Next week I’ll be attending and speaking at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. Once again I will be a panelist for the SEO Clinic alongside Rae Hoffman-Dolan, Michael Gray and Michael Martin.

SEO clinics are always one of my favorite panels to speak on. Not just because I don’t have to write a powerpoint presentation, but because site clinics are a great way for site owners to get specific help with their current problems.

If you’re not familiar or have never been to an SEO Clinic — it’s basically a big Q&A where audience members get to ask the panelists for specific advice on their websites. Panelists review and give recommendations to site owners live in front of everyone.

Site clinics are great because attendees are able to go home with real to-do’s and advice from professionals on how to improve their site. The problem is, every time I’m on a site clinic I see the same problems over and over. It’s especially counter-productive when multiple sites in a row have the same problems in the same session!

Rather than sounding like a broken record, I’ve come up with a checklist of the most common problems seen in SEO clinics. So before you submit your site for review make sure you fix these 5 common mistakes!

Domain Canonicalization

While this is definitely the most difficult problem to pronounce, it’s an easy one to fix.

Domain canonicalization is a fancy way of saying that both http://www.yoursite.com and http://yoursite.com resolve. They shouldn’t. Redirect your favorite one to the other if you have this problem.

Overuse of Inline CSS & JavaScript

This is a pretty common problem especially among framework sites that rely on plugins, such as wordpress.

What I mean by “inline” is CSS and/or JavaScript that appears in the HTML of a page rather than being referenced by an external file. Inline scripts make your pages heavy, and slow down site load times.

If your site uses a lot of CSS or JavaScript, put it in external files to decrease page size and load times.

Example: <script type=‘text/javascript’ src=‘http://yoursite.com/location-of-javascript-or-css-file.js’></script>

Lack of XML Sitemap

This seems to be the most common problem. If you have a website, an XML Sitemap is a must.

Don’t worry, they sound more complicated than they are! In fact there are many tools out there that will automate the entire process. (check out the tool I use)

XML sitemaps are used by search engines to discover pages on your website. You can also use them to tell search engines which pages on your site are more and less important. If you’re having trouble getting pages indexed in search, make sure you have an XML sitemap first.

Poorly Formatted Title Tags

Although it seems more and more sites are getting their title tag game together, you would be surprised how many people are still doing it wrong!

Title tags appear between the <title></title> elements in the header of your page. In a browser they are the text that appears at the top of the browser, or on the tabs depending on which browser you use.

What a lot of people don’t realize is, the title tag is also the clickable text that appears in organic search. Title tags are important for several reasons. First, they are a known ranking factor for organic search. Meaning: what you put in your title tags has an affect on where you rank for search terms. Also, because they are the clickable text in search they can affect your click through rates. 

Rules of Thumb:

• Keep title tags under 70 characters, including spaces
• Don’t “stuff” or use too many keywords
• Include important keywords for the page at the beginning of your title tag

Lacking or Duplicate Description Tags

Description tags in my experience are hit and miss. It seems to me that most sites either don’t have any problems with their description tags, or they have every problem. Don’t be the latter.

Description tags, like title tags, also show up in search results. They are the snippet you see for a listing under the clickable text. When you don’t have description tags all together — search engines will create them for you, taking snippets of text from the page that they deem relevant. My philosophy is: I’d rather decide what potential visitors see about my site than let Google decide.

Another common mistake among description tags is for site owners to copy and paste the same text across multiple, sometimes even hundreds of pages. DON’T DO THIS! This is especially common among newly launched sites. While it may be easier to copy and paste descriptions for pages, it’s better to leave them blank.

Rules of Thumb:

• Keep description tags under 150 characters, including spaces
• Write unique tags for pages
• Support the keywords from title tags in description tags

Make Sure to Say Hi!

If you’re attending Affilate Summit West this year, come say hi at the Tip Off Party on Sunday sponsored by Double Play Media - or Monday at midnight for Strike Out Breast Cancer!

For me, the business of “domaining” has always had appeal and allure. Maybe it’s because of all the stories I’ve heard about millionaires making their money domaining, or because it seems like I’ve heard all of the smartest people online talk about it at one time or another. Yet information on “domaining” seems to be illusive. I wouldn’t by any means consider myself a domainer, but I have definitely had success using what I’d like to call “practical domaining” for my efforts in search and online marketing.

While traditional domaining consists of buying domains (usually in large volume) in attempt to later resell for profit, I’ve used domains and domain buying in some alternative ways for my benefit.

Buying Domains

Most people that make a living online tend to have way more domains than they need and/or could use. For example, I own this site — which serves no absolutely no purpose other than its comedic value. While I’ve had a few offers on different domains I own, I’ve never sold one. So technically I’ve never done any traditional “domaining”. But there are other reasons to buy domains than hoping to flip them for profit.

