So, what’s the real benefit?

What are the benefits of purchasing an existing domain over a brand spanking new one from hosting companies like NameCheap of HostGator? History and authority. Two main factors Google looks at when ranking a website is how long the website has been around and the back links to it from other sites. The longer a website is around, the more potential it has for having other sites reference the site and link back to it…in theory, anyway. That’s why I typically look for an existing domain that is about to expire, has already expired or is for sell. If the site is indexed in Google, then oftentimes it is a better canvas from which to start than a blank one.

Where can I find a domain to buy?

Places like Ebay, Sedo and Flippa are known quantities for finding quality domains at decent prices. While the prices can escalate quickly when bidding on a top quality domain, there are oftentimes lots of domains for sell that offer very good value.

So, what do you look for when buying a domain?

The short list is:

• Age of the site
• How many links from other sites point to the domain
• What kind of traffic does the site get?
• Page Rank of the website

The above are just a sampling of what to look for but it is a fair amount of the overall value of a domain. Some of the items above may not matter much or represent a very small portion of the value of the domain, while others may be the very thing that can immediately make a huge impact to you as far as rankings go. The best way to know for sure is to ask an SEO consultant, but most times you can’t go wrong with buying an existing keyword rich domain. Be sure though, to check out the site’s history to make sure the previous owner hasn’t abused the domain in anyway (i.e. posting porn pics on the website).

If you haven’t located a good domain then you can always register a new one. It’s relatively straight forward to do. Pick whatever your main keyword phrase is and register a domain with that keyword phrase in it. This won’t apply to all businesses, however, but if you can…do it. A keyword rich domain is a very BIG step in the right direction towards ranking well for that keyword. So, if you’re main product that you sell are “red widgets”, then it would be a good idea to register or find an existing domain with the keywords “red widgets” in it. An example or two you ask? Certainly: “redwigets.com”, “bestredwidgets”, “redwidgetsco.com”, “red-widgets.com” are all really good examples. The key, of course, if finding a domain that isn’t already owned or being squatted on by someone else.

Good luck and feel free to leave some comments if you have anything to add.

• “a ‘-1′ button in the search result, so I can penalize pages I don’t want to see.”
• “a “search by date” and “search newest” options to be expanded to the main search page.”
• “showing results from inputting multiple domains or links and then having my search results limited to results appearing with those domains in common or as the base of my search.” (This would be an excellent time to implement a Twitter-esque hashtag/slash system like blekko).
• “the ability to see speech input across more Google Web services, starting with Google+.”
• “Incorporate Wayback Machine-like functionality into Google Search.”
• “as a user I would like to see spam-free SERPs. That’s all.” (wouldn’t we all )

My list of Google Features for 2012

and my own recs would be:

• Adding the ability to turn off personal search results without resorting to flushing cache and cookies or logging out of Google
• More intuitive searches that clearly separate textual searches from image, video and audio. (If i’m searching for “pepsi logo” it is fairly obvious that I only want to view pepsi logos. Google should automatically switch to “Image” results.)
• Index text in graphics.(Something Google has been working on for a while now.)
• The ability to search by regular expressions or plain HTML would be really nice.
• A complete revamp of the “Shopping results for…”
• Some way to natively see search results from different geographical regions (aka data centers) in the US
• Image upload search. I’d like to be able to upload a pic and have Google provide results.
• More relationship results. If I input “HP Touchpad” into Google instead of having the first 4 results show up that are HP’s own ads I would like to see links to the TouchPad’s OS, hardware specs, availability, etc.

I’m sure Google has quite the list of items it’s working on for the upcoming year. Rest assured that first and foremost is the continuation to protect authority and minimize if not eliminate spam and duplicate content. With the Panda updates Google has done a tremendous job of increasing the average relevancy and authority of a Google search this year. I’m looking forward to seeing what Google has up its sleeve for 2012.

Not sure what has really happened with Google. I’m assuming they are tinkering around with another panda-esque update. The reality is that ever since I took the Director of Marketing position over at Zexzoo/MyCitySocial I haven’t been doing much of anything as far as SEO is concerned with this site. So, these rankings could be temporary (though I was ranked #2 for weeks prior to today).

What’s likely the cause is the nature of the backlinks i’ve built to steffanhaeberle.com, how I have managed and maintained those backlinks and how I have automated the building of new backlinks to support both steffanhaeberle.com and the core backlinks built months ago. It’s all part of a multi-tiered on-site and off-site SEO strategy that I developed almost a year ago. It’s also why Zexzoo.com ranks so highly for super competitive keyword phrases like “daily deals” and why Rackwise.com continues to dominate the competition with keyword phrases like “data center management” and “data center software”. Not to mention the other sites I have that are self-supportive, automated and rank highly for other competitive keyword phrases that bring in substantial traffic and income to keep me in toys like my new 2012 Audi TT RS racecar.

