Organic Hat SEO

Satellite Websites orbiting around your main website have been in vogue for quite sometime. Everywhere you look SEO practitioners recommend ways to build-out a series of satellite websites to strengthen your main (branded) website.

So what is a satellite website and do I need one? First, a satellite website or website are a series of websites each built around one topic. If your main website is about writing then you might build 5 or 6 satellite websites each with its own topic but all relating to your main website. An example: fiction, short stories, journal writing, writing exercises and science fiction would each have its own 5+ page website with all of them pointing to your main website. Other then pointing to your main website they would only point to one other of the satellite sites, so A would point to B, B would point to C, C would point to D and d would point to A with all other external links have a rel=”nofollow” attribute so not to leak away Google Juice.

Why on earth would you go to all this trouble? Back-links are the life blood of ranking in search engines but they can be very time consuming to acquire and that time adds up to lots of money. Building-out a number of great content websites can can you an ongoing set of strong links. The sites you build are under your control.

Don’t get me wrong, not for a second am I suggesting you don’t need a robust back-link strategy to go along with the satellite program, you do, this is just a highly effective way that gives you one more weapon in your arsenal to get to the top of the rankings.

Some think having a blog that helps shape the views and services offered at your website and helps in promotion both to the public and the search engines is old hat. I’m not in that camp. Blogs can have real impact in traffic, rankings and perception of authority.

If you have been neglecting your blog it’s time to once again dust it off and let the world know what you have to say. The main caveat is, blog at least 4 times every week and keep it going otherwise you are wasting real valuable time for no real benefit.

Once you get the old blog cleaned up and back on track make sure you have it listed in lots of good blog directories that are part of your link strategy. Here are a few I think offer value. Of course there are many more places to list your blog, some cost and some are free. The trick in to jump in and experience success.

1. Best Of The Web  BOTW
2. EatonWeb Directory
3. Powered by Wordpress Directory
4. Wingee Directory
5. Delightful Blogs Directory

It seems the work we need to do to promote out business and our websites just goes up and up and up. When will it stop or when will it get easier is a question I’m asked all the time. Well there is good news, once your website has gone through the SEO (search engine optimization) part of your marketing things should get easier. And yes I said easier but not necessarily move into a time saving mode.

Once the SEO is complete you will have a strong set of keywords to use as your basis for things like article marketing, web page building and external linking. Having a direction is always easier then not having one.

Once you are ready to expand your pages and write expert articles you will need so help. The web is full of handy tools to help you organize your information and research your niche. Here is a list of sites you may find meet your needs in getting both organized and efficient in promoting your business.

1. Advertised as “A personal research assistant. Inside your browser” Zotero is full of tools to help in your research endeavors.
2. DecisionStreet bills itself as a website service that “helps you make smarter decisions through a set of simple yet powerful tools and access to the experiences of others.” Check it out.
3. LingoZ offers a user built dictionary in many languages.
4. Right off I loved this site, SuTree, it is a site of free instructional videos with hundreds of topics to choose from.
5. MindBites is built around the community model of everyone has things to share.

Many of these sites are still in beta but you just never know when you will find just the right tool to help in your work of finding and collecting information that will put your business in the lead and your website on top.

Today October 15th, 2008 is Blog Action Day. This year thousands of bloggers around the world will blog about some aspect of Poverty and what we can do to stamp it out. I’m very pleased to spend a little time and share a little space for this concerted effort to make a dent in the number of people affected by poverty.

It’s a huge subject, for me to make it somewhat manageable I choose Soup Kitchens as my focal point. I’m pretty sure everyone knows at least tangentially what a Soup Kitchen is but do you know where they are in your community, have you ever visited one to put in a couple of hours of work?

Soup Kitchens can be found in most communities big or small, local churches and community groups come together to offer a few meals a day to those in need of food. Millions of people across the US and around the world utilize these meager resources made available to them by caring and concerned people. Yes we must end Poverty but until we do we need to help those who are struggling with Poverty everyday.

In New England where I’m located the need grows as the weather gets cold. I’m listing 6 Soup Kitchens, my hope being, you will visit at least one of their websites and leave them a couple of bucks or maybe stop on over to see what you can do.

