Don't Over-Think It! Yes, You Too Can Do SEO

As someone who sells SEO as a service it is often not in my best interest to tell people they can do SEO on their own. But it's true. Just as changing the car's oil, fixing clogged pipes, or painting a house are all relatively easy, most business owners can SEO their website on their own. All it takes is some knowledge and time.

Knowledge can be found easily enough for free, and time, well, that's not something you likely have an excess of. Fortunately, SEO doesn't all have to be done at once, it can be implemented a little at a time, as you have time.

If you want to optimize your site yourself then you need to simplify. A lot of what you'll learn about SEO can be complicated. Especially when you start reading about .htaccess, robots.txt, 301 redirects, absolute links, and so on. This is all good information to have but you don't always have to start there.

If you're doing it yourself then start with the things that you can do yourself. Don't get caught up in all the complicated issues that go beyond your knowledge or ability to implement. The more difficult technical tasks may still be necessary down the road, but for now, do what you can with what you have.

Here are some things that you can often do easily enough on your own:

1) Customize all your title tags. If your site is big this may take some time. If its dynamically generated then you may want to have your programmers implement a template that pulls in and inserts keywords based on the page.

2) Customize your content. This can be especially important if you sell products. Don't settle for stock descriptions, and take the time needed to write somethign different for each of the 20 products you have that are simply different versions of the same thing. This customized content is essential.

3) Get content on all of your pages. If you have category pages that link to products or other information pages, put at least a paragraph of text on each page.

4) Link, link, link. Add links throughout your content to other pages and products of your site. Link back and forth between pages, add links to related products, link to your blog and from your blog.

5) Blog. Write content that your visitors will love. Don't just use your blog to pimp your products or services. Write helpful tips and tutorials or provide insight that your readers can use.

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Yahoo! to Launch New, Comprehensive Mobile Portal

Yahoo! will launch a new mobile experience called, wait for it, Yahoo! Mobile. It will be available via mobile web and downloadable mobile applications for the iPhone as well as smartphones powered Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola. An app will also be available for smartphones with the Windows Mobile operating system.

Yahoo! Mobile will feature a ton of stuff including:
Yahoo! oneSearch - Yahoo!'s award-winning mobile search service providing the most current, relevant answers you need.
Today - The most interesting stories buzzing on the Internet right now, selected by Yahoo!'s editorial team.
Yahoo! oneConnect - Yahoo!'s service designed to provide consumers everything they need to stay in touch with the people about whom they care:
Email - Access to Yahoo! Mail and other popular email service providers, including Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and AOL Mail.
Pulse - Access totheir social networks, including Bebo, Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Last.fm, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube.
Yahoo! Messenger - An upgraded version of Yahoo!'s popular mobile instant messaging service.
Yahoo! Address Book - Keeps consumers' contacts always handy and in sync.
Yahoo! Calendar - View, add and edit appointments when users are away from their PCs.
Yahoo! News - Breaking headlines across popular topics.
Yahoo! onePlace - Access and manage your favorite content, all from one location including news topics and sources, RSS feeds, weather conditions, sports scores, stock quotes, websites/blogs, horoscopes and movie theaters.

Smartphone apps will include:
Yahoo! oneSearch with Voice - Allowing users to launch searches by simply speaking.
Maps - Powerful improved tools that let consumers locate, learn about and get directions to points of interest.
Opera Mini 4.2 - An integrated version of the world's most popular mobile web browser, with easy return to the Yahoo! Mobile app, that launches when web site access is needed.
Widgets - Enhanced mobile-optimized experiences for services from Yahoo! and other brands. Users can browse, add and remove these at anytime according to their tastes.

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Timing of SEO in the Web Design Process

If you’re just starting to build your website now is the best time to start planning your search engine optimization and search engine marketing strategy. The best time to introduce the SEO planning of a website is when the site design is ready and the site is ready to be launched but there is no content yet for the site. Just before the site launches is the time to bring in an SEO consultant to provide some SEO services.


After the design of the website is done an SEO consultant can give you suggestions about what keywords and key phrases you need to add into the site HTML as Meta tags and where those tags should go. Once the site is tagged and the design and navigation has been tested it’s time to add in content. Having SEO content on your site from the start will give your web site a big advantage over older websites that might already have a bit of a following but haven’t had any SEO services by a professional SEO consultant.

For a new site where that site ends up on the search engine results pages can be critical to its success. In order for the site to get a high ranking on the search engine results pages it’s imperative that a professional and experienced SEO consultant creates search engine optimized content that is ready to be part of a broad search engine marketing campaign. It just makes more sense to get all your ducks in a row before you launch the site doesn’t it? Bring in an SEO consultant when you’re ready to start putting content on the site so that when the site launches your site will be instantly indexed by the search engine spiders and can start drawing traffic from search engines immediately.

If you have an existing site that is due for an overhaul or a design revamping then you should also consult a professional SEO consultant before the site is redone so that you will have a good idea of what SEO services that you need. Cosmetic work on the site is important so that your site doesn’t look outdated but changing up the content on the site will be very important. Most of the traffic that websites get comes from searches done by people who use Google or another search engine to look for website dealing with a particular topic.

You want your site to be at the top of or at least near the top every search that is done by a search engine for the topic that your site is about. In order to achieve that you need an SEO professional to write great search engine optimized content before the site launches. If your existing site has had the same content on it for more than six months you should get an SEO professional to write new content. Changing the content is a great search engine marketing strategy to draw new web site traffic and improve your search engine ranking.

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What You Need To Know About Directory Submission?

Do you own a website? Have you tried all the methods to generate traffic to your website. One of the methods which used by webmasters to increase the credibility of their website is directory submission. A web directory is a website which is divided into different categories and sub-categories. Webmasters submit their website to the directory for the purpose building backlinks pointing to their website. Number of quality one way links is one of the criteria which is used by search engines to rank their websites. Greater will be number of the backlinks pointing towards the website better will be the rank on the search engine result page.

There are two types of methods which people use to submit their website to the web directories. The first method is automatic submission with the help of software. This method is fast and does not need so much time and effort. The second method is manual submission. This method is bit difficult and needs time but this method is preferred by webmasters and SEO experts.

Building backlinks is a slow process. If you will try to fasten this process your website can be banned by the search engines. Nowadays you can also find many SEO firms which offer directory submission at reasonable prices. A good SEO firm can save lot of money and time for you. Always remember that the benefits of directory submission are long lasting. If you want to generate more traffic to your website then you have to use different techniques in proper way.

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Google toolbar adds adds Chrome's speed dial to Firefox

If you like Chrome but miss your Google toolbar, you might just want to keep using Firefox (or switch back). The latest version of the Google Toolbar for Firefox adds features mimicking Chrome's start page to newly-opened tabs in Firefox.

In addition to your 9 most frequently visited sites, the page also displays recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs. The update also boasts an array of new buttons and the ability to add Gadgets as buttons.

Here's a shocker for you: the new version has been labeled a "second beta" by Google. We'll wait with bated breath to see if the label changes at some point in the next 8 years.

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