To get more search engine traffic there are a lot of things you can do. You can read all about search engine optimization until you go blind. You could even hire an SEO consultant if you have money to burn. You could comment on a thousand blogs a day with a link back to your website. You could research keywords with Google’s keyword tool, the AdSense keyword tool, and the AdWords keyword tool. And, don’t forget about the Google keyword research tool.

What the–?

Has Arctic Llama lost his mind? Aren’t all of those tools listed up there the same thing? In fact, some of those tools don’t even exist! Maybe it’s time to look elsewhere for information about quality website content writing that drives more search engine traffic to websites. What kind of professional freelance writer would write such a thing?

It is possible.  But before you go, let me explain. Then, you just might be wondering if those OTHER websites you are reading are filling you in on all the details, or if they even know them. (O.K. Maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration.)

Content Is King … IF Content Matches the Search Exactly

If you’ve been writing online for more than five minutes, you have read that content is king. That isn’t necessarily as true as it sounds. In the end, content may be king, but there is a lot of road in between your website, the search engines, the searchers, and the end.

Here is the ugly reality. A title tag that matches EXACTLY to what a Google user types into the search engine box is much more likely to be returned as a high search ending ranking result than one that is off by even a single word, or a single reversed word order!

To see what I’m getting at, fire up a web browser. Any web modern web browser will do. If you still have Internet Explorer 7, or heaven forbid, Internet Explorer 6, you’ll have to finesse the experiment a little bit by searching for something completely unrelated to anything you have ever searched for before. Try something like knitting needles, or Ford transmissions, or maybe Oxnard, California.

If you have a current browser, just open up the Privacy Mode. In Internet Explorer it is called Privacy Mode. In Google Chrome it is called Incognito Mode, and in Firefox it is called Private Browsing. The point of using the private mode is to keep Google from using all of the cookies and other data stored on your computer to “customize” or otherwise skew the results you get from your search.

In private mode, type in any Google search you would like. Just make it at least four words and try and make it an actual English phrase that someone might actually write or say. Then, try rephrasing the same search by changing just one word, or adding just one word, or subtracting just one word. Do you get the same search results each time or are they different? Look closely. Just because #1 search result is the same doesn’t mean you are getting the same results.

Click the image to see a bigger version.

This is two seemingly very related searches on Google on 03/28/2010 using Google Chrome in Incognito Mode. The search on the left is for make soft rice krispie treats and the search on the right is for making soft rice krispie treats. (Links go to my article on soft rice crispie treats on my parenting website. – See what I did there with the spelling?) Now, this is hardly night and day difference in searches, and yet, the search rankings and search results are not the same.

Now, Google claims that they take synonyms into account, but technically make and making are not synonyms. Of course, that can be said about most words. That is why there are two words!

For example, automobile includes more types of motorized vehicles than cars does, and motorized vehicles includes several kinds of recreational vehicles and such that would not count as automobiles. In other words, synonyms can be tricky business.

In this case, however, the point is that one gets very different search engine result rankings based on only the tiniest of variations in the search. Although the #1 results remains the same (as does my article on my parenting skills website at #8), the search results ranked #4, #5, and #7 disappear altogether from the first page of search results if one changes a single word in the search. The #3 and #6 ranked search results become #4 and #5 in the second search.

These difference might not seem like much to the inexperienced eye, but an online content pro knows that there is an enormous difference between ranking in the Top 5 and the next five. There is an even bigger difference between being on the first page of search results and being on the second page.

Ironically, the same article on Undefeated Daddy that ranks #8 in both of these searches also ranks #8 in a search for soft rice krispie treats trick. Look closely and you’ll see that this article turns up on the top page of Google search results because the title of another article on that site happens to have the word “trick” in it.

I am completely aware that these are not important search phrases, and that these keywords not only do not pay per click very much, but that they also do not drive much traffic. However, at least a few visitors each day end up there due these various searches. More importantly, there are other “accidental” or slightly “incorrect” searches that people make on Google that send much more valuable traffic to websites I own based on variations very similar to these. (I wouldn’t use the golden goose as an example!)