What’s Your Secret to Successful SEO?

Well, the sauce is secret but it involves a highly optimized, keyword and content rich site combined with a core base of extremely authoritative back links from individual sites and from a network of linked and unlinked web 2.0 sites, new back links to the existing back links, regular news/press releases and an optimized social media campaign that is semi-automated. There you go!

I have no idea if steffanhaeberle.com will stay #1 for “las vegas seo” or if it will continue to climb for other keyword phrases I optimized and promoted it for (like “los angeles seo”) but I hope it will. It’s been fun to see this site continue to do well and rise in rankings though, especially since I haven’t been supporting this site as much as I probably should have.

EDIT (11/4/2011). Ah, looks like the company that used to be #1 is going through a name change because I am now seeing two websites in the top 10 for one company. The new (well, actually it was registered back in 2007) is now #1 so either they are going for the simpler domain name or someone left the company . Either way, it really won’t matter. This website was always a way for me to showcase and it has always done exactly that. It was never intended to be a website for bringing in clients. In fact, I have turned down numerous (far too many to count) requests for client work since February. I am #2 in Google as of today for “las vegas seo” and that is awesome, especially considering the nature of this site, it’s age and the limited amount of resources and time that have been put into it these past few months. Still, I will continue to test out unique SEO methods using this site and another site that is also an SEO “test” website. Though, to be honest I don’t have a lot of hope for my competitors in Las Vegas and LA.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to shoot me an email.

The short answer is to always…always appeal first and foremost to your audience. If your service or products is best described with multiple web pages or expanded marketing copy then BY ALL MEANS, make your website a multi-tiered, multi-paged website.

Sometimes a shorter, more concise website is better. If your business is best suited for a one or two paged website, say one that if dedicated to operating hours of your dry cleaner service, then a multi-paged website doesn’t really make sense.

But, what about for SEO?

So, you have a dry cleaners service in some city and you want to get the word out about your specials? Your question is “Is a one page website going to be better than a multi-paged website for capturing the top rankings for my keyword phrases?

Well, that’s a good question. The answer is…yes, a one page website would be fine for your business. Why? Because you are most interested in telling your visitors about your business and a multi-paged, multi-tiered website does NOT do you the best service. You have to ask yourself: “Do I really have enough content for more than one or two pages on my website?. The answer, is typically no…and i’ve worked on too many of these types of website to count.

From a strictly SEO perspective, a one-page website, for two, three, four or even eight keywords will work ABSOLUTLEY FINE for rankings. The key is to always build a website for your customers and NEVER for Google. I always try to condense as much as possible, a client’s website so there are as few clicks as possible between the entry point of website and the information a visitor is searching for.

As few clicks as possible

Let me say that again…ALWAYS build a website with the purpose of offering as FEW CLICKS as possible between the entry point of a website and the potential information a visitor needs. So few websites actually follow this strategy. It’s more UX design and user retention than true SEO but often times, useability and effenciency trump pure SEO.

So, if you think you need 10 pages to describe your company’s product or service, my advice to you is to reassess your website and consolidate your site, if needed. Most of the websites I have worked on have about 50% too much “fluff”, which, while increases the potential for traffic from longer tail keywords, has an overwhelming potential of diluting the value of the core keyword phrases.

If ranking at the top of Google for a few keywords is your ultimate goal, then a simple, consolidated website, with concentrated content is a great starting point.

Got a comment or question? Feel free to leave a comment here or contact me directy through the contact form on this site

Many businesses have no doubt come across the problem of having their names, products or services talked about online in an unflattering manner. There’s the usual list of items someone can try in order to remove negative comments which include responding to the negative comment with a possible resolution, petitioning the site owner to have the comment removed or going so far as the take legal action. What if all those measures fail?

There’s something else you can try, something very easy that works extremely well in practice. If you are dealing with dealing with trying to remove a negative comment from a blog or a forum, try this:

Assuming the website or forum is still open to adding additional comments, create a comment of your own, make sure you reply with an image (like a smiley face or personal signature) that is hosted on one of your servers or a server you have access to. Let a few more comments be posted by others and let some time pass, then change out the image on your server with one that is obviously copyrighted or against Google’s TOS. File a report with Google, telling them there’s an indexed page in their SERPs containing illegal content and Google will de-index the page.

You can report the website using this link: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en&pli=1

Is this ethical? Absolutely, in the cases where you are trying to suppress negative comments that are malicious, fabricated, inaccurate or deceptive and after you’ve tried all other methods.

