SEO Mentor

Reading a very recent post at Davidmihm.com about Local Search and Ranking Factors David talks about a new survey and study that was launched about local search and “Participants were asked to rate the importance of 47 criteria with respect to their influence on rankings in the Google and Yahoo Local “Universal” search algorithms”

David says the following about his study:

“It is my hope that this study will help small business owners confused by Local Search, or those strapped for time, to prioritize their marketing efforts.”

The results and discussion are worth taking a look at with regards to his Local Search Survey!

Below I found a couple articles that I found very informative on the Local Search subject:

Local Search Ranking Factors

For businesses that are truly local in focus, targetting local search ranking factors is a very effective SEO strategy if for no other reason that it enables you to weed out your global competitors and focus more on ranking tops for …

Yahoo Offers Local Search Tips

Anytime a search engine rep. hands out SEO/SEM advice, I think it’s generally worth listening to. I did my best to get some local SEO advice from Yahoo’s Brian Gil when I interviewed him a couple months ago. Be sure to read that if you …

Everyone needs to remember that the “SMX Local & Mobile 2008” in San Francisco, July 24-25 and my good friend Jordan Kasteler will be speaking so you can’t miss it!

So I have come across a lot of debate about putting Trust Seals on your website. First of all I am letting you know now that this post is going to be short and to the point: TRUST SEALS WORK! It is that simple. Personally I endorse Trust Guard seals and here is why:

Two Recent Consumer Reports™ National Surveys show that…

• The #1 concern visitors have:
  Is my personal information Safe and Secure?
  (88% of Internet users surveyed, viewed this as “Very Important”)
• The #2 concern visitors have:
  Can I Trust the site and the information on it?
  (81% of Internet users surveyed, viewed this as “Very Important”)
• The #3 concern visitors have:
  Does the site have a good Privacy Policy?
  (76% of Internet users surveyed, viewed this as “Very Important”)
• 95% of those surveyed want access to a websites;
  Email address, street address, and phone number.

Trust Guard takes care of all these consumer issues, and this is the simple reason why I choose Trust Guard seals over HackerSafe, TrustE, BBB, and Comodo.

But don’t take my word for it check out a couple of their great testimonials:

“After putting Trust Guard on my web site my conversion rate went from 6.8% to 9.6%! (A 41% Increase!) It has been a tremendous asset for my company! Thank you!”

-Bryan Hoover, RadiantSmile.net

“In the two weeks following installing the Trust Guard seals on my site, sales increased 116% over the prior two week period! Clearly, I’ve been losing sales for months by not having a third-party site verification like Trust Guard. On the Internet, Trust is everything. Thank you Trust Guard! I’m glad I found you.”

-Larry Weaver, FunnyEmployeeAwards.com

 

I also add my testimonial that Trust Guard seals work I have had much success with using the seals on my LearnSEOLive.com site and many others. But the best thing about Trust Guard seals is that they are effective and affordable. Go to their Comparison chart and you will see that you can save $1000s.

So there you go, but don’t take my word for it check it out yourself.

I will not pretend that I am the expert of building links, I will leave that to Eric Ward! Also I don’t want to write another link building blog post, there are plenty of those as well. So what I am doing is giving you a good resource to Link Building tools, services, and articles.

So all you SEOs out there do you ever feel like this dog when it comes to link builing? We all know how powerful quality links back to our site are when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. So why can’t we have a cool tool like this dog.

Here are some quality link builiding tools & services that can can help with your link builiding campaigns:

• Aaron Walls Back Link Analyzer
• SEO Elite
• Links Manager
• Xinu
• PR Prowler
• http://www.googlealert.com/
• Marketleap Link Popularity Checker
• Web CEO
• LinkAssistant SEO Tool
• WebLink SEO Software 2.7
• Link Hounds Hub Finder
• DoFollow Directory
• Free SEO Friendly Directories
• Back Link Watch
• OptiLink Software
• SEO for Firefox

Here is a great list of articles that I read in the past that will help with Fetching For Link Love:

• Aaron Walls - 101 Link Building Tips
• Eric Ward - Link Bait Kool-Aid?
• 21 Keys to Link Bait Success
• Rand Fish - 5 Rare & Valuable Link Building Tactics
• Andy Hagans’ - Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and SMM
• Jerry West - Link Baiting - Article Debunked
• SEOChat - Using Internet Directories as a Link Building Tool
• [Video] How to Build a Self-reinforcing Authority that Keeps Building Free Links
• 15 of the Best Link Building Techniques
• If you want all the top Link Building articles of Sphinn.com then click here!

So I am finally getting done with the design of my blog here at YourSEOMentor.com and am almost happy with the layout and design. I am so sorry I know that design doesn’t matter and content does but I guess I am a perfectionist when it comes to all this stuff. Any ways I just wanted to write and let everyone that ever reads this blog know what I will be writing about and why you should continue reading it.

First of all if you are beginner, guru, professional, or whatever you are you should become a reader of YourSEOMentor.com. Here is why:

Why Not!!!

No, I do not consider my self a guru or professional I simply consider myself a Teacher and Mentor of SEO and Social Marketing. I have had much success in the last 4 years and would like to share that success with everyone that is willing to accept my point of view (Which won’t always be right). I say this because I can tell you right now that I will be getting people commenting on my posts that will disagree with me which is fine. I know the SEO industry all to well and I know there will be people that consider themselves know it alls and will try and tell me that I don’t know what I am talking about. But it all comes down to this I DON’T CARE what they think. I know what works and what doesn’t work cause I do this for a living all day every day. Does this mean I know everything, of course not and I would never dream of telling you all that I do know everything.

So there it is somewhat of a disclaimer for all those that read this blog. Will I give you some great content? Yes! Will I help you with your SEO and Social Marketing online journey? Yes! Will I make mistakes? Yes! But you can know this I am here to help and mentor those that want to Learn SEO and Social Marketing. I will give you access to great tools, techniques, to help you get better rankings in the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. I will be writing about what others in the industry is saying, and any news that I think is worth talking about.

Here is a list of my Categories that I will be talking about (this is the list as of February 6, 2008):

• SEO
• SEO Tools
• Google
• Yahoo
• MSN
• Link Building
• Keyword Research
• SEM
• Social Marketing
• Social Bookmarking
• Web 2.0
• Web Design & Usability

So there it is all laid out for you to decide, “Is this blog really worth following?” Well I hope it is and I will do my best to give you the content you want. So simply click on the Get SEO Advice under that cartoon image of me and ask me anything and everything and I will try and help answer all you SEO and Social Marketing questions to the best of my ability.