In Maine you’ll find groups like Waysde Soup Kitchen serving hot and nutritious food to hundreds everyday. In Nashua New Hampshire the Nashua Soup Kitchen is working hard to turn grocery receipts into food for local residents. In Boston you will find the Boston Rescue Mission, working to help people since 1899. In central Vermont there are dozens of daily Soup Kitchens listed at the Secretary of States website. In Connecticut you will find the Shoreline Soup Kitchen that served over 400,000 meals in 2006. In Rhode Island you will find volunteers at Judy’s Kindness Kitchen making and delivering food to the Soup Kitchen

I want to thank all the bloggers who have taken part in Blog Action day 2008 Poverty. The more we bring things into the open the quicker solutions will be found.

Many of you have heard me talk about Squidoo.com and I expect some of you have actively invested time and effort into promoting your business or organization by building a couple of lenses at Squidoo. But just adding a couple of pages to a service like Squidoo or another free topic builder is not the end of the work.

In the last year I have built over 125 pages or lenses as they are called at Squidoo to test out what was possible, to test out what works and what doesn’t. Squidoo is a good source of back-links for your main website, it seems to get quick ranking and listing in search but unlink an authority site like Wikipedia it may not hold onto a high listing unless you are doing lots of regular updates to your lenses.

I recommend you create your Squidoo lenses in conjunction with your article marketing and satellite websites so that everything is traveling around your main website universe in a smooth orbit. Of course as with all subjects there is a wide latitude in what topics you choose when building lenses at Squidoo.

I’ll use some examples of lenses I recently add to Squidoo. First is my lens for Utterli which is a mobile service for publishing your social media bits. Second is Social Media Tips, a collection of things to do to expand your social media footprint. Third is my lens called Google Search Alternatives, thoughts and listings of search beyond Google. Forth is Micro Blogging and as the name says it is about the joys of Micro Blogging.

Each one of the lenses I list above is tied into SEO and this blog, I use them to add value to this blog and garner authority within search. As you can see the titles of the each lens fits nicely into my SEO universe but each can stand alone. Within this subject there are a multitude of articles I can write, pages I can build on my website and an equal number of external topic pages I can create at sites like Squidoo.

Populate your content universe with many views and colors of a topic, it will garner authority for your business and ranking for your organization.

Creating original content to promote and market your website has many rewards that may not be obvious at first glance. The article you just wrote is well defined, well focused and clearly on a  topic that will inform and entertain your customers, clients and users but what can you do with it?

First you can submit your work to an article submission website (EzineArticles or Work) or have an article marketer do it for you. Second build a new page on your website that zeros in on the new article’s topic adding lists and hints that will expand on the topic without losing focus. Third build a new 3 page website using the articles topic as the focus, import all the info from the web page you just created but do remember you want to be creating something new and of value beyond what you just created. What I’m saying is expand on the topic don’t just copy the same stuff to every new page or site.

Every step in the process builds on the one before it. Your users will be able to choose a summary or dig deeper, you are giving them the choice all the while keeping them on one of your web properties. I hate to use the term but in this case it fits, this is a win - win proposition.

Now coming up with new, fresh and exciting ideas surrounding your product and service might seem nearly impossible. If you drill down in the subject almost any product or service will give you dozens and dozens of new ideas for articles, pages and websites that spin around the universe of your offering.

Guess what, if you focus in on useful information most of your optimization will be done for you. All the keywords and section headers will be waving at you to use them. Search Engines will see your value along with your users returning over and over.

I am adding an example of a simple article that a writer created to aid in promoting his book. Ellis Goodman published his new spy novel Bear Any Burden earlier this year and has written a series of quick articles talking about aspects of writing. You will see how he has focused on an aspect that informs the reader but he does not give all his ideas and thoughts away in one article.. He has countless room to write more and more and get more and more promotion. Read the rest of this entry »

Some say time stops when a new idea is born, it may be true but what happens after the new idea is born? Do you put it on a shelf with all the other good ideas that never seem to see the light of day or do you jump out into the spotlight holding your new fresh faced idea up for everyone to see?

