my visitors.
2. I like the fact that I get traffic from my link partners (an often overlooked benefit of link exchanges).

I am happy to exchange links with another site if it meets my criteria. I don’t think that a reciprocal link will hurt you (unless you link to a banned or penalised site, and then it might, or your reciprocal link is between two sites you own) so having a links page is not going to get you into trouble.

If I am going to link to a site from mine, these are the criteria the other site must meet.

1. The site is 100% related to mine (ie. my visitors would find the other site interesting).
2. The other site does not use any black hat techniques (these are the techniques we have talked about in this newsletter before like hidden text, keyword stuffing, auto-generated pages etc).
3. The links page where my link is found only contains links to sites related to mine.
4. There are no more than 30 links on their links page (including links to their own pages).
5. If the site is PR0, then I check to see when the site was registered. If it is an old site, I wont link to them.
6. The other site has a link to their links page from their homepage, so that the search engines can find the links page.
7. The other webmaster does not use the nofollow tag on the links page, or on the homepage link pointing to the links page.

Any site that contacts me and meets those requirements, are good sites to link to. Any site that fails to meet those requirements (and most do fail), don’t get a link from me.

These strict criteria often mean that I only exchange one or two links a month. That is fine by me. This method appears much more natural to a search engine than rapid link building, so is likely to be better for your site in the long run.

Since all of this is fairly automated, I have more time to concentrate on the other methods of link building.

One thing that you do need to do regularly is to check up on your link partners. Google have made it clear that your own rankings can be damaged if you link to a site that Google has penalised. This means checking each and every one of your link partners on a monthly basis to make sure they have not been penalised. What you are looking for is any site that has had their PR reduced to zero. These are the sites that can get you into trouble if you continue to link to them. All link partners who have been reduced to PR0 should be deleted from your links page.

Checking up on link partners is a time consuming task (especially as you build more and more sites). Fortunately LinkMachine can generate a report for me that shows which of my link partners have PR0. I can quickly see which sites may have been banned, and take the appropriate action.

If you are building your links pages by hand, or using another script/tool, you could use the highly versatile SEO Elite to automatically check whether your link partners still link to you, and also what their PR is.

Whatever your method of checking, do so once a month for each of your sites.

If you are following this mini-series, your next task is to create a links page. You can use a script like LinkMachine which helps with all aspects of links page maintenance.

Alternatively you can do this by hand. If you do the latter, here are a couple of points to consider:

1. Each link on your links page should have a link to the partner site, plus a description of what that site is about.

2. Include an easy way for other webmaster to contact you. Better still, include a form on your site to allow other webmasters to submit their sites to you.

You can see an example of a simple links page on my ezSEO site.

and click the link at the bottom of the right hand menu.

OK, go and get your links page set up.

Next Sunday is Christmas day, so don’t expect a newsletter. We will of course continue this mini-series in the next issue (whenever that is).

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3. VEO Report feedback
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Last week I wrote about the “VEO Report” by Colin McDougall.

The only feedback I have received personally on this has been very positive. It seems a lot of you are as excited as I was when I read this (Colin is busy working on updates to the report, based on the feedback many of you have supplied, so look out for those updates soon).

I have been speaking with Colin this week, and asked him about the feedback he has received. The large majority of people found the report a real eye opener. However, a few were not so happy. This does not surprise me, as the report is not what a lot of people will expect. I know from the emails I get week-in and week-out that people want formulas. They want to know exactly where to put their keywords, and what density to use. The VEO Report turns all of this on its head, and puts people in the “uncomfortable zone”.

You see, there is one big problem with formulas - they don’t work anymore. The fact is, if you use a formula, your pages end up leaving a “footprint” which search engines can spot.

Imagine creating 100 articles using a formula (e.g. put main keywords once in header, twice in opening paragraph etc etc etc). All 100 pages will have near identical optimization. Do you think Google can spot this? You bet they can, and they don’t reward this type of site with good rankings ;o)
If you think along the lines of “Google hate optimized pages”, you can get an idea of what Google will do with your “formulated” pages.

Colin used to use the James Martell system of building sites, but found that over the last year, his site rankings dropped, and so did his income. After talking with Google Engineer Matt Cutts, Colin was able to identify some serious flaws in his site building strategy, and create a new strategy.

The VEO Report shows you that Strategy.

For those who have already bought the VEO Report, I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Whether you loved it or hated it, let me know.

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4. Other Stuff
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The December Niche Blueprints were released earlier this week. I have set it up so that those who want both Blueprints, can do so at a reduced price. Visit the Niche Blueprint site, and click the link to the December Blueprints.

Well, that’s it for another issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online here at my blog:

http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/blog/index.php

For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives.

Have a great week!

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