Exact Match Domaining

One of the most common reasons to buy domains is to get a domain name that directly matches keyword phrases that you are trying to rank for. It’s well known among the SEO community that exact match domains tend to work better than they should. This is especially common among niche affiliates and sites that have a big focus on lead gen.

Type-in Traffic

Another reason to buy frivolous domains is for their type in traffic. If you are able to get ahold of a domain that receives any amount of significant traffic just because people type it in their browser, it never hurts. People tend to get into trouble here though because they post duplicate content on these types of domains. The best thing to do is put a 301 redirect on the domain to the main site where you conduct business. I’ve had clients that had as many as 20 different type-in traffic domains that were able to contribute traffic to the main website. Be careful not to get carried away though, it’s rare that you actually find a domain that is valuable for it’s type-in traffic.

Misspell Domaining

Most people are familiar with the concept of buying domains that are common misspellings of your brand name or search phrases in order to capture all type-in traffic. Maybe not as popular, but definitely full of potential is buying domains that are the common misspellings of other popular sites. Misspell domains of sites like Facebook and YouTube receive large amounts of traffic that could hypothetically be used for all kinds of things. While all of the misspellings of these particular sites are already taken, if you’re able to get misspell domains of a site that becomes popular, you could be in for a big payoff. Misspell search phrase domaining can also be used to capture misspell search traffic as these domains can be used as exact match domains on popular search misspellings.

Trendwatch Domaining

While traditional trendwatch domaining consists of buying domain names that you anticipate to be popular, we can also use this strategy outside of trying to simply sell anticipated popular domains for profit. The most popular method I think is for affiliate marketers. Affiliates who can anticipate products that will become poplar can purchase domains in hopes of being able to launch an affiliate site with either an exact match domain or type-in traffic domain they bought prior to the product becoming popular. Imagine how many affiliate commissions you could have made if you had bought up all the “snuggie” domains before the snuggie was popular.

Developed Websites

While buying domains that are already established websites isn’t technically domaining, it may be a tactic to consider. I’m not talking about buying established online businesses, that’s a completely different animal. But there are many websites online that are left dormant that can be great sources for link building. Buying these domains can often be a better way to get links than asking for them, or trying to “persuade” the site owner to link to you. While they may not be “up for sale”, owners of these types of domains can be responsive to offers.

Conversely, if you’re good at building sites that get decent traffic and/or rank well, building sites to sell is already a proven and established business model.

Did you hear about the new Google update? Which one? Exactly. Any seasoned SEO has his/her catalogue of stories about how algo updates have affected rankings over the years for better and for worse. The longer you have been in the SEO game, the more stories you are bound to have about search engine algorithms changing and messing up you and your clients rankings. But what has changed really?

Blowing Up

“The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.” — Albert Einstein

When Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt recommending the initiation of what eventually became the Manhattan Project, he forever changed technology and history. Yet the creation of the world’s most powerful and devastating bomb did nothing for world peace, go figure.

Back In the Day…

When I started in SEO there was no such thing as universal, blended, or personalized search. You could get a site ranking for a key-term, and it would stay that way for a month or two. Suffice to say, the landscape of search has changed. Each new update and change brings new challenges, new things to learn, and new opportunities.

Necessity is the mother of invention; when in need we will create the most brilliant of inventions to solve our problems. SEO’s are no exception, the things I have seen friends, colleagues, and competitors alike come up with to get rankings in competitive spaces are ingenious. Problem solving at this capacity is an ability that is uniquely human, and some of us are great at it. But what has it gotten us?

A Day in the Life

The job of an SEO at it’s core is to figure out a way to beat the search engines. Granted, it’s not always an easy job, but it’s the core function of an SEO nonetheless. While there are many different approaches and methods used by various SEO’s to accomplish this task, every SEO is always trying to figure out the best way to increase rankings. And over the years as the engines have made their changes and implemented updates, the SEO is left to overcome any obstacles left in the way. But besides the technology, what has changed?

Think Different

Near the end of his life, Albert Einstein said that signing the letter to President Roosevelt recommending the creation of the atom bomb was the “one great mistake” he made in his life. Yet he realized that even if it hadn’t been created, it would have changed nothing because our thinking hadn’t changed.

As SEOs, as marketers, I think it’s important to realize that sometimes it’s a change in thinking that is needed, rather than a change in method. As an SEO, I get asked occasionally to use and sometimes even teach “blackhat” tactics for and to various people, including clients. While I have nothing against anyone that may be a “blackhat” SEO, I simply don’t perform those services. It always amazes me though how people think they need to go to such extents to increase their performance. Most often, clients that are wanting to push the most extreme edges of the envelope, simply just need to look at their problems differently to be satisfied.

It’s usually our thinking that needs to change. Most of the times where I have found myself beating my head against a problem trying to “solve” it, I needed to think differently. The problem with thinking differently, is that often you don’t realize it’s what you need. What if there is a new way to think about the problems and goals you have currently?