The point is that depending upon the topic of your article, there may be some real value in ensuring that you capture multiple ways of saying the same thing in order to match searches as close to exactly as possible each and every time. As a matter of fact, in certain circumstances it might be advisable to allow a typo or two to sail through in order to match up with those searchers who aren’t as precise in their use of language.

If an extra 1,000 visitors happen to hit one of your webpages because a search for Attorney Generals matches a line in the second paragraph of your post that oddly enough is the only time you didn’t use the correct term, Attorneys General, I’d say that is a worthwhile typo. Wouldn’t you?

While you are at it, make sure that article also includes AG, AGs, and, if it can be fit without being inaccurate, you might also want to consider DA, DAs, and District Attorney for those who might not have the knowledge or the inclination to be precise in their query. (Notice the varying use of search and query in this article. Query is more technical, while search is more common. Does it matter which one is “right” if they end up getting readers here to where they find information they were looking for?)

Those four different search tools I referenced up at the top of this article? It is not the purpose of this blog to rank highly for those terms, but if someone happens to come along who wants to know how to change their writing to get more traffic from keywords they research in the Google keyword tool, guess where they just might end up?

Do you use multiple ways of saying things in your posts or articles? Do you ever ignore typos or purposely use slightly incorrect grammar or spelling in order to catch a bigger pool of fish?

SEO is all smoke and mirrors.  It doesn’t work.  None of the tips, tricks, or software out there really does much of anything to boost the ranking on your SERP, aka Search Engine Ranking Page, particularly from Google.  Yet, there are a multitude of professionals and non-professionals alike constantly beating the drum about all of these things you can do to improve your search ranking.  Collectively, these techniques are known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

In reality, only three things matter.  One is how many links there are to a specific webpage (adjusted in unknown fashion for quality of link).  The second is what your title tag is.  The third is how many other sites there are with the same title tag keywords as the search entered.

Everything else, is just billable hours for a SEO consultant.

Mystery and History of SEO

Google’s original rise to become the preeminent search engine on the Internet was based almost solely on the fact that its search results were “better” than the results from other search engines ranging from Yahoo Search, to Altavista, to Alexa, to whatever Microsoft’s search engine was called back then, if they had one.  Better, in the search world, means being able to find more sites than the other guys, and for all of the sites that are found to be more relevant and less spammy than the sites returned by others.

While it took Google’s spider a while to achieve it, there can be little doubt today that Google’s index of Internet webpages is the largest one.  That takes care of the first criteria.  For the second criteria, things get a little trickier.

The OSEs (Original Search Engines) relied almost entirely on counting the number of keyword or key-phrases on a webpage.  Later, they tried to use meta tags like description, and keywords, to help tune the results.  Unfortunately, these criteria are incredibly easy to manipulate.  It didn’t take long before webspam (as Google calls it) was filling up search engine results by repeating keywords hundreds of times.  When search engines began to filter out that technique, websites took to creating articles stuffed with keywords.  Same thing with the meta tags.

Google’s Search Algorithm Core

What let Google stand out from the pack was an algorithm that did not depend as heavily on what was on a webpage.  Instead, Google ranked pages based on who linked to them and how good those links were.  Since no one was actively trying to trick an algorithm like that, the rankings were surprisingly good because they were natural and not influenced by any SEO techniques.

Eventually, of course, all of that changed.  As SEOs and SEO companies shifted tactics, new spamming tricks arose, things like link farms and paid-links.  At every step, Google did its best to detect and filter out such tricks.  And, it was very good at it, which allowed its search engine rankings to remain the best on the web even though every other search engine in the world started mimicking Google’s core ranking principal of counting the number of links.

If you want to cut to the chase, read Matt’s “disclaimer” at the top of the post about PageRank Scuplting in which he says that at least since 2000, the search engine ranking scheme that is repeated nearly verbatim by every SEO around has been through major modifications and updates.  Nearly 10 years later, one can assume it would be nearly unrecognizable, but that doesn’t stop the converted from preaching to the choir.

