Author Archives: Nadir Garouche

Write tutorials to get links and traffic

If you excel in web design, graphic design, Javascript programming, drawing or even gardening, and if you never wrote a tutorial and published it online, you just missed opportunity to get more traffic and links.

There are literally thousands of web sites that accept tutorials submission. Tutorials present many advantages:

  • Free advertising, tutorials websites usually accept free submissions
  • Traffic: if your tutorials are unique, you’ll increase your chances of getting traffic
  • Links: You will get a link from both the site you submitted your article to, but also from visitors who would have mentioned your link elsewhere
  • Sales opportunities: if you drive people to your site to have them read your tutorials, and if you provide services , you might convert these happy readers into customers.

A good example of tutorials web site is Good-Tutorials.com, the famous Photoshop tutorials site. They accept free submissions for all kind of articles related to the use of Photoshop. If you just found a new trick with Photoshop, you can try to submit it over there.

To find websites that accept tutorial submissions, you could go to Google and type this query:

“submit tutorial” “business”

Replace “business” by the field your tutorial fits in, for example “web design”, “php”, or even “gardening”.

Google offers fee-based support for Analytics

According to an article from ZDNet, Google is about to launch a fee-based support for those who are using their Web Analytics solutions: Google Analytics.

They are partnering with a Seattle based company called: Zaaz, a web analytics agency, to provide support to the “lucky” (?) ones who are using Analytics.

From Zaaz Web Site:


Google Analytics is a powerful standalone tool, but today marketers are seeking more – they need help in understanding how to decipher and more effectively use web analytics to identify opportunities for improvement and act on the findings. We are pleased to partner with Google to provide our comprehensive range of services to their enterprise Google Analytics clients.

Their services include:

  • Accuracy audits and data collection best practices
  • Goals definition, key metrics and scorecard creation
  • ROI monetization and forecasting models
  • Attitudinal, behavioral and competitive analysis
  • Site optimization, A/B and multivariate testing
  • Business user training and consulting

It looks good to me, but I think that kind of partnership can represent a threat for other Web Development companies who would not have been referred by Google. Companies for who Web Analytics is new, would not hesitate a second in choosing a company to help them analyze their figures, they will trust Google.

For those who are still willing to try Google Analytics, they promised to send out more invitations, the last ones were sent on January 19th:

Today, we sent out another batch of invitations to many of you who expressed interest in a Google Analytics account. If you have not received an invitation, please continue to be patient. Although we are adding system capacity every day, the demand for Google Analytics accounts still outpaces our ability to add resources. We are working hard and will continue to send out invitations as frequently as we can.

What do you think about Google Analytics by the way? Our company received an invitation but I didn’t give it a try yet.

Call-to-Action Titles

When you write your title tags, do you have the users in mind or just the robots?

While it’s important to write relevant title tags for SEO reasons, we should make sure our title tags are going to catch the users’ eyes and incite them to click on your site. Just like using call-to-actions text ads in Pay-Per-Click advertising, we can use this technique in the organic results. Because users are not robots, they should be treated differently, a robot won’t buy your products, a user can and you should make sure you write titles that can motivate their behavior.

Link titles on search engine listings are your most important element: because they are underlined and use a different color than the rest of the result, they are the main draw to get people to click on your link.

For example, if you are an electronics store and your advantage comparing to your competitors is your low prices, instead of writing something like:

Electronics: MP3 players, computers, cameras, home theaters and more!

You could write something like:

Consumer Electronics: Lowest Prices on All Electronics Since 1998

If you want to be more “aggressive”, you can even write words such as “click here” like WeBuildPages does:

If you want to rank higher, click here. Internet marketing …
We Build Pages is an Internet Marketing Company providing SEO Services. About Us – Home Page – Site Map – Contact We Build Pages …
www.webuildpages.com/ – 30k

In the mean time, you could also optimize your description and include call-to-action words and maybe promotional words.

Aaron tells you that SEO goes back to Traditional Marketing

One of the most respected SEOs, Aaron Wall, the famous author of SEO Book, has been interviewed recently by Lee Odden, President of TopRank Online Marketing.

He comments about the recent purchase of Threadwatch , the famous Internet Marketing discussion site/blog. The guy really impresses me, he really seems to be both a good SEO and a very skilled business man.

The most interesting question in the interview is :

“What do you think has been the biggest change this year affecting SEO or SEM?
”

when Aaron replies:

“Duplicate content filters and the reemergence of natural links. Seems to me all the blogs and whatnot make it to where a good viral marketer will typically be able to outperform most strictly search marketers. Search marketing is becoming more about traditional marketing. “

We can’t argue on this point. After the big chaos that Google created with Jagger, it’s obvious that most of the SEOs have to calm down a little bit on PageRank, reciprocal links and all kind of obsolete techniques and focus more on “traditional marketing”.

