Yakiji (Yah-key-jee)

First off, the world of SEO and web marketing is an exciting one, but can be very challenging at times. With that said, there is no one stop shop for learning the arts of SEO and PPC.

Getting a Job in SEO/PPC (obviously this could be different between employers) : This will be difficult (not impossible) if you don’t have any experience under your belt. This is because there is still no definative “cookie cutter” way to achieve success in SEO/PPC. While there are the basic techniques of SEO, successful SEO needs to have elements of uniqueness, creativity and good troubleshooting. These all need to apply to the specific client/project you are working with (relation to industry, competitors, etc…). Being able to sell yourself as a successful candidate for a job, means demostrating to the employer that you have these traits and that you know how to apply them. You will also need to demonstrate that you have kept up with the latest trends. SEO never ends because tomorrow a new competitor will arise.

Start off with these 8 simple steps:
1) Learn the basic rules of the major 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN). Google has one of the best knowledge bases for this: http://www.google.com/webmasters/
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html
http://webmaster.live.com/

2) Know the basic processs of SEO/PPC. Here’s a good article that outlines a pretty decently 10 Step process. Note: as you become more knowledgeable, you will likely develop your own process.
http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/2008/04/10/seo-step-nine-of-ten-conversion-optimization

3) Subscribe and Read up on some of the top SEO/PPC blogs:
http://www.seomoz.org/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog
http://www.seobook.com/
http://www.searchengineland.com/
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/
(many more, but those should give you a good start…)

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If you haven’t heard already, Google, MSN, and Yahoo have joined forces in support for a single xml sitemap format – Sitemaps 0.9. In the easiest terms, sitemaps are xml formatted files that provide a way for a website to list the URLs (along with related data) so that search engine spiders can index the website in the easiest way possible. It’s basically an easier way for us (webmasters) to talk to search engines and recommend to how we’d like to have our websites crawled. This is great news! There is now a common sitemap protocol which will alleviate the drudginess of having to create different sitemaps for each search engine. In light of this merging of forces, the big three (Google, MSN, and Yahoo) have announced the launch of www.sitemaps.org, which will provide details of the current release of the Sitemaps protocol and will include future updates.

OK, so now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to create an xml sitemap. This can easily be done in notepad if you have a site with a small amount of pages (50 or less). You just need to follow the correct protocol (syntax). On the other hand, if you’re working with a site larger than 50 pages, then you may want to consider a sitemap generator. Google provides a long list of third-party recommendations. My personal favorite is www.XML-Sitemaps.com. It’s as simple and inserting your domain and letting it take care of the rest. Depending on how big your site is, you may need to wait for a bit. Once finished, it will spit out a fully formatted and compliant sitemap in several different formats of your choosing (up to 500 URLs). Go ahead and check it out!

Sitemap Generator – www.XML-Sitemaps.com

Related Links:
Google Sitemaps
Yahoo Sitemaps
Sitemap Protocol
Third-Party Sitemap Tools

Got a burning question that you need answered? Then consider asking it on Yahoo Answers. With a solid user base, you’re sure to get a response from every point of view. While browsing the questions and answers, finding something of interest shouldn’t be difficult and could provide a great backlink opportunity. With a mass of open questions, people are open to recommended sources and feedback that could potentially provide them a resolution.

If you’re promoting a real estate website, then search for real estate questions. Then get ready to roll-up your sleeves and dig into the questions. If you find something where your website could provide a credible solution, then throw your link up there along with a decent description describing it. You’ll be amazed how quickly the visitors will start rolling in.

If you haven’t heard of or used Wordpress yet, then you are one of few in the web world. After reading a recent posting in the Sitepoint Forums asking web developers to supply their Wordpress SEO checklists, I decided to post my own.

After installing Wordpress, download and install the following plugins:

• Google XML Sitemaps – to auto-generate XML sitemaps when new content is created.
  
• All in One SEO Pack – automatically optimizes your blog for search engines.
  
• Category Base Killer – removes the “category/” base text from the URL string.
• Wordpress.com Stats – quick and simple stats that are important to your blog.
  

Contributing factors:

• .htaccess: force the www rewrite for your website so all the urls.
  #Force www domain
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com [nc]
  RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
  #End force www
• XHTML/CSS: Develop a wordpress theme that has clean XHTML with semantic tags and clean CSS.
• Robots.txt: identify your sitemap and make sure your content is crawled correctly with the robots.txt file. Be sure to disallow the “wp-admin” directory.
• Permalinks: set to custom use %postname%. Ultilize keywords in your URL.
• More Tag: utilize the more tag so your entire post doesn’t show up on your homepage and it’s own page.

Useful Links and Resources:

• Wordpress SEO Checklist (SitePoint Forums)
• Ultimate Wordpress SEO Guide (ToddW Blog)
• Pushing Wordpress SEO Boundaries (Andy Beard)

Page redirection can be accomplished very easily and can be well received by users. In order to best satisfy the needs of search engines a 301 redirection is the optimal way to redirect pages across your website. A 301 status code means “moved permanently” and can be accomplished very easily with some slight variations between coding platforms. Ideally, you will want to focus more on the server side redirects. Client side redirects are prone to issues if users or search engine spiders can’t read javascript.

HTML Redirect

<html>
<head>
<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”4;url=http://www.yakiji.com/newpage.html”>
</head>
<body>
<h1>301 Moved Permanently</h1>
This page has moved. You will be automatically redirected to its new location in 4 seconds.
If you aren’t forwarded to the new page,
<a href=”http://www.yakiji.com/newpage.html”>http://www.yakiji.com/newpage.html</a>.
</body>
</html>

ASP Redirect

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(“Location”,”http://www.yakiji.com/newpage.html”);
Response.End
%>

ASP.NET Redirect (without tracking)

<%@ Page language=”c#” %>
<script runat=”server”>
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e) {
Response.Status = “301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(“Location”, Link);
}
</script>

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Google couldn’t be more generous to SEOs and web marketers when it decided to launch Conversion University. Articles have been posted very infrequently, until just recently when Google released the new and improved Conversion University. By the looks of it, it received quite an overhaul. It looks to provide more information than ever with such topics as Acquisition, Onsite Behavior Analysis, Outcomes, Videos and more.

Thanks Google!