SEOs Become Ineffective, But No One Notices

Here is where things get weird.  Over the years since the basic Google algorithm became common knowledge, tiny tidbits of information about how rankings are determined have trickled out.  Concepts like the Google Sandbox and so on also became part of the SEO knowledge base, but then it all stopped.  In the last few years there have been virtually no new techniques added to the pile of SEO tricks.  So, either you believe that Google stopped improving its system, or you have to believe that SEOs have been made irrelevant.  Oddly, most people somehow choose to believe that both statements are false, although such an outcome is mutually exclusive.

These days, only two widely accepted ideas actually retain any value.  One is the Title tag which is still overly influential in how a specific page ranks for a particular keyword or keyphrase.  The other is how many links there are pointing to a particular webpage using particular keywords.

This became inherently obvious thanks to something called Google Bombing.  Google Bombing is when a lot of websites all link to a specific webpage using a specific keyword phrase.  When enough sites do this, the webpage targeted would rise through the ranks of Google’s search rankings.  The most famous Google Bomb incident was making President George Bush (The Younger) bio page at whitehouse.gov to rank #1 for the phrase “miserable failure” despite the fact that neither word appeared anywhere in any form on the page.

In other words, ranking for a search term has much less to do with what is on a webpage than it does with what is on the pages that link to it. From here on out, the techniques of so-called search optimization experts didn’t evolve much.  Instead, what evovled was their sales pitch.

SEOs today don’t say they can get you to a #1 Search Engine Ranking in a keyword or phrase that is commonly used (because they can’t) but rather that they can give you a number one SERP spot for not-commonly used, or less competitive, keywords.  In fact, the SEO business is less about getting you a ranking than telling you what you should be trying to rank for!  It is about here that we jumped off the wagon, though we kept listing it as a service offering to remain competitive with other writers.  (We’ve never had a SEO only project.)

Recently, Matt Cutts, one of Google’s Senior Webspam Engineers and owner of a nearly universally read blog in the world of SEO outed the so-called SEO-pros in a blog posting, although none of them are acknowledging it that way.  In a June 15, posting on Cutt’s blog he states in clear terms that one of the most common SEO tactics, which he terms PageRank Scultping, is utter nonsense.

PageRank Sculpting is the practice of trying to improve the PageRank of specific webpages by linking to them in specific ways, while at the same time either not linking, or adding the nofollow tag to the links that don’t point to the exact locations you want them to.  The idea being that this will channel all of your good linking juju, known as “Link Juice” around the web to your best pages which will make them rank higher.

It turns out, that despite the concept being practiced and touted by virtually EVERY SEO anywhere (until June 15th, that is), it is utter nonsense that hasn’t worked for a very long time.

The important points from Matt’s post:

More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows

…some crawl/indexing/quality folks noticed some sites that attempted to change how PageRank flowed within their sites, but those sites ended up excluding sections of their site that had high-quality information

And then, the kicker that proves SEO is nothing more than Internet snakeoil:

Q: Why tell us now?
A: For a couple reasons. At first, we figured that site owners or people running tests would notice, but they didn’t. In retrospect, we’ve changed other, larger aspects of how we look at links and people didn’t notice that either, so perhaps that shouldn’t have been such a surprise.

In other words, the only SEO tricks that the Search Engine Optimization community knows are those that are either a) out of date, or b) spoon fed to so-called SEO-pros so that the work they do will be more in line with what Google wants them to be doing.  While Matt’s rationale for releasing the information is no doubt accurate up to a point, it likely isn’t the whole truth.

Google has probably noticed that the affects of PageRank sculpting have been making Google’s rankings worse and the complexity of fixing it by undoing what SEO experts are telling everyone to do, is no longer worth it.  By passing out this tidbit, Google can end the practice of adding nofollow links to all manner of links on various websites for no reason other than attempting to artificially raise the ranking of another page on the website.

All of which leads inexorably to here.  For every petty trick that some SEO claims to “know for a fact that it works” there is a counter-move in Google’s search engine ranking algorithm.  If having a long URL with keywords separated by hyphens ever did help get a higher page rank, you can be sure that as soon as it became ridiculous, that Google either stopped using it altogether or made major modifications to how the data was used.  Unfortunately, the SEO experts never changed their advice, so now thousands of websites have unweildly URLs that offer no benefit, but ensure that they will never be used or remembered by humans.  You have to wonder how much that advice was worth.