To set you apart from the crowd, you now need to create interesting content for your visitors, which will make it linkable. It’s quite easy to retain the attention of your visitors by writing articles that really touch to them.

For example, if you are in the debt market, you can write dozens of articles to help people make better choice regarding their debt problems, and also explain them how the solutions that you offer can relieve them. If you really create that kind of trust with your visitors, you can be sure that you will convert more of them and also have more people who will link to your site.

Aaron also speaks about “the trouble spots” he sees for search marketers:

“MarketingSherpa recently reported that affiliate marketing commissions this year will be greater than the amount spent on search marketing, and about 89% of what is spent on search marketing goes to the paid (non organic) side. To me that means that if you have an SEO service business model you really need to focus on keeping costs uber low or build a hell of a brand so you can charge out the nose. Otherwise your better off creating content for contextual ads and affiliate programs. “

That’s what most of the people have been talking about recently, it seems that you can make a living with affiliate programs with the increasing number of companies spending money on that kind of marketing.

Get your v7ndotcom elursrebmem T-shirt!

This whole contest is just crazy, I’ve already seen more than 20 websites participating! You can already get your goodies at Cafe Press.

I also decided to participate and created a blog for v7ndotcom elursrebmem , lol, we’ll see how it goes. I plan to write a story per day and get a couple of links….

One hour after I published my blog, I already received a comment from someone who visited my blog while I was the only person to know about it! Weird?

V7N Contest: already a number 1

V7N officially launched their SEO contest today, where the goal is to rank number 1 on Google for the term “v7ndotcom elursrebmem”

Pretty unique term, right? The winner will receive $4,000 and an iPod. The second prize is $500, and third through fifth places will receive $100 each.

I think it’s a pretty exciting contest, not only to know who is going to win, but more to see and analyze the techniques used, for example H1 tags, anchor texts, location of the keywords in the url or not, and also links. I’ll keep an eye on it and give some feedback on the things that I think make them rank well.
There is already 10 results for the keywords. The number 1 is a girl who chose to register the domain http://www.v7ndotcomelursrebmem2.com , good luck to all!

Did you change your SEO methods yet?

Everyone knows that Search Engine Optimization is not as easy as it was even 6 months ago. The Jagger update did prove to many of us that Google has become smarter and needs more than just keywords, links, and PageRank. SEO is also more time consuming and more advanced. Content has to updated frequently, navigation has to be easier, inner pages now need to get stronger incoming links.

Regarding links, you have to forget the idea of “the more, the better”. But instead, prefer the idea of “the most relevant, the better”. You don’t need hundreds of links to rank well, I recently noticed that one of my clients competitor ranks very well on Google for a very competitive search phrase and has only 100 links, while pages behind him have 500, or 1000 backlinks. During your link campaigns, target only those related directly to you. Even if it takes more time, don’t give up, keep contacting webmasters and let them know that your website exists and that it could be a great resource for their visitors. If you do ask kindly, there is no reason they should say no. Because that’s what all webmasters want, right? Provide useful information to their visitors.

One other thing that you should focus on is to make your website “visitor friendly”. Your website should be easy to use, provides comprehensive information and updated frequently. By focusing more on the user, you are more likely to have them revisit your website again. Also, a user friendly website makes a site more “linkable”. Online discussions and social bookmarking is booming: by having a great website, that sets you apart of the crowd, you will increase your chances of getting links from your visitors and your clients. For example, forums is a great example: you ofen see people recommending companies to other members who are looking for advices. They do that naturally, because they liked your website, the services you provide, or your customer service. It shows again that to improve your presence online and your sales, you need more than just search engine rankings.

SEO Principle? Another SEO Blog!? Again?

Hello and Welcome to my blog!

Yet a new SEO blog, but I hope you will enjoy it!

Let me tell you more about myself for those who don’t know me. My name is Nadir Garouche, and I do SEO for a living. I’m a 22 year old guy who graduated from a french Business School in June 2005 and decided to do Internet Marketing. I’ve always been passionated by the Internet and I love marketing, so I think that doing Internet Marketing was the best work I could have ever dreamed of!

I’m not an expert yet, but I’m impassioned by the wonderful world of Search Engine Optimization in particular and Internet in general. I work for a small firm located in Southern California called eVisibility (previously called Vnsco.com, we rebranded recently). I really like my company and the people I work with. It’s a small team but full of smart and talented people. For references, we are currently managing the SEO campaigns for clients such as LampsPlus, Allstudentloan or even Duke University. The passion that I have for SEO and the knowledge that I gained from many great folks on forums and blogs allowed me to lead successful campaigns for in-house clients but also for personal projects.

I think SEO is one of the most interesting field in the Web. I love it and I would like to use this blog to communicate with my fellow SEOs and also newly initiated people who would like to learn how to optimize their websites for the search engines.
So, see you at the next post and don’t hesitate to drop me a line if you’d like to ask any question!
Nadir