If you have an idea simmering in the deep recesses of your mind now is the time to being it forward and not just to show the world, show it to Google and you may get the cash to make it happen.. You only have till Oct, 20th 2008 which is the closing for entries. Get over to Googles Project 10to100 today.

Online and Offline community’s give juice to your Search Engine Marketing efforts. This is the headline in my head when I opened my eyes this morning and I’m sure it is neither news nor a new idea to anyone who had spent even a tiny amount of time marketing theirs or someone elses website and business.

Social Networking, Social Media and Social Interaction on just about any level all do the same thing, they grow your business and organization. While all the shouting and waving about how great Social Media is has taken on epidemic proportions, one thing may be overlooked. Below all the hype there is a truth about Social Media and it’s not that it is revolutionary but that it is easy and that opportunities abound to connect with people who are interested in what you are doing.

I can hear people now saying ” my niche is small and there is no online community for me.” Small niche or no niche there is a good chance there is a community for you and if there isn’t you can easily start your own.

Here are ten you may not know about and there are hundreds more just waiting for you and your clients to join.

1. Vinivino a wine lover community. If you are selling wine are you there?
2. YouPlanet a community for travel.  Involved in any part of travel industry, do you belong..
3. GameVee a community for game makers and gamers. do you belong?
4. Folia plants and garden are what this community is about.
5. Zeer if your business is centered around food then check it out
6. Fubar here is a place to check out if you are in the bar or alcohol business
7. Razoo here is a community based on making a difference in the world
8. Retroland if your business touches retro anything then check this community out
9. UnitedCats the name says it all, if your business touches on pets then check it out
10. Eons this is a community for people 50 and over. is this your demographic then join

The above list is just the tip of the hundreds of social communities available for your business or nonprofit to join and connect with your customers and supporters. Join 4 or 5 till you find the 1 or 2 that best adds value to your marketing efforts.

Promote your idea, your vision, your hobby, your product. That’s right get a blog and write about nothing, write about something. Why do I seem to be writing about nothing much and suggesting that you pay attention to what I’m saying? It’s because I want to emphasize how important content really is to the search engines and to your users.

If you create a blog for your organization or business and a couple of days go by without you creating any new entries don’t panic, just write about something relevant to the blogs purpose. You can rehash an old idea or you can review some blogs within your genre. If your stuck then give your readers an outline of your business, its history or why you started it.

I’m rambling along writing about something but this entry is not really focused and that is ok from time to time, your users will understand that you can’t always come up with an earth shaking subject to write about. The search engines will see you are sticking to regular relevant updates and will reward you for the creative work you are producing. Don’t misunderstand I’m not suggesting you scam the search engines with sub par content on a regular basis. What I am saying is that all the content on your website or blog does not have to be strictly perfect all the time. Of course if you are IBM or Microsoft and you can create a staff of workers that do research and blog everyday then your content better be very good all the time. If on the other hand you are a small business or nonprofit that is doing promotion on a part time basis then it’s ok to put something out rather then nothing.

And don’t forget the social sites like twitter and plurk after you have published your blog, let people know you have updated it. Also ask friends and colleague’s who have blogs to slip in a mention of your blog from time to time. Example:  I have a blog where I write flash fiction and poetry and I’m happy to put a link on this blog to that blog or to a friends blog from time to time.

Be creative in your promotional endeavors and never forget offline marketing to promote your website.

Search for many businesses means just one thing, Google. Sure Google is the biggest and baddest engine on the block but it is by no means the only game in town. There are hundreds of niche Search Engines and thousands of niche directories and forums that can help with your business information needs.

Some of the engines aggregate the results from the big 4 and present you with the top results from all the results. Others try and fill a niche by searching only with closely defined parameters. One engine may only get its results from Wikipedia while the next one may only search retail websites for their results.

The key is to be open to information alternatives. Maybe using one of the services that will allow you to build your own search engine might better meet the needs of your clients. Adding focus both to your searches and to the information results can add depth to your organization.

I placed a list of some alternatives to tradidtional search on a Squidoo page entitled Google Seach Engine Alternatives. It also has build your own engine links and some other information you might find useful. Check It Out!