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!

 

 SEO Mentor Podcast #4 SEO News & Tips [16:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This SEO Podcast I talk about some of the following news items:

Google Joins Venture for Mobile WiMAX Next-Gen Wireless Internet Access

Yahoo and McAfee Offer a Safer Way to Search with SearchScan

 Yahoo Shares Tumble After Microsoft Pulls Bid

The SEO Tip for this podcast I talked about Loren Baker’s post about Subdomains or Subfolders : Which are Better for SEO?!

“Subdomains or Subfolders? What’s better for a blog/forum/etc: a subdomain (eg. http://jobs.searchenginejournal.com/) or subfolder (eg. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/)?

Subdomains and subfolders both have their advantages, especially when setting up blogs.

For blogs, I prefer a subfolder (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/) because the link juice which is sent to that blog is going to be naturally distributed to that main domain, and other subfolders under the domain.”

 

 SEO Mentor Podcast #3 - SEO Tips & News: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here it is my third SEO Mentor Podcast and this one is packed full of the latest SEO News and Tips. Here are some of the things that I talk about:

SEO News:

• Google Stock Up 18% to $533
• Yahoo Earnings : Q1 Increases Beat Market Expectations of Revenues that reached $1.818 billion for the first quarter of 2008
• Google Enters Utility Business : Invests in Solar Power Plant Technology
• Google Rolls Out Mobile Image Ads
• Microsoft Acquires Farecast : Travel Search & Airline Fare Search Engine
• Google Applies Copyright-ID Technology to Fight Child Porn Online

I also talked about “The SEO Baby Contest” and my last Jason Gambert post and added some great SEO tips with the help from Richard Burckhardt from Searchenginejournal.com. Here are some of those tips I thought were crucial to your search engine optimization:

(more…)

I recently had a question from Mike Florence about Universal Search and what it is. Blended Search or Universal Search, whichever you call it; both are changing the online world. Google was the main pioneer of Universal Search and of course all the Major Search Engines (of course I mean Yahoo & MSN) soon followed.

Here are a couple things changed in the search engines when Universal Search came to fruition:

Digital Content syndicated in search results such as -

• Video Content
• Images
• Press Releases
• Articles
• News
• Local Listings
• Books
• etc.

Let me show you a quick image example of what I am trying to explain in words:

As you can see from the screen shot above, images and video are part of the organic search results. I don’t see any better explanation of blended search than the above image.

So how is Universal Search effecting the SEO and Search Engine Marketing industry? Well think of it this way, at one point you were competing with 10 other results to be on the first page of Google. Now with universal search, if there is a news and video result within the search query your website now only has a 80% chance to be listed on the first page of the search engine.

So you might be asking, “What does this mean for me and my business?” Well no need to worry. IF!!! You are taking advantage of video, press releases, image optimization, news, etc. Sites such as the well know YouTube.com, PRWeb.com, and Flickr.com just to name a few will help you take advantage of Universal Search.

Now you also need to know about the latest Social Media, also called Social Marketing, Social Networking. Search engines are picking up content from Social Networking sites such as Hubpages.com, Zimbio.com, and Gather.com, and these are just a few examples. Stay tuned for more about Social Marketing in future posts and podcasts.

Hope this answers your question Mike!

So I was on vacation this last week and got to watch my Cubs in spring training in Mesa, Arizona. While there I was thinking about what I could write about to help those that may stumble upon my fairly simple blog. With my experience in mentoring individuals, the question about getting websites indexed in the major search engines is always one of the first questions. So I would like to give a quick outline of what I think you can plan on when it comes to getting indexed in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

First off there is no real amount of time that I can tell you that your site will be indexed cause I have seen my own sites take as long as 3 months and have had sites get indexed as fast as a week. But overall I have found that my sites get indexed in MSN first within on average about 8 weeks and then Yahoo follows on average of 10 weeks and Google usually shortly follows of an average of 12-15 weeks. Now keep in mind this is just from my research and also that I am talking about brand new websites.

Here is the manual way to see if your site has been indexed go to the search engine (I know this works for Google, Yahoo, and MSN) and in the search box input site:(your url) for example site:http://www.yourseomentor.com/. Then click search and if you see at least your home page in the results then BADABOOM your site has been indexed in the search engine, meaning that the spiders/robots have found your site.

Here are secret SEO tips (ok it so they are not so secret anymore) but none-the-less a great tip to getting indexed faster:

• Start your Link Building and get links from related authority websites with high pagerank
• Also link to other sites (External Links) it is rumored that some search engines don’t index sites that don’t have external links
• Content!!! Make sure that your site has content related to your site Title and Meta Tags (Note: Stay away from Frames, Flash, and all image site design)
• Do not Spam (e.g. Keyword Stuffing)

The most important thing you should remember from this article is PATIENCE, continue your SEO campaign and don’t give up.

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.