We’ve been working on some search engine ranking tests of our own.  Some, ironically, were to prove that certain SEO tactics offered no benefit.  Others are to discover what things might actually have usable value.

In the meantime, the best advice is the same as it has always been.  Producing good quality, useful, information and lots of it is the best way to a higher page rank.  From that part of SEO, we CAN help improve your website’s PageRank by writing customized high-quality content on your topic.  Maybe, we are SEO professionals after all.

If this weren’t an online blog that depended in no small measure on the traffic generated by readers looking for information via search engines, that title would have been more catchy, more appealing, and more fun.  In other words, more likely to grab the reader’s interest and more likely to be enjoyed by the reader.  Something like, “Are Search Engines Putting the Web To Sleep?” or “Could This Title BE Anymore Boring”.

But, alas, the world of search engines has become mired in the groupthink caused by Google’s rapid and unprecedented rise to the top of the mature Internet.  As the first company to come along and develop something so powerful that web users flocked to it based upon comparing it to other offerings, as opposed to becoming number 1 because the number of competitors was zero, Google’s methods are overly emulated.  Nowhere is that more apparent than in the search engine universe.

A recent posting on Microsoft’s Live Search blog led me to bang out a rather lengthy comment.  The post in question contends that search engines try to look for keywords where writers put them.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Search engines USED to look for keywords where writers put them, in the text.  But, keyword stuffing led to new search engine ranking techniques, one of which is highly valuing the title tag.

Search Engines do not look where writers put their most important keywords and key phrases, writers put their most important keywords and key phrases where search engines look.

The search engine companies, predominately Google, advocated and defended this approach by insisting over and over that titles were the most relevant content.  Ironically, this actually makes it easier to spam web search results because you know exactly where to put the target words AND you know that professionally written materials may not sacrifice readability for the sake of search engine rankings.  Thus, your spammy keywords are now guaranteed to be used by the search engines AND the competition will be lower.

Titles Were Never About Keywords

Of course, any professional writer or professional publication actually writes their titles not with any keywords or key phrases in mind, but rather with the goal of “hooking” the reader.  In fact, nothing turns a reader off faster than a title like, “Analyzing Mutual Fund Expense Ratios” which is why an article on that topic in any respected publication other than a text book would carry a much different title.  A title like, “What’s Really Keeping Your Returns Low” would be much more likely.  Yet, the former is much better for search engine rankings.

Take a look at the Best Selling Business Books on the New York Times Bestseller list.  Count the number of keywords that would help that book get a better search engine ranking.  If you want to be really fair, count the number of keywords excluding those that make up part of phrase or sentence that is tacked on to the title, because on a webpage, those wouldn’t count as titles, they would be content.

I can’t find it anymore (please e-mail me or post a comment if you can find it), but there was once an article on Inuit’s small business web area regarding how they had to change their title tags in order to rank properly in the search engines.

You see, the title for the Quickbooks webpage once had “Quickbooks” as the first word in its title tag.  But, searches for “accounting software” considered that to be an inferior keyword.  So, some thin content, spammy, website with the title tag “accounting Software” or even more cleverly, “Best Accounting Software” would be counted, on that measure, as a better fit for the search.  So, Intuit had to change their title tag.  Today, it reads, “Small Business Accounting Software from Intuit Quickbooks”  Which actually makes for a lesser browsing experience for the user because with tabbed browsing only part of the title displays when multiple tabs are open.  So, if you want to click on the Quickbooks tab, you’ll have to figure that out when all you can see is “Small Busine…” on your tab.  Good luck, if you are comparing 4 or 5 small business products at once.

Titles Are Not For Keywords, If You’re a Human

In a post on the Live Search Webmaster Center Blog the author repeats the “it’s where important words are” fiction yet again.  My comment, reposted here for my readers, points out that in reality writers are forced to either write “bad” titles, or more commonly to write two titles, one of the reader and one for the search engines.  The title for readers is the one that the human beings read at the top of the page.  The title for search engines is the one that most humans routinely ignore which is the one in tiny font up on the top border of your browsing window, certainly NOT where writers put their most important words.