This definitely works and combined with other methods (including a few I’ll keep secret for now), you can eliminate just about any negative reference to your business.

Yesterday, I noticed that many of those sites were now showing Page Rank which matched close to what it was just a couple of months ago. It appears that Google has updated the PR again, possibly updating the very algorithm they created. I’ve seen many report that this latest update has not affected every site, which leads me to believe this might be a fix to the algo change they did a few short weeks ago or it could be just one stage, the next coming soon.

This all seems extremely strange of Google. Not like them at all. I don’t think you can exactly call this a rollback because many of my sites and client sites aren’t back to where they were and new sites have gained in PR as expected. So, Google…what gives?

Funny that through all this, it appears that Twitter throughout the day was bouncing from PR 0 to PR 9 and back. Hello, Google…what are you doing? LOL

A couple of my sites are still lower than usual. Hopefully, Google and their PR team gets their acts together. I know many feel Page Rank is passe but every factor at Google should be included when performing SEO for websites. While I have not seen much difference in SERPS from this PR change it is interesting what Google is up to.

What’s your experience with the latest PR bump from Google? Seeing sites lower or higher and how has it affected your traffic and revenue?

This isn’t necessarily a “How-To” but this article does include some solid points to keep in mind for promoting yourself to get more clients, a better job or to connect with other like minded people in the SEO field.

My particular journey started about a year ago when I took my current website steffanhaeberle.com and decided to do something more with it than have it be just the glorified one page resume that it was. You can check out what it used to look like here http://steffanhaeberle.com/v1. I decided my website would feature a little bit about everything I knew about SEO, print and online marketing, social media, design and development. I let my experience lead the way.

Step 1: Establish A Main Goal

First thing I did was to define exactly what I wanted my site to be and do. Did I want to use it to get more clients? Use it to find a better job? Make more connections? I had to decide exactly who my target audience was and once I established that and the intent of my website I started on designs.

I decided this website would be my resume. I was going to add my resume in pdf format on it, articles which featured useful information for everything from design to SEO, design and development to showcase my skill and I would position my site in Google for targeted keywords to prove my expertise. All sounds easy, right?

Step 2: The Design

It took me three very different and unique design attempts before I settled on this design. In all, I worked on the design for this site for three weeks. I ultimately choose bits and pieces from various sites that I admired and viola, steffanhaeberle.com had its own look.

Step 3: Development

For this site I chose WordPress and PHP. I heavily modified the standard theme and installed and modified the various plug-ins that I knew I needed to complete this site. Total time for development: around 3 weeks.

Step 4: Setup For SEO and Social Media

A few of the plugins I installed included social media network integration. I connected this site to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I added a couple of videos and several images via YouTube and flickr. I relied on my knowledge and experience in SEO to optimize Steffanhaeberle.com so it will appear in search engines on the first page for all my targeted keywords.

Step 5: Testing

I spent many weeks in optimizing and promoting my website so it appears in Google on the first page. I continued to write articles and promote them through social networks and other SEO techniques. I stayed active on Twitter and Facebook and integrated that activity into my site. There was unique, relevant content on this site on a daily basis, which was critical for its success.

Step 6: My Site Is My Resume

After a few months I was getting a lot of targeted traffic and several monthly requests for more information on social media, seo, design and development. I was beginning to pick and chose my clients. If I found a position online that I felt met my criteria, I never emailed a resume but included a short paragraph about my skills and experience and forwarded the link to this website.

Lessons Learned

This site has become a great learning experience and I have learned a lot from promoting and optimizing this site along with several other websites I own, manage and promote. Having your own site is critical to your success. After all, if you can’t do for a client what you can’t or haven’t done for yourself, how is a client going to believe in you? My advice would be to follow my lead. It’s always a good idea to showcase your skills and experience and this site, for me, has been that perfect example. It assisted me in landing the job I wanted and am continually receive requests for new work and consultations.

I continually use my websites to test new SEO techniques and I continually use it to make new contacts and stay connected within the community.

My last bit of advice would be create the opportunities for yourself you seek from others. Sure, you probably will be reaching too highly to start your own rival site to Facebook, but you can learn quite a bit about how Facebook operates and functions if you attempt to replicate at least some of its functionality on your own site. Lastly, if you are looking for design, development or SEO work there is absolutely no better sales tool than your own website. Resumes may not be quite dead yet but websites like mine and sites like LinkedIn are making the resume passe. Today, clients and employers want to see examples, not paper resumes or letters of recommendations.

It’s taken a lot of work from design to development to marketing, advertising and SEO. We have a quality sales team that has put together some truly fantastic deals and i’m sure in time, Zexzoo.com will be a great success.