It doesn’t always have to be a giant paradigm shift either, sometimes just a slight shift in thinking or perspective can open huge insight. What if you started reading a different blog, attended a different session at your next conference, or attended a different conference altogether? I challenge you to not be hypocritical in your proclamation of open mindedness.

Photo Credit: willposh, LACP, gnu

In today’s competitive landscape of internet marketing, we are surrounded by incredible talent in every arena. SEO’s, copywriters, PPC professionals, affiliate marketers, and social media marketers are sprouting up everywhere; and they’re getting better at honing their craft.

While your average SEO might be able to rank for terms related to your business, does he/she understand what happens next? This was brought to my attention recently over dinner with a client prospect, who was expecting that all I would do is get them to rank for terms, and then send in the invoices. While this would make my job unquantifiably easier, it wouldn’t make me a very effective marketer.

While you do want “the right tool for the right job”, this doesn’t mean that internet marketing consultants aren’t responsible for delivering good integrated tactics that support a comprehensive marketing plan. The job of an SEO isn’t just to get rankings, much like the job of a copywriter isn’t just to write an article, or a social media marketer to make something hit a front page.

Unfortunately, I think that the internet has enabled people to become highly skilled in a single area, but completely ignorant of others. It has become common for the self-start internet marketer to have no clue about marketing basics like market saturation or ROI. We have bred a generation of online marketers that are penny wise yet pound foolish.

Over dinner, my prospective client was very pleased to hear that rankings were just the beginning of a consulting campaign. The SEO that he was working with previously had set his expectation that getting his site ranking was the goal (A Fortune 500, mind you). As I explained that working through optimizing keyword selection, bounce rates, and conversions were all part of the process, I began to wonder how many companies, even large ones were working with marketers that were only doing half of their job?

Don’t settle!

Cross pollinate, I’m confused to see SEO’s sitting in SEO panels all day at conferences. Shouldn’t you know this stuff already? Go check out a PPC panel, or learn about reputation management, why drone out on the same stuff that you breathe daily? Or, go even further — go check out a conference that you’ve never been to! Go read something by Dale Carnegie or Zig Ziglar rather than buying the latest SEO Book.

Likewise, if you’re looking to hire — ask questions about your consultant. Do they seem to have a good marketing sense? Or are they just looking to implement some tactics to get a few quick results for you? I’m not saying that they should be an “All In One” solution to your marketing, we all specialize in our specific areas for a reason, but the best are well rounded.

Photo Credit: seeveeaar

I’ve been noticing a trend lately that has people running mad for any and every piece of software they can get their hands on that is “SEO Friendly.” I’m glad that the general population is becoming more educated about SEO and it’s importance in online marketing, but people need to wake up and realize that just because some schmuck that is trying to sell you something SAYS that his/her software or plugin is “SEO Friendly” doesn’t mean that it is.

Sadly, it seems that once again a descriptive phrase that we all have used so kindly is starting to become an annoying, overused buzzword by people who don’t know it’s true meaning. What I don’t understand is, why does everyone blindly believe those whom have no business sticking their noses in the world of SEO, that something is or isn’t SEO friendly? Would you believe me if I handed you a plate full of potato chips and told you they were fat free? What if I started marketing my own brand of potato chip and slapped a “Fat Free” logo on there and sold them on my website? Would you buy them?

How is it that everyone is fooled by a few lines of SEO-speak that can be pulled off of any SEO blog or wikipedia? Is that all I have to do to sell my fat free potato chip? Copy and paste some healthy jargon from a hippy food blog and you’ll all believe me? Just because there aren’t laws about substantiating claims in SEO doesn’t mean you should believe everything you hear. There are things that work, and things that just don’t. The people like me that you pay to listen to at the big SEO conferences have had years of experience doing and learning this stuff, we didn’t just dream up a product to sell overnight and read some articles to help us sound official. Think about that the next time you go to drop $100 on a piece of software that claims to be “SEO Friendly” — is it really? Who’s behind it? Has someone like me given it a look over? If not and you still want to buy it, let me know so I can also sell you some chips.

I keep seeing all the main SEO sites putting up posts about how Ajax is not search engine friendly. Which, for the most part is true. But not all the way true. There is a way to use Ajax, to make applications that are friendly to the search engine spiders. It’s all just a matter of how you write the javascript.

The problem with javascript / Ajax and search engine compatibility is not with the search engines, or even the use of javascript. The problem is in how the code is written. There is definitely a way to write spider friendly javascript. It’s called un-obtrusive javascript. Which basically means javascript that displays if the browser supports javascript, but also displays if javascript is not supported. Hence -> un-obtrusive.