Whether titles are or are not a good method of judging and ranking search engine results is open to debate (though I say no), however, it is not at all in doubt that writers do not now, nor have they ever put their most important keywords in places like titles, headings, or chapter titles, EXCEPT when they are doing so at the command of search engine algorithms.

Search Engines do not look where writers put their most important keywords and key phrases, writers put their most important keywords and key phrases where search engines look.

My Comment Submitted on the Live Search Blog:

Holy groupthink, Batman!

“Search engines look for keywords and key phrases to be in spots where writers use them to emphasize key points.”

“For example, words used in page titles are considered definitive for assessing the contents of that page. ”

NOT!

That isn’t using keywords and key phrases in spots where WRITERS use them.  That’s using keywords and key phrases where Google says they are supposed be.  Which came from asking programmers and technical writers where they think keywords should be.

Maybe technical manuals have chapter titles and headings that are composed of keywords.  But, if you want someone to read something without having to put it in the box with the software, that won’t work.

Writers know that titles are supposed to be catchy and to intrigue your audience to read on after seeing the title.  Nothing is more boring than, “Improving Productivity By Categorizing Email,” and in the real world, this title is considered amateurish and will likely be re-written by the editor lest it turn off the reader from reading the article.

Top 5 Titles From the New York Times Business Best Seller List:
1) Outliers
2) House of Cards
3) The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide
4) Peaks and Valleys
5) 10-10-10

How many keywords do you count in those titles?

It’s not just books.  Read the headlines in any magazine, newspaper, or book sitting near your desk right now that is not a technical manual.  See lots of keywords?

You want proof that this whole title has the most important keywords concept is nothing but a giant pile of B.S.?  Look at how many websites and webpages have one title for the search engines, and a different title for the readers.  That is the result of writers having to write a DIFFERENT title for search engines, not the result of search engines looking for how writers use keywords.

One of the most oft recommended WordPress plug-ins is All-In-One-SEO.  It’s primary feature is helping the author create a SECOND title for search engines so that writers can write real, entertaining headlines and titles for their readers and plain, robotic, no stop keywords, headlines for the search engines.

Your search engine does not look for keywords and key phrases where writers use them, it looks for keywords and key phrases where you TOLD WRITERS TO PUT THEM.

By the way, just to beat a dead horse.  I’ll be posting this with the help of the All-In-One-SEO WLW plug-in and companion WordPress plug-in sot that I can doctor up that title for better search engine readability.

Do some reading on domain names and what good ones are, as well as a little bit on search engine optimization and eventually you will come across the very sound advice to only use www.domain.com or domain.com, but not both.

The idea is two-fold.  First, you don’t want to lose out on your search engine rankings by having people (and yourself) point to both www.arcticllama.com AND arcticllama.com, because the search engines consider these to be different pages.  Second, you don’t want to confuse visitors who might wonder what the “real” address is, even though it doesn’t really matter.

What you won’t find is advice on which one is the better choice.  Most sites will just say, choose whichever one you like and go with it.  Well, I’ve found that there is a best practices for choosing whether or not to use www in your domain name.

Don’t use WWW in your domain name.  Why?

As the Internet evolves, things are always changing.  One change underway right now is the emergence of mobile-based or mobile versions of websites.  While there is no standard practice yet, many sites are choosing to use an “m” and then the domain name, like m.arcticllama.com for their mobile sites.  (I don’t have one yet.)

If you are using www, like I am, you are boxed out of doing this.  We never know what the future will bring, but there might be all manner of single letter prefixes for various things, or other evolutions.  Either way, the www will only hamper you, while the no www provides full flexibility.

Unfortunately, I did all of my recent sites with www, so I’ll be working over the next months to eliminate that without causing any harm to my site’s traffic.

Save yourself the trouble, and use your domain name without the www and then set up your site so that any visitors to www.domain.com get redirected to domain.com.  You’ll thank me later.