In time we hope that Zexzoo and the Zexzoo Daily Deals will become a household name. We already are getting a lot of exposure and I have already gotten Zexzoo.com to the top 15 sites for “daily deals” and “daily coupon/s”.

Check us out! Maybe you’ll find some great deals too!

This is really interesting. Google seems to be doing some testing on a new layout for its SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages). While I was able to test the new layout extensively two days ago it seems to now be gone.

New Layout for Google?

It’s not so much a new layout as it is a lot of added padding and new colors for the text. Nothing else is really new or different…just added space and new colors.

Google rarely does anything these days that doesn’t help big business first and foremost. On the surface, this looks like another step in that direction. The added spacing between search results really presents a problem to the lower ranked websites on any given result page with this new layout. It will take increased scrolling by the end user to view the lower websites.

How much extra white space is there now between the listings?

Without getting the old trusty ruler out I would say there is roughly three times the space around and between each listing. Not only has the white space increased between each listing but also between the title, description and link within each listing. See for yourself in the pic below:

As i’ve said, there seems to be ample cause for the undoubtedly massive outcry from businesses who will now be beneath “the fold”. I foresee, a lot of complaint and angry Google customers. I wonder how many companies have already threatened to pull advertising from google if this update actually goes live.

Once this change does go live, assuming it does at all, it will likely take me a few days in order to tell exactly what impact this has on traffic and conversions.

I wonder though if the spacing actually promotes user scroll. There’s a psychology behind this update, that’s for sure. Since this update effectively makes each listing more separate, maybe it will actually helps sites that appear in the lower half of the page, as well as those lower ads that appear on the right hand side. I wonder if google will start putting ads on the lower left hand side of the first page too, making it ever more critical to be ranked on the first page of google but giving more value to those that do.

I’ve heard lately that Google has been meeting with customers to discuss the strategy behind this update and the consensus is that this update may very well be to increase the competitiveness of both the ads and lower listings on any page. This may be Google’s attempt to make those ads in the 4 to 6 positions more competitive with those in the 1 to 3 positions. This update could very well make those sites that show up in the 6 to 10 positions more competitive to those in the 1 to 5 positions.

What do you think? I have heard nothing from Google on when they will go live or if they even will at all.

How does your presence on those social networks potentially help your website, assuming you have one.

If you do have a website and want to rank highly for certain keywords then by all means, utilize your social network presence to your site’s advantage.

How do you do that?

Well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it!? The answer is yes and in theory, doing so is simplistic in nature. You want people in your various networks to know who you are, what you do and how you do it. After all, that is the nature of a social network, isn’t it? Yes, of course.

So, tying in your personal website and letting everyone know about it on your social networks is just a way to let people know a little more about you. The benefit of doing so is that it’s good for SEO.

How do social networks benefit my website in so far as SEO is concerned?

Simple! Google, Bing! and Yahoo all look at activity from social networks and use that data in its search algorithm. Google’s own Matt Cutts late last year even stated that Google was utilizing more and more data from Facebook and Twitter and incorporating it into its search algorithm. Given, if two equal sites in all respects tried to rank for “red widgets”, the one that integrated social networking into its site and leveraged social networking would have the advantage and thus appear higher in the search engines.

Exactly how does a site leverage social networks to its benefit?

You are asking yourself by now “How can I use Facebook and Twitter to help get my site ranked higher?” and that’s a great question. The answer is somewhat simple. You “talk up” your website and integrate social networks into your site. Here’s some advice, when you create an article or add a new piece of content on your website, tweet about it. Post it on your Wall and Check-In on FourSquare and comment about it. Link back to your site wherever and whenever you can. As you know, back links are important for SEO and back links from social networks like Twitter and Facebook are fantastic!

What do I mean by “integrating social networks into my site”? If you look at this website, you’ll notice that it’s virtually impossible to leave a comment without logging in using Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. So, you want to implement functionality into your website so it is easy for visitors to login, check in, and “Like” content on your website. Make your website as social network-friendly as possible.

So, the checklist is:

- Add new content and tweet about it, put it on your wall and get the word out on other social networks, with links back to your website.

- Add functionality to your own website so people can interact on your site using social networks. Let your visitors interact using their Facebook or Twitter personas. Let them comment or Like or +1 or Tweet content on your site.

The writing on the wall is clear. Social networks will only increase in prominence and importance over time…especially where SEO is concerned. As a rule of thumb going forward, you want to add unique, relevent content on a regular basis and tell everyone on your social networks about that content and let those people comment on your own website using their social network accounts.

That’s it for now. Good luck and if you like this article please login using Facebook or Twitter and leave a comment, Like it or tweet it. Thanks.