There are many ways to do this besides using the common noscript tag. There is an example of such javascript on the webdev page of my other site. You can test it by going to the page, clicking around on the javascript accordion to see the javascript in action; then turn off javascript in your browser prefs, refresh the page and viola! all of the content still displays. This is the essence of un-obtrusive javascript.

You can do the exact same thing using Ajax, or XHR (Xml Http Requests) by referencing files on the server using links that don’t follow when javascript is enabled and putting the linked content on the page by appending it to the DOM (Document Object Model) with javascript. What you get then, is an Ajax application that works for the user with javascript capabilities, and for the search engine without javascript capabilities, it is simply a link to content. Ajax/javascript can be SEO and spider friendly, it’s just a matter of how it’s done!

I just watched a video that Michael Gray put up today on his blog about how to optimize your wordpress blog. The video was mostly informative and insightful. Being that I use wordpress, it definitely gave me some things to consider. Mostly he talked about making sure that googlebot won’t read duplicates of your posts by disallowing the robots from your archive files. This way, he says, you will have the engines only viewing your content in the main place that you put it. Which makes sense. Except that I have three contentions with this idea.

1. Everyone, everywhere else is saying to not worry about duplicate content. It is situations like these that are going to make duplicate content inevitable no matter what. Duplicate content is something that happens naturally, and googlebot knows that.

2. The whole idea behind archives and categories is to increase usability on a website. It is extremely useful to be able to sort or seach posts by date, category, author, etc.. It doesn’t make any sense that we should be worried that our site is extremely accessible, aren’t most of us battling to make other people’s sites more user friendly and navigable by both humans and spiders alike?

3. We should not have Google dictating this kind of stuff to us. We should be dictating how we want THEM to function. IMHO it’s one thing to optimize a site so that it is viewable to robots by using text and rich content, and to build links etc etc etc.. Nit-picky stuff like this should not be mandated because googlebot might get confused! Google has one of the biggest, best and most expensive devlopment teams in the world, they for sure can figure this out.

So, mostly I like what Graywolf has to say. I read his blog regularly, and am for what he is doing in the “greyhat” area of SEO. But stuff like this, brings up feelings like noted in #3 of above. Let’s all use good technique as we develop. But let’s also develop from the bottom up, and not worry about who’s sitting on top. –kenny

Today I read an article by search authority Danny Sullivan regarding, among other things, all of the recent buzz about Google spidering CSS files on webpages. Now, while there seems to be some validity to the issue concerning using css to cloak and hide duplicate content, I don’t see what the big deal is! At the SES conference in Chicago this past December, a number of search experts specifically addressed the issue of duplicate content and quite blatently said not to worry about it. So, why not just chill out? Furthermore, using css will only enable you to alter appearance or layout of content, NOT make it magically dissappear! So all the wannabe spammers are still gonna have to address the fact that Google will see their illegitimate tactics. So for the rest of us, lets all settle down. It’s not like it’s difficult to write valid css! –kenny

Well, I’m back from the search engine strategies conference in Chicago. I attended what was a four day conference and trade show. The information I learned was certainly not priceless! With the basic to mid-level training in SEO under my belt, I estimate my worth to have gone up about 15-20k per year on a salary basis. Nice for me The conference was a great opportunity for learning the official ‘white hat’ techniques for gaining organic listings in the major search engines, and strategies for development of search marketing in the areas of ppc, link building, and site optimization. I see search marketing to be a very niche, and very lucrative aspect of web development and design. I am excited to dive in full throttle as a search marketer, and even more excited to be able to add search marketing to my resume of services offered to clients. I was able to make some new contacts, from having attended the conference.. One of which was speaker Jim McFayden of Critical Mass. He spoke at the Flash & SEO session as well as the session regarding Ajax, css, and Web 2.0 & SEO session. He caught my attention as one of the few speakers who stood out as a technically inclined search marketer. This of course makes perfect sense seeing as he is a programmer / web developer himself. I was able to meet up with him later one evening for a couple of drinks where we had a great conversation regarding both of our positions as web developers both at a salary job, and on the side. His insight was much appreciated on my part as I was able to glean valuable knowledge from a seasoned search marketer and programmer. I hope the favor was returned as I was able to give a bit of insight to him as well on topics that he was maybe not so up to date. I was also very glad to be able to catch up with my colleague/partner in web development & SEO, Justin Walton of Position Technologies. I guess, catch up is not so much the term seeing as we speak on a daily basis.. But in person was a nice change from the ever so familiar instant message conversations that we carry on from one day to the next. We are both looking forward to some recent developments in our opportunities as partners in web-design and SEO. This conference was only a boost for the both of us. In summary, I was very glad to have had the opportunity to attend Search Engine Strategies Chicago ’06, and many thanks to Barry Langberg of Global Power Supply for having sent me as an in-house representative for GPS. Certainly Global will benefit from my learning as I am the sole web developer for the company. I look forward to the next conference! –kenny