Recently, I’ve noticed that the more time I spend trying to “SEO” my various sites and pages, the less I actually write.  That is a HUGE problem, because it turns out that nothing, and I mean nothing, counts as much for search engine results rankings than writing, or as the SEO pros call it, content.

While you are busy editing tags and trying to get the right headers to be H2 or H3 tags and you are out trying to get people to link to your articles using exactly the right keywords, your pages are slipping down the Google rankings.

Why?

They are getting older, less useful, and less read by your audience.

Let a week go by without updating your blog and you can watch your ranking fall from 11 to 13 even if you have been getting more and more links or tweaking your CSS or whatever.

On the other hand, post at least every 3 days or so and you’ll see your blog moving up in the rankings, certainly not for every keyphrase, but for plenty of key words and key phrases that are important to you and your readers.

I have email conversations with people all the time trying to nail down whether posting at 6:05 am is better than posting at 6:25 am who haven’t posted AT ALL in days!  I tell them, go post something NOW, then worry about it.  After all, you never know when the Google spider is going to drop by.  How much would it suck if you carefully scheduled your post for 6:11 AM only to have Google index your site at 5:59 AM with nothing but 11 day old articles on your home page?

Let Search Come To You

Don’t get me wrong, some things are important, but they are the no brainers.

1. Use Keywords in Your Title Tag – If you want to be funny or clever, install a plug-in that lets you create a different title meta tag than the title visible on your article.
2. Link Internally Often – You would be shocked and appalled to realize how much your own links help your search ranking.  Link your related posts as much as possible.  This is one thing Live Writer can really help you with.  Just highlight a keyword, click link and then select link to previous post.  It will fill in the rest for you.
3. Alt Tag Your Images – It never ceases to amaze me how many people find one of my sites via image searches.  It happens because no one really bothers to alt tag their images.
4. Link Out – For all the talk about “link juice” and nofollow tags, you would think that Google bodyslams sites that link to other sites.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Your (non-nofollow) links to quality sites shows that you are providing quality content, and Google loves that.  So link out and don’t worry about your juice.

Lately, my traffic comes almost 90% from search engines.  That is down from about 98% at the beginning of the year.  Is it because I’m getting less visitors from search engines?  Actually, it is the opposite.

What IS happening is that more and more visitors are getting here other ways.  There are some that are “direct” (they came here by typing the name or using a bookmark), and some more that are “referrals” (they came here by clicking a link to the site).  If they get here and it looks the same as it did the last time they dropped by, chance of them coming back start to drop as well.

In the meantime, my sites don’t rank worth a darn on many of their “target” keywords or keyphrases, but guess what?  They rank 1, 2, 10, or 20 on plenty of keywords and phrases that I never thought of (and that never showed up on WordTracker) and those bring in plenty of traffic.

You never know when you will write something about automatic tweets just as a way to relate with your audience about what you are trying to accomplish and end up ranking 1 or 2 for the term.

Go ahead.  Try it.  Search for automatic tweets or auto tweets and see who is up near the top of the list.  — Hi, it’s me!

Not that I need, nor know anything about what to do with traffic looking for information on automatic tweets, but if I’m lucky one or two of them will be writers too.  And, maybe, they’ll decide that this is a good destination for a writer and, maybe they’ll link to me on their own without any begging from me.

Then, I get to do what I love, which is to write, not to kiss ass to try and get links or Diggs, or whatever.

Unless the purpose of your site is to sell stuff (some sort of shopping thing) then bag the SEO and just keep writing.  You’ll probably come out way ahead.

So, like many others, I have read with some dubiousness about the exploits of others using Squidoo lenses to great affect for building up their links and increasing traffic to their various freelance writing projects or just to their own writing in general.

Now, I have no doubt that someone who is dedicated to building up a portfolio of several dozen lenses, linking them from all of the back corners of the Internet, and generally telemarketing the web, can build up a significant enough of a presence on Squidoo to both be “featured” and have sycophants willing to re-link and re-promote said lenses and/or their targets to make Squidoo lenses very good traffic building tools.

I, like most other successful professional writers, am busy doing other things and will not be dedicating myself to becoming a Squidoo Guru or Squidoo Master or whatever it is that they are calling themselves these days.  That being said, can an ordinary Squidoo lens thrown together in a matter of 45 or 60 minutes generate any traffic or other benefit at all?

To test, I have created a Squidoo lens that for SEO purposes I have titled, Investing Information Guides.  The lens for the most part links to an editing gig I have at Bright Hub where I am the managing editor for the nascent Investing Channel, which for SEO purposes I will not link with those words despite that being the best and most intuitive place to link from, because those would not be good “long tail keywords”.  Instead, I will link thusly to my work as How-To Investing Guides for Beginners.

This link should ensure that next time the search bots come by here that they will at least see the link and head on over to take a look.  Then, we see if there is any benefit.

• Do the links from my Squidoo lens show up as inbound links?
• Is there any increase in traffic?
• Does Google Analytics show any additional Direct traffic from the Squidoo.com domain name?

We’ll see how it goes.

Oh, and in the interest of further self-promotion, here is a link to my latest investing guide titled Dividend Stock Investing Guide.

(Wow. Microsoft Office Clip Organizer came up with 21 clip-art or photos for squid.  Impressive.)

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If you are serious about your blog or website, then you have to have an XML sitemap in the root directory of your site. 

If you are running a WordPress blog, that can be easier than it sounds thanks to a free plugin called XML Sitemap Builder WordPress plug-in.  The XML sitemap building plugin automatically creates a Google format sitemap and then updates it every time you write a new post or create a new page.

Even so, it has an option to rebuild your sitemap manually should you ever change your blog configuration, or permalinks, or whatever else you might update on your WordPress site.  Since it is as easy as clicking on a link, I recommend doing it regularly whether you think you need it or not.  It’s a lot better than logging into Google Webmaster Tools and finding a bunch of your links are coming up 404 Not Found or Unreachable, or whatever.

Is this true?

As you may know, I’ve been working on building my own web empire.  These sites are filled with what I think is really good (and hopefully really well written) content that users would find very interesting.  As these site mature, I am experimenting with monetizing them, primarily through Google’s AdSense product because it is pretty easy for freelancers to use and it won’t ruin your reputation.  To paraphrase what they used to say in IT: No freelancer ever ruined his career by using Google AdSense on his sites.

While I’m not putting any real effort into further reading or research on Google Ads (I already have quite the stack to get through), I recently ran across this article posted a few months ago at advertisespace.com (good domain name, eh?) in which the author provides seven tips to increase your AdSense Revenue.

The Number 1 tip to increase AdSense revenue is to “Write Crappier.”  Now, the author had posted a tongue in cheek item earlier in the article, so it is possible he is only half serious.

On the other hand, he quickly pointed out that he was only kidding on that other point, and his reasoning makes sense in a twisted kind of way.

If you write good content, his theory goes, readers will be more inclined to stick around and read more of your article/site when those readers who end up on junky, limited content sites, are much more likely to see an ad for something they are even remotely interested in and click it rather than spend more time on the original site.

I’m not sure how this stacks up in the real world, but you have to admit, a lot of the top ranking sites you end up going to via Google Search results aren’t exactly jammed packed with useful, non-obvious, information.

Considering the effort it takes to achieve some of those rankings, the payoff has to be at least pretty decent.

Why can’t it just be that the good are rewarded and the wicked are punished?  It would make things a lot easier.

Makes you think.

I think I may have stumbled upon a useful technique for writers who develop websites.  I call it Inverted SEO.

While we understand Search Engine Optimization and the ability to monetize the traffic that SEO brings, it can still be a drag to develop websites for yourself from this perspective, even though you know that a website dedicated to Britney Spears naked shaving her head next to Paris Hilton making a sex tape while a drunk Lindsey Lohan drives the car could bring traffic by the thousands.

This is, of course, why everyone always says, “Write what you know,” and “Write what you love.”

As writers, we write because we are good at it, and more importantly, because we like it.  Let’s face it, there are a lot of easier ways to make money if that is what one is after.

So, it is no surprise that writers sometimes have a difficult time developing money making websites for themselves.  Sure, if someone else hires a write to develop a money making website, a professional freelancer can do that all day long.  After all, that is when professionalism kicks in, as well as a solutions orientation that makes all the difference when it comes to focus.

But, when developing a website without that “it’s what the client wants” mentality, things can be much different.  After all, the client is you.

SEO When Content Really Is King

Read any of the Top 5 SEO websites, and you’ll repeatedly hear that content is king.  That isn’t completely true.  What is really king is choosing good keywords, picking a domain name with those keywords in it, then building up a plethora of links from other bloggers.  After all of that, THEN content is king.  Of course, that is a little bit like saying the Mayor of Denver runs the government.

What is a writer to do?

Write what you love.

No, seriously.

Build your website around a topic that you love, and the content will pour from your fingers.  You’ll write articles or blog posts when you are procrastinating (like I’m doing right now), when you are at your computer late at night, and when you are bored.  This will not only build up a sizable website with plenty of well written and valuable content, it will help keep your mind and talent sharp and fresh as well.  (Nothing dulls a passion for writing like never writing anything you enjoy.)

After a month or so (depending on how much you have cranked out), load up Google’s webmaster tools and take a look at your Top Searches.  See which ones you are already ranked in the Top 20 for, and which ones, if any, already bring visitors (clicks) to your website.  Now, go back and write another article on each, being sure to use those same keywords in the title and in header tags and all those other SEO tricks that you know.

Optimizing Your Content Driven Site for the Best SEO Results

Then, go back to writing your usual stuff that you want to write.  A few days, or a few weeks later, go back and repeat the process.

What’s the point?

By developing a site that you love, and ignoring any keyword research up front, you can easily build up the kind of content that you need to have a full site.  But, ignoring keywords and SEO is a sure way to have a site that takes years to discover, if ever.  Inverting your SEO process, however, can be the golden ticket to big success and positive cash flow.

Writing the content first, and then observing which keywords stick and using that information will provide a way to meet all the same goals, without having to sell out to do it.  By building on the “accidental” success you have, you will build up the number of visitors (and ad review) to your site.  Since you undoubtedly have oodles of worthwhile content, some of those visitors will stick around and come back on their own.  Keep repeating these steps and in just few months, you can be the “authority” for keywords you never knew existed that are directly related to a topic that you love writing about.

Do this with a hundred or so sites, and you can stop working as a freelancer.

Good luck.  I’ll keep you posted on my progress.  I hope all of you do the same.

For those of you wondering about the headline, you MUST read Ian Lurie’s recent posting, “The Perfect Blog Post”.

If your goal is to

quit your day job

and make a living online off of ad revenue generated by your very popular blog then you should print off Lurie’s article and treat it as the gospel in your writing endeavors.

If, on the other hand, your goal is to be a professional writer, then you also should print off Lurie’s article and do your best to incorporate whatever you can into your writings to ensure your current survival.  Then you can hope that one day, the search engines update their algorithms in order to favor useful, well written, content over that which was purposely written to contain a specific searched-for phrase in the title tag and then is linked to from wherever for whatever reason.

It is apparent that Ian is a “real” writer and, like me, has some issues with some of the things that make one “successful” on today’s Google driven (and thus blogger driven).  And, while we both understand them, we don’t have to always like them.  So, we play along thanks to a realistic world attitude that understands that success does not always beat a path to the door of the worthy.

I have tried to write this post about 100 times, but have never succeeded in plumping the depths of such “strategies” without sounding bitter.  Satire is often the perfect tool for laying bare that which annoys.  I will pocket that lesson for the future.

In a single post (under 200 words, I might ad) he has successfully managed to mock, maim, and criticize all of those pandering tactics that are used far and wide by various “online professionals” in the name of SEO to write popular high-traffic blog posts and other online articles.  The net result being page after page of worse quality and lesser value, but highly searchable content that will drive your ad earnings up.

By the way, Mr. Lurie, I am sure that our demographic (real writers with souls) is much smaller than their demographic (who cares what it is if it drives traffic), but if you can find it in your hear to link back here using the link text “professional freelance writer”, that would be swell. 

Oops, did I just link pander, too?  (Yes, yes, give in to your eye rolling, for that is the true power of the